You'll wish that summer could always be here

Well, things haven't exactly been lazy around here (if you know the song referenced in the title), but we have been managing to enjoy some of the spoils of summer in the midst of moving in. Last Saturday, Tres and I took a trip out to a (fairly) nearby  farm and picked 20 pounds of blueberries. It was a really neat place - they also have u-pick organic cherries, apples, pumpkins, and squash, their prices are reasonable, and the people are super nice - I'm excited to go back for apples and to squeeze our own cider in the fall.

blueberries, with some ready for the freezer

After entertaining various ideas for preserving them, I decided we'd just eat as many as we wanted fresh and I would freeze the rest. I froze them in a single layer on cookie sheets (I followed a suggestion I read in a number of sources, that you don't wash them prior to freezing, in order to keep the skin from wrinkling. . . we'll see if this pans out), then transferred them to containers for the freezer. I wanted to try something other than ziploc bags this year, as in order to properly keep out air and moisture, they can really only be used once for this purpose, so I bought freezer-safe pint jars (the largest size they had - I would like to do more research and see if I can find straight-sided quart jars, if I decide I like this method) and filled those. It took a couple of days to process them all and we ended up with 24 pints of berries, in addition to plenty of leftovers for eating over the course of the week.

half of the berries, in the freezer

I've also been trying to do some preparing for this fall, when we will have a new little person around and might not be up to our usual cooking pace. Luckily, the garden is producing more than we can eat these days, so it's been easy to gather enough for some extra meals. My first attempt was a cucuzzi (squash) ragu, which I made in smaller quantities earlier last week and is nice as a stew with bread or on top of pasta, polenta, or your choice of grain. It's quite simple and easily adaptable to whatever you happen to have around.

Ingredients assembled (I ended up adding some carrots too)

ragu

I sauteed the onions and garlic until soft, then added the sliced cucuzzi (when it's small like this, you can leave the skin on and seeds in, if more mature, it's advisable to remove both - this holds true for any summer squash . . . if you're unsure, try a bit raw and see how you like the texture and taste) and carrots. Once they were softened, I added the coarsely chopped tomatoes and a pound of cooked, ground pork. I added salt and pepper, simmered it all together for about half an hour, and then put it into the fridge to cool, before putting it into containers for the freezer. I have, of course, no guarantees about how it will turn out (it's my experience that squash and tomatoes tend to get a bit watery in the freezer, so adding some tomato sauce when reheating might be a good idea . . . I'll try to revisit this after we eat it and talk about how it turned out), but it feels good to have a few meals prepared for the fall.


In other exciting garden-related news (and as you likely saw in Tres' earlier garden post), my dahlias are in full bloom. I've really been enjoying going down to the garden every couple of days and picking a new bouquet. Having a little something pretty in here during the chaos and general filthiness of moving has been a nice little touch of civility.

We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall

Actually, we do need that piece of paper and I am happy to say that we are now the proud owners of a Certificate of Occupancy! Again, a bit anti-climactic, as we've already been moving in for the past couple of weeks, but it still feels good to have everything settled officially. Now, we can get down to things like starting garbage service, figuring out where to put our mailbox, and other such affairs.

kitchen

living room

As aforementioned, we're into our second week of unpacking and setting up house. It's been slow, partially because it's mostly me working on it during the week and I'm big, pregnant, and tire easily but mostly because everything that's been sitting in the dusty shop for a year needs to be cleaned before it can be put away. Still, we're making good progress; we have probably 80% of our stuff in here and most of it put away (with no shelves for books or records, they are still sitting in boxes, but we will try to remedy that in the next month or so). I've made a trip to Goodwill, done about 12 loads of laundry, and innumerable dishes (I can't even say how much I'm enjoying the modern convenience of a dishwasher right now) and feel like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. There's still plenty to be done (the shop is in total disarray and needs a serious cleaning of its own), but we are making progress.

