I spend A LOT of time on Pinterest, collecting images of stuff I want to do. They don't call me Downeast DOING STUFF for nothing! ( Well, I call myself that....) But I find that I collect more stuff than I'll ever do.
After going to the lawyers today to draft a will, etc. I realized how times flies and now I'm paying someone and telling someone what to do when I'm DEAD!
Working on the Risotto. It's a full time, 20 minute job.
Saute some chopped onions ( supposed to be Shallots, but I didn't have any.) in butter and Olive Oil, to get ready for the scallops.
Add Parmesan Cheese to the rice.
Wilt the Spinach in the butter left from cooking the Scallops.
Seared Scallops.
(Jersey girl, me, pronounced Scallops
Mainiacs say Scollops, or something like that.)
Spinach with a big dollop of Risotto and then the Scallops.
DEEEE lish!!
We have lots of cukes in the garden, so I thinly sliced them (on a box grater), salted them and let them sit in a colander for a while to withdraw a lot of the liquid, add thinly sliced onions, pepper, sugar to taste and vinegar. Makes a sort of sweet and sour dressing. Toss. I served this with the Scallops.
I would have served this with wine, but we already had two Pina Coladas each, so we had water.
Thank you Pinterest. One down, 4 million to go....
Update: I'm in a place where the internet is sketchy at best. I thought I scheduled this post to appear after midnight on the 15th, but alas, it didn't. So here it is.....
Sorry Birdman.....
Typical image of the Birdman aka Mr. Downeastdoingstuff. Camera in hand....
Sadly I am not with my Birdman on his birthday. He's in Maine and I'm in Florida, but the miles do not mean anything. I am always with you, my sweetie and always will be.
Wishing you a wonderful day. Miss you and will see you soon....
Much love, Elenka xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxoooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxoooooooooooooooooooooooxxxxxxxxxxxxxx etc.
8:17 PM. July 9, 1986. You entered this world. Little did I know that we would end up with the cutest little baby on earth! Dad and I were so proud....
Nana and Babka were proud, too.....
Papa? Well, he didn't even know what to say! (or was it Daj mi Pivo?)
Grandpa loved to come visit you!
Just you and Wiz.
Papa and Grandpa were together with you because Babka and Papa came up from Florida to see you perform a lead in.....
the musical, "The Secret Garden". (Colin Craven)
Keep smiling my little bird, keep smiling......I love you forever.
Happy Birthday my sweet angel.
Race you to the top of the morning Come sit on my shoulders and ride Run and hide, I'll come find you Climb hills to remind you I love you, my boy at my side.
So today Mr. Downeastdoingstuff, aka Birdman, announces he wants to make some Mojitos. Mojitos??
"Do you know how to make one?", I ask.
"No", he replies.
"Well, I know you have muddle some mint leaves in the bottom of a glass first.", I inform him.
"???"
":-/"
"Muddle?"
(blink...blink)
"Let's just not use mint leaves!", he declares
"No, I'm pretty sure that's an integral part of the recipe.", I say.
So, off I go to my best friend......Google.
Come to find out we need to make something called 'simple syrup'. It's a good thing that this idea of Birdman's came just after breakfast because to make simple syrup you have to make it hot and then let it cool before you actually use it.
I found a recipe and emailed it to Birdman's computer. He's the drink maker around here.
Late afternoon I went to Hannaford's and got the ingredients.
(I picked up 3 Lobsters, too...just in case.)
Here we go:
Rum, simple syrup, mint leaves, lime and club soda.
Muddle the leaves first.
"???"
Next step? You Tube.
(we'd be in big trouble without the computer)
Important fact learned. Do NOT muddle it too much. Be gentle. Key to a great Mojito.
Easy on the muddling.
Twenty minutes later, 2 great Mojitos. Here's one. (I photographed Birdman's Mojito because mine was half gone already at this point.) ;-/
:-)
:-) :-) :-) :-p
Drinking the Mojito, Birdman is playing with his i-phone.
Next thing I know he tells me that he's looking at the weather radar map. We are having a few storms coming through the area, as you can see....
Then he tells me that he decided to scroll to the right to see if he can get to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean on his i-phone.
I'm, like, whatever.
This is what he finds....
(apparently the Atlantic Ocean...)
After more scrolling, more apparent Atlantic Ocean. And then....and THEN...here's what he finds!
It's really there! Great Britain.
Chance of a few showers and no Mojitos in sight.
But then again, it's not cocktail hour there anymore.
....or maybe it's just beginning.....
As Jimmy Buffet says, "It's 5 o'clock somewhere."
Cheers.
the recipe:
Bacardi Mojito
Ingredients
12 fresh spearmint leaves
1/2 lime
2 tablespoons simple syrup (equal amounts sugar and water heated until sugar dissolves, cooled) or 4 teaspoons sugar
In a tall glass, muddle or mash together the mint leaves and lime. Add the simple syrup or sugar and fill the glass with ice. Add the rum and top with club soda, stir well.Garnish with a lime wedge and a sprig of mint.
This is more or less a public service announcement.
If you wake up one morning and find this on your shoulder (or anywhere).....go to Quick Care, immediately. (that's me)
It's a Deer Tick bite with the telltale bullseye ring around it, precursor of Lyme Disease. Now, I've had plenty of wood ticks sucking on me ever since I've lived here....they're not an issue.
I would just rip them off of me and throw them out. But this, I've never seen. A Deer Tick is the size of a pencil point and I never even saw it. But I saw it's results, so I immediately flew into action like any medical professional would.
I googled it.
And then I went to Quick Care. Have to take two weeks worth of antibiotics so that I DON'T get Lyme Disease. Whew. (The rash goes away all by itself even if you don't do anything about it, but years from now many, many things can go awry, like arthritis and brain issues, etc. You don't want that.) (Google it.)
That night, after Quick Care, I got really sick with flu like symptom....chills....aches.....the works. That lasted almost 2 days.
Now, this all happened just 5 days after THIS:
Just me and the electric hedge clipper. We did it. (Don't ask.)
Had to get a tetanus shot that for 4 days, made my arm feel like it was run over by a truck. That was after I got a Shingles shot in the same arm the day before.
And this is after the refrigerator died and a repair man couldn't come for 5, count them, 5 days!!
I like to do stuff. I find millions of things to do on Pinterest. I save them for later.......(yawn).
But these directions for making a round basket out of plastic bags were obviously translated from another language by somebody other than a human being. (I hope)
My laptop died. About a month ago. At least it pretended to die. And I thought we were friends.
Let this be a lesson to you all. BACK EVERYTHING UP!!
Oh yes, I've read that missive before. I've heard it drilled into our heads at school a gazillion times. And I actually did back up my work......three years ago.
Not good enough apparently.
The thing that was attached to me by the hip let me down. Surprisingly it felt like a punch into the gut, like the wind got knocked out of me, like someone ate all my coconut mounds brownies.
(recipe to come.....)
I was grieving. I lost over 3,000 photos, a million recipes, untold amounts of school work and directions for a spinach smoothie that makes you forever young and rich beyond your wildest dreams.
To make a long story short, all of a sudden, after an attempt to download an update for itunes, my screen went gray, the apple symbol showed up and I was unable to sign in. Then the computer started to restart itself over and over and over again and I was never able to sign in.
The computer guy at school said I killed it. ('My' computer really belongs to the school.) He tried several things....his assistant tried different things....everyone researched the internet for solutions to no avail. The special 'architecture' of the 'school' programming did not allow
these remedies to be useful. It needed to be re-imaged, and then all gets erased no matter what.
BUT...