Bind On

It was another busy day here yesterday. There was a little of everything to do, I think. I started out by processing the beets. My yield was 5 pints of pretty pickled beets.

That's probably enough to see us through the year, but I'll probably make more before I'm finished. 

After that, I went to work on my slow-stitching. When I finished for the morning, I decided I'd stitched enough to move my hoop to the next position.

I was a little worn out stitching all those straight lines for the barn, and so I decided to move the hoop lower and stitch the cardinal. He's one of just two figures I've colored in, aside from the quilt blocks, and so I hope he looks okay when the stitching is finished.

And then it was time to bite the bullet and sew the binding to the Shop Hop quilt. This is a very large quilt, at 78 x 78 inches. My domestic sewing machine is set up in a little nook in my basement. With walls close-in on three sides, it can feel a little cramped working with something so large. Always, the anticipation is the worst part, and this went together without much trouble. Now it's ready for hand-stitching, and it's packed into the RV for our trip this week. It will keep me in stitches while we're away.

Now that it's time to pack for a trip, I'm thoroughly beset with laziness. I love RV travel. I hate packing and unpacking. So, I didn't do much the rest of the day. 

It was a nice evening, and we ate dinner outside. I tried something new. This is a recipe from our Cooking Light Diet, called Panko-Coconut Shrimp. I baked it in my toaster oven, and served it up straight from the baking sheet.

There are a few restaurants in town that serve coconut shrimp as an appetizer, and you can also have it as a main dish. I've never tried to make it at home, but this turned out to be surprisingly easy. It was also surprisingly delicious. It's a little messy to bread the shrimp, but not too bad. I kept a paper towel handy to wipe the breading off my fingers occasionally. I served it with some of the sweet cherry pepper jelly canned last week, and it was a great main course. If you want to try it, I'd suggest increasing the amounts of coconut and panko to 3/4 cup each. I ran out of breading before I ran out of shrimp.

We've also been eating a lot of watermelon. It's a refreshing side dish for summer weather. There was half a melon leftover from when I made Watermelon Salad with Rum and Mint earlier. Rather than make the same salad again so soon, I decided to make this dish for Watermelon with Blue Cheese and Prosciutto. The original recipe (there in the link) has you grilling the watermelon. We didn't think that added anything to the dish, other than making it more complicated, and so we just had it raw.

When I was growing up, all melons were salted before we ate them. The Italians like prosciutto with their cantaloupe, and the saltiness of the prosciutto is a good accompaniment to any kind of melon.

While we were eating, I spied this guy at the far end of the property. He's probably looking for squirrels. The squirrels seem to have moved to the other side of our field. We've dispatched 26 of their brethren, either via deportation or else via Smitty's superb hunting skills. Now, I imagine the hawk will have its way with them.

He sat there the whole time. I'm afraid these aren't great pictures. I'd activated the digital zoom on my point and shoot camera to get close enough. We have several resident hawks in the neighborhood, but we don't usually get to see them just sitting. Most often, they are seen soaring overhead.

Okay, so it's a new day. I really need to get serious about packing today. My plan is to hoe the garden and harvest any zucchini that are threatening to take over the planet. After that, I'll pack everything I can without going to the grocery store. Tomorrow morning I'll make a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up anything I'm missing, and then we'll be ready to go. If there's any free time, I want to finish off the top-stitching for Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs. 

There's plenty of stitching to take along when we go, but I don't want to run out.