Nothing lasts forever; that's the way it's got to be, there's a great black wave in the middle of the sea

We've hit midsummer in the garden. It is a great time in some ways; the weeds have basically stopped being an issue; the summertime crops are coming on; planting for the year is basically done. But it is a melancholy time too, because one of my favorite things about the garden is the promise it provides, and by midsummer the die has been cast for the year. It's too hot to plant any new cool-season crops, and too late to plant any warm-season crops (except green beans). We've just passed the time when most of the fall-maturing root crops and brassicas, which will feed us this winter, need to be in the ground. The wave has crested, and from now to October we'll be attempting to keep our heads above the produce! I've learned a lot this year about our new garden, and I'd like to share some of the successes and failures.

Amaranth - Success. Well suited to the climate and soil. Not bothered by insects

Beets and Spinach: Marginal. We have problems with leaf-miners and an as-yet unidentified pest that is eating seedlings

Brassicas: Fail. I've planted a lot of brassicas, and gotten relatively little food from them. First it was too cold. Now there are lots of aphids. Half of the plants are stunted (I don't think they like the sandy soil). The rabbits eat a lot of the transplants. The cauliflowers that survived haven't headed because they didn't get enough chilling later in the spring. Collards were a moderate success. 

Lentils and Garbanzos: Fail. Very well suited to the climate and soil, but heavily preferred by the rabbits. I didn't even get a chance to see the edamame, they snapped them up so quick. You can see all of their leavings next to my neatly trimmed lentils. 

Pumpkin: Fail. A dilly of a pickle. These plants looked great early in the season, and have collapsed. I can find no sign of disease, and presume that they got too big for the hot dry sandy climate combination to support. Some of the smaller/later plants look ok at this point, but who knows. 

Carrots: Success. Other than a slow start from a cold spring, these babies have done really well. No insect problems, no root formation problems (except some forking, probably arising from too-rich soil), and they are holding well in the field. I'd highly recommend the Bejo variety 'Nelson', having now grown it both in Seattle and here. It produces an early, vigorous and tasty Nantes type carrot. 

Popcorn: Win. I crowded my sweet corn too much however....

Cucuzzi: Super win. You've probably never heard of cucuzzi unless you are of recent Scicilian extraction. Cucuzzi is an edible gourd that is used similarly to zucchini, but predates it. I very much prefer cucuzzi, as it is more firm and has a very pleasing flavor. The plants are vigorous and the flowers are pretty, opening in the evening to be pollinated by moths. I guess some people have a hard time growing it, but it likes it here.  

Watermelon (and muskmelon): Win. Well suited to the climate and soil

Sunflower: Win. Well suited, and attractive to some very interesting native bees

Quinoa: Fail. This looked good early in the year, but the heat and some kind of fungus has burned the plants down.

Solanums: Peppers, eggplant, tomato, potato; they all do well here, which makes me happy. Often when I consider whether I could move to X or Y location, one of the things that crosses my mind is "Can I grow good tomatoes there". Amelia and I have been enjoying our variety trial and taste test... results will be coming in a future post. 

It's been a long, long time coming

Ok, I fully intended to post an update the weekend before last, but things have just been so busy around here that I never had time to finish my entry. Instead, I present something of a saga (sorry, I get a little verbose) of the past two weeks.
Week 1
It felt a bit like old times around here this week, as we were back to 90 degree days and the old crew was back out to work on the house. The inside is completed and our building company's work is done, so now it's up to us to finish things up and get ready for our final inspection. First up, getting in and out of the house. As of Thursday morning, the front and back doors looked like this:

front door

back door, with makeshift covered pallet step

My father-in-law came out on Wednesday night and started work on the front on Thursday. I went to work on the bathtubs/showers, soaking and scraping all of the drywall mud and other debris out of them.


