A Busy Day and a Winner

It's been cloudy and cool the last day or so. The cloud cover and bright light of the rising sun made for a surrealistic view of Mt. St. Helens this morning.

Let's just take care of business first, shall we? I spun the dial on the Random Number Generator this morning (no actual spinning took place). And the winner is...

#20--Carol!

Carol and I have already communicated this morning, and I'll be sending her fat quarter bundle off as soon as I can get to the post office. Thanks to everyone who joined in and played along. I really enjoyed reading all your comments.

Yesterday morning started off with the usual slow stitching session. The spider web is finished. Now, all that remains is the top of the broomstick.

I've been working on this section for nearly a month, and so I'll be very glad to finish it off. 

It was another day of making dinner early. I had a cold chicken pasta salad on the menu, and so I wanted to get started on that. First, I needed to water the flower pots, and take a walk around the garden. My trusty companions were along with me for this part of the journey.

We checked out the hydrangeas. This one is covered in flowers. It puts out blue, lavender, and pink flowers all from the same plant. Sometimes a single flower has more than one color.

The purple one is putting on quite a show now too. I was happy Mae would get a chance to see this one because it was a gift from her.

To its left, the Red Cardinal clematis continues to amaze and delight us. It's doing really well for having been in the ground only two years.

Now here's something interesting. This is what the individual flower looks like. Pretty, huh?

And it has a thin round stem.

Now check this out...it's a double flower...a conjoined flower, if you will. You can see that it has two centers.

And look at its stem...flat and wide. Weird, huh?

Okay, but I had chicken pasta salad on my mind. My dish includes a walnut "pesto," made from basil. Now here's the thing about basil. I absolutely love the stuff, especially in pesto. But I'm annoyed that I have to buy either too little or too much when I'm grocery shopping. And, yes, I can grow my own, but I didn't do that this year. So, I'm back to my problem of too little or too much. 

Now here's something else: you can make pesto from pretty much anything. I've made it from beet greens, carrot tops, basil, kale, and even nasturtiums. So, I got an idea to use the sorrel in my culinary herb garden for this dish. I planted sorrel when I first planted the herb garden some 15+ years ago. It has always flourished. You can see how big the plant is in the image below.

I haven't found a lot of reasons to use it, although I have made soup from it, and I've made pesto from it too. So, instead of purchasing too much basil for my dish, I decided to make the pesto from the sorrel. Here's what an individual leaf looks like.

If you taste it raw like this...straight from the plant...it has a lemony-peppery flavor. So I substituted an equal amount of sorrel for the basil, and voila! My salad was born:

This is a Chicken and Farfalle Salad with Walnut Pesto. Just now, I spent some time looking for the recipe online, but it appears to have been taken down. Not to worry, I'll give it to you right here. It's an easy dish to make. I use one of the rotisserie chickens from the grocery store and plenty of kalamata olives. They add a nice, salty bite. I've made it with basil before, but in this case, I substituted the sorrel for the basil. We couldn't tell the difference, and I saved myself some money.

Chicken and Farfalle Salad with Walnut Pesto

Serves 4

Recipe from Cooking Light

Ingredients:

Salad:

2 cups uncooked farfalle (bow tie pasta; about 6 oz.)

2 cups cubed cooked skinless, boneless chicken breast

1 cup quartered cherry tomatoes

2 tablespoons chopped pitted kalamata olives

Walnut Pesto:

1 cup fresh basil leaves

1/2 cup fresh parsley leaves

3 tablespoons coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted

1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 clove garlic

Remaining ingredient:

4 curly leaf lettuce leaves

Directions:

To prepare salad, cook pasta according to package directions, omitting salt and fat.  Drain; rinse with cold water.  combine pasta, chicken, tomatoes, and olives in a large bowl.

To prepare walnut pesto, combine basil and next 6 ingredients (through garlic) in a food processor; pulse 6 times or until finely minced, wiping down side of bowl as necessary.  Add pesto to pasta mixture, tossing gently to coat.  Place 1 lettuce leaf on each of 4 plates; top each serving with salad mixture.

* * * * *

Okay, so that made it easy when we returned home from our wine-tasting event with Erik and Mae. I had just enough time left to sew the final vertical row of blocks together for the Ties & Tails quilt.

It still needs three borders, but that will have to wait until we get home from our little getaway.

The wine event was lovely. It was a weird day of weather yesterday...cloudy and cool in the morning. Then it rained just enough to make the afternoon very humid, and when the sun came out in the afternoon, it was downright uncomfortable. We'd all dressed for cooler weather. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our time at the winery. They had different stations set up with food and wine pairings, including a station where they made individual S'mores. Great fun. Here's a safety tip: If you're ever served up an individual S'more with a wet wipe for cleaning your hands, open the wet wipe before you start eating the S'more. You'll thank me for this at some point in the future.

Okay, and I went around taking pictures of their beautiful gardens. They had a nice kitchen garden going here with various vegetables and herbs.

There were some beautiful gladiolas in bloom.

And LOTS of artichokes. Clearly someone is on an artichoke mission. You can see them on both sides of the image below, and they were growing all over the property.

This one is blooming. If you've never seen an artichoke in bloom, it is something to behold. Think about the little thistles you'll see in a patch of wildflowers, and then multiply it in size by several hundred, and you'll have an artichoke blossom. They are very cool and prehistoric-looking flowers.

This rose was putting on quite show.

I noticed this next one as we were leaving. I don't know what it is.

Back home, dinner was ready...and for this guy too, apparently. He doesn't seem bothered by the pinwheel. Can you see all the sunflower seeds around him? He's been busy at the bird feeders...just tidying up, no doubt.

Okay, so today will be a busy day of packing and cooking. Most all the food we'll be eating on our trip is already prepared from leftovers and other stuff in the freezer. I'm making just a few more things ahead to make it easy on myself. I'm making up a meat marinade and some cookies. Also, some coleslaw and another salad. Meanwhile, I'll be packing my things. We're only going for a few days, and so it shouldn't take too long. I'll be bringing the laptop along, mainly so I can take pictures off my camera, if necessary. I'm not sure if I'll be blogging, so don't worry if you don't hear from me for a day or so. If there's anything to write about, I'll check in. If not, I'll be back here no later than next Saturday.

So either way, I hope y'all have a good week ahead of you. Don't forget to stay away from floods, fires, and avalanches.