Wrapping Up Boulder City

It's our last day in Boulder City. We'll head north to Pahrump tomorrow, which is just a little ways up the road. We like Boulder City, but I'd be lying if I said this visit was enjoyable. The weather has been cold and windy most of the time, and so we haven't been outside much. On a positive note, it's given me lots of time to sew, and so it's all good. Nevertheless, I'm hoping for warming weather and more time outdoors when we move on tomorrow.

Even the kitties are bored. Sadie took a morning nap on her window hammock.

She looked so comfortable, Smitty was seriously considering his options for napping as well.

We decided to head out on a pet supply run to give them some peace and quiet. We need to replace the corrugated scratch pad in their scratching post. You can see it in the upper left of the image below. We headed off to PetSmart, but ended up getting the wrong size. We knew the dimensions, but for some reason one person in our party thought we could get something of smaller dimensions and make it work. It won't. 😕 (Do you ever have a conversation with your significant other that leaves you scratching your head?)

The trip wasn't a total loss, however. We got them some kitty grass while we were there. (The store was sadly lacking in kitty toys.) The kitties went after their kitty grass with great gusto. I'm estimating it's about half the height it was when they started in on it yesterday afternoon.

So that was the most exciting thing to happen all day. When we got back, I spent the rest of the afternoon stitching on the blackwork basket. Now I've stitched up that whole section.

And there's just a little bit left. I expect I'll finish this today.

And this being Sunday...I'll be linking up to:

I wanted to tell you about an experiment from last night. On our menu for the night was a grilled zucchini sandwich. It sounded good at the time, but then I was less than inspired at dinnertime. No worries. I'd discovered a forgotten bell pepper in the back of the crisper, and I had an idea about how to spice up last night's dinner and use the pepper in the process. We ended up with sandwiches, as planned, but these were far tastier than what we were going to make originally.

I was riffing off a recipe I'd tried before for this Marinated Veggie Cheese Sandwich with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto. Now...before I go on, you might just want to fasten your seatbelt because I'm about to tell you about the contents of our refrigerator. It's a nail-biter, so get ready.

Okay, so I wrote about the problems of RV refrigerators when we made our USA perimeter tour. Since then, we've exchanged our old RV for a new one, and this one has a refrigerator about twice the size of the old one. I especially appreciate the larger freezer since I'm bringing lots of frozen leftovers from home whenever we start a journey. It's hard to photograph such a large surface of stainless steel, but I want you to see the size.

Okay, now this is the exciting part...strap on your helmets for extra safety. It's a wide refrigerator, but it's still only about 12 inches deep, and so the size is deceptively smaller than you might think. As an example, it's only the depth of two egg cartons sitting side by side. I've used a lot of plastic bins inside to keep things from falling over as we go down the road, and we've had pretty good luck with that.

But getting back to last night's dinner...the problem with RV refrigerators is that one must look for the smaller sizes on things, and then one must also attempt not to have a lot of leftovers. Recently, I needed some jarred pesto for a recipe. I only needed about 1/3 of the jar, and so now I'm stuck with an extra jar of pesto...not an easy-to-use item. Also, I had a tub of shredded gruyere cheese...another leftover where I only needed about 1/3 of the amount I was required to purchase. 

So, I already had the zucchini for the now-rejected original idea. But in my database, I had this second recipe, which handily used the bell pepper I'd rediscovered. So we made the original recipe, marinating the vegetables as before, but I substituted gruyere cheese for the goat cheese, and Swiss cheese for the provolone. Also, I had leftover fresh spinach, and so we used that. There was still one avocado, and that was added. Mike grilled the veggies and toasted the hoagie rolls. I mixed the pesto with an equal part of mayonnaise, and that turned into a tasty sandwich that used up a lot of the leftovers from the fridge. We enjoyed it. 

So here's the sandwich the way I made it:

Marinated Veggie Cheese Sandwiches with Pesto-Mayonnaise

adapted from Half-Baked Harvest

Serves 2 (one sandwich each)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme 

2 cloves garlic, minced or grated

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes

kosher salt and pepper

1 zucchini or yellow summer squash, sliced thinly lengthwise

1 yellow, orange, or red bell pepper, quartered

2 hoagie rolls, halved lengthwise

2 tablespoons jarred basil pesto

2 tablespoons canola mayonnaise or regular mayonnaise

2 ounces grated gruyere cheese

2 slices Swiss cheese, cut in half 

1 cup fresh spinach

1 avocado, sliced

Instructions:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, thyme, garlic and a pinch each of crushed red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Add the peppers and zucchini, tossing to combine. Allow the veggies to marinate for 15 minutes or up to overnight in the fridge. 

2. Mix pesto and mayonnaise until combined.

3. Preheat the grill to high. 

4. Grill the peppers and zucchini until light grill marks appear, 3-4 minutes per side. At the same time, toast the top and bottom of the hoagie rolls. Remove everything from the grill. 

5. Working with the bottom piece of bread, spready with the pesto mayonnaise, grated Gruyere, slices of Swiss cheese, grilled vegetables, avocado, and spinach. Add the top half of the ciabatta and gently push down on the sandwich.

6. At this point, you can slice the sandwich and serve warm or wrap in plastic wrap and keep in the fridge for up to 1 day. 

* * * * *

Okay, so I expect the latest inchy from Crabapple Hill has been posted. Mike will need to take back the wrong-sized kitty scratcher today, and I'll be spending the day sewing. I want to at least sew together the blocks for Dancing Chickens and Flying Pigs. If I'm feeling truly energetic, I'll work on getting the borders sewn on.