My dad came out Thursday night and on Friday, while work on the outside continued, we got to work cleaning inside. We began by washing all of the walls, which were covered in dust from sawing and grouting, as well as splashed with black grout and tile cement. It was slow going and tiring, with lots of getting up and down and reaching; while the three dimensional bits came off, there remained a lot of staining that would have to be painted over. My dad cleaned all of the shelves and cabinets, while I continued with walls. Tres came home early and helped clean, which definitely made things move faster. To give you some idea of the scope of this project, here are the cabinets in the kitchen (each one is divided by a removable shelf through the middle, sometimes two):

By the end of the day, we had completed all but two rooms. In the afternoon, our construction manager came out and we went through our list of things that needed to be checked/fixed. It wasn't short, but many of the issues were cosmetic and none would be too difficult/time consuming to fix. He told us we should be ready for the final inspection Monday/Tuesday.


We finished cleaning on Saturday and moved on to touch-up painting. We spent the rest of that day painting, each room's stains needing 2-3 coats. I gave the floors a quick vacuum and Tres wrapped up the day by mopping the entire house. The floors were far from sparkling, but it got a lot of the dirt/dust from the grout up and moved us a step closer to having the house ready to move in.

the front steps

back steps

Sunday was time for more painting and cleaning. After a day and a half of painting, my dad passed on the last few rooms and moved on to filling nail holes in the trim and moldings and washing the windows. Tres and I continued painting and finished by the afternoon, moving on to filling moldings. His pop raked and cleared out debris outside (including hundreds of nails and screws and huge hunks of concrete he had to dig out of the sand with a shovel) and drove them out to the dump, put up our address numbers (required by the city, despite the fact that our house is not anywhere near the road, but I digress. . . ), finished the back step that afternoon, and then joined us on work inside the house. 

our snazzy house numbers

In other news, the sprinkler system (which has thrown us for more than a couple loops in this process) is finally completed! It still needs to be inspected, but we shouldn't need to have any more work done on it. It only took me 3 days to get the plumbers to send someone out to hook water up to it. Hooray!


Week 2
On Monday, the dads finished up the windows and put up the screens and Tres' pop loaded up the last bits of debris/garbage for disposal. I filled some nail holes and cleared a lot of our stuff out of the house, so there wasn't so much around for the inspection on Tuesday.


As predicted by our construction manager (and is typical), we did not pass inspection in the first go-round. Instead, we were met with a list of corrections. Most were neither difficult nor time consuming (stick up some insulation that was hanging down over the crawl space vents, post the length of the dryer duct, and revise the site plan to reflect the true set backs). He also wanted us to bring the grade around the house up about 6 inches, which was a bit problematic - I ended up calling him a few times to determine what exactly he wanted and how it could be done - but it was doable, with some extra work on our part, of course.

our dryer duct sign

The real kicker involved - big surprise - the bloody sprinkler system. You remember the sprinkler system, don't you? The one I said was finished just mere paragraphs ago? Every time I think we've heard the last of it. . . it's back! There seemed to be a bit of a disagreement about whose responsibility it was to inspect the system. The house inspector wanted an additional part installed, but when I contacted the fire marshal (who would be inspecting and officially approving the system), he said it wasn't necessary. This resulted in a few days of back and forth discussions, with no real resolution. Sigh.


On Tuesday night, Tres and I hit Home Depot and bought 15 vent wells and 6 bottles of caulk, to cover up the foundation vents, as the new grade would otherwise result in them being covered and subsequently filled with sand. While he removed our new front and back steps and generally cleared things out for the excavator, I went around the foundation and taped 3 inches under the siding all around the house, so the excavator could see exactly where the inspector wanted the grade to reach. The excavator came and moved the sand up and spread the rest of our gravel for the driveway on Wednesday and Tres came home early to finish putting up the vent wells. I cleaned some tile inside the house and tried to coordinate our various jobs to be sure that we could get everything done in time to have the inspector back out by Friday, as he was headed out of town the following week. By the end of the day, we were graded and vented and Tres' pop was back out to help us get things finished up. Whew!

 vent well, with finished grade

inside a vent well

Thursday was a parade of workers, as people from the company came out to do small fixes we had requested (the aforementioned insulation under the house, some inside cleaning, closet door adjustments, etc.). The sprinkler installer came out to test the system and everything looked good. The fire marshal met us for the inspection and . . . the bell didn't work. At this point, I really didn't have words. Everyone was super nice about it, but they wouldn't be able to come back until next week, which meant no certificate of occupancy or moving in this weekend. I was so disapointed and frustrated, I thanked them and had to sit for a few minutes in the shop by myself. I called the inspector and left a message, asking if he would be willing to pass our final inspection, even if the sprinklers hadn't passed. Next, I called the electrician and they sent someone out to look at the bell and the water heater, which had (excitingly) let off a large spark when the sprinkler installer had touched it with his wrench (not a normal or desirable occurrence). He worked for awhile and assured me everything was operational.


In the meantime, in order to fix the sliding door (which wasn't hanging properly), the workmen tore off the siding around the door, to adjust the framing. The day before our scheduled inspection. Holes in the side of our house. Oh, my head. My father-in-law put the steps back on the front and back and raked the grade up to the side of the house. I did some floor wiping and filled some nail holes, then headed out for a doctor's appointment. The inspector returned my call, saying he thought my plan was reasonable and that he would be happy to pass us on our final (assuming he approved our corrections), on the contingency that the sprinkler inspection passed next week. What a wonderful surprise!


I returned home happy and did a little more work in the house. The workmen had fixed the door and replaced the siding, although they had not yet sealed around it. I finally got a return call from our construction manager and he assured me that he would send someone to look at the water heater and that the inspector probably wouldn't worry about the lack of sealant around the door. He also mentioned that he hadn't called in for the inspection. WHAT? This was something we had been talking about all week. I had told him the inspector was going out of town. I had told him we needed to call in for Friday. What had happened? It was too late to call in for an inspection any more, so I reassured myself that the inspector and I had spoken and made plans and hoped that he would overlook the fact that I had not set up an official inspection.


We started off Friday with low expectations, hoping for the best. That morning, I received a call from the inspector. He didn't see me on his schedule: had I called in for an inspection? When I explained what had happened, he told me he had a busy day, but would try to fit us in, as we had so few items to be checked. I thanked him profusely and crossed my fingers. Lo and behold, just a few hours later, there he was. He went through our corrections quickly, but thoroughly and advised me to have a few areas of the yard (and when I say yard, I essentially mean sand dunes) leveled a bit, so they won't be an erosion issue. And that was that. Aside from the sprinklers, we were approved! While not as exciting as getting our certificate of occupancy, which would mean we could actually start moving in over the weekend, it was super relieving to get all of this worked out before the inspector left  for vacation.  The sprinkler installer stopped back out to check the bell and it still didn't work. Is anyone surprised at this point? A different electrician (read: one who actually knew what he was doing) came out and REALLY fixed the bell and the water heater, as in showed us what was wrong and repaired it, as opposed to saying: "everything looks fine, I don't know why you had trouble." We all did a little more work inside that day, then took the rest of the night off.


On Saturday, I worked on finishing up filling the nail holes while Tres and his dad moved the heavy stuff into the house. It's technically not really ok to do that yet, but there's no way we can move it by ourselves (seeing as I can't do heavy stuff these days) and we don't really have any resources here to help us, so this was the most convenient arrangement. It's pretty exciting to have even a few things in the house, as it makes this all start to feel a bit more real. It took us all about 6 hours to finish our jobs and then his pop headed back home. That night, we slept in the house for the first time. It felt a bit strange, both more enclosed (as opposed to the openness of the shop) and freer, as we weren't surrounded by all of our stuff. It's the first time we've been in our bed (as opposed to a mattresses on the floor) in over a year and it felt surprisingly more comfortable to me, perhaps just because it feels more permanent. Of course, being in the cool, well-ventilated house was really nice too.


On Sunday, Tres did a bunch of much-needed work in the garden and I took the day off. I didn't want us to move a bunch of stuff in, as we still didn't have our certificate of occupancy and the building company technically didn't want us moving in until we had signed closing papers with them. At this point, I really didn't want to rock anyone's boat.


(technically) Week 3, or this week
Monday dawned with high hopes. The sprinkler installer and fire marshal came out in the morning and we passed the test! I waited a few hours for the information to get entered into the system, then called the city to find out about getting our certificate of occupancy. The woman there was extremely nice and checked with several of the involved parties, before regretting to inform me that the inspector hadn't entered us into the computer. We could have someone else come out the next day to re-inspect . . . After some consideration (what if they were pickier and gave us other corrections?), we decided to wait until he returns. We met with our construction manager that afternoon, filled out our closing documentation, and got the keys to our house. Wow, we were really done! Upon returning home, we brought up some essentials and made dinner in the house for the first time.


It feels fairly anti-climactic to be this close and just short our certificate of occupancy, but things should get resolved early next week and I'll try not to spend too much time worrying that someone will change their mind or that we'll get in trouble for moving in before it's technically allowed.  Ok, that's my story. I'm off to fill up the car and  start moving stuff up here.

Life is just a bowl of. . .

Before we headed out on vacation at the end of June, I went to our local orchard (you may remember it from last year) and picked some Rainier cherries on opening day. Speaking of last year, my very first entry was also about preserving Rainiers. While I was quite happy with our initial project, I'm sad to say that the dried cherries turned out to be pretty disappointing. After a month, or so, of storage they became really bitter. I wasn't able to turn up a lot of information on why that might be and what I could do differently, so wasn't particularly inclined to try it again this year (especially since our dryer has since been dismantled to be used in other projects). So, it was on to another method and I had one in mind - delicious amaretto cherries that we had eaten a few years ago at a friend's house. Happily, we have since acquired a book with a similar recipe, so I was prepared to give it a try.

my 7 pounds, or so, of cherries

I picked for about an hour and figured I had enough for a double batch, which was plenty for a day's work. They weren't super ripe, as it was still quite early in the season, but they were still tasty and I figured the syrup would certainly make them sweet enough. When I got home, I got to use my new cherry pitter (so sweetly gifted by dear friends last year, after my lamenting about doing all of that work by hand) and - let me tell you - it is a nice tool to have. I'm pretty sure your hand would still get tired if you were processing something like 20 pounds, but it was just right for the task at hand and made my life so much easier.

my sweet, sweet pitter

pitted and ready to go

Next, I heated them up in a light syrup.

For each jar, I added some amaretto, poured in the cherries, and then filled it with syrup. I processed them all in a water bath and: voila!

jarred

all of our cherries

Luckily for us, I didn't have quite enough to fill the last jar, so we got to eat some right away. I have to say, they are pretty darn delicious, just the right amount of sweet and amaretto. I will be interested to see what will happen as they sit (and what effect the water bath had on their flavor and consistency). All in all, not too strenuous and a recommended recipe!

Didn't we almost have it all. . .

I wrote this post the week before last (June 20th) and forgot to post. We were away last week, but we're back now and I'll take some more photos and do some proper updating here this week!


I'm a bit behind on my house updates, but I was able to pop in yesterday and take some photos. Last week they installed all of the cabinets, trim, and counter tops and hung the doors.  

kitchen cabinets

dishwasher (can you tell I'm excited about this?)

dining room

guest bath

water heater

master bath

The tilers actually came over the weekend and finished up the tiling, so the floors are done too. So far this week, we've got plumbing fixtures installed and attached and most of the electrical done (they'll come back for the work on the outside, as the siding is getting replaced, due to some defects in the paint). Yesterday, the heating and cooling guys came and installed the heat pump. We're getting close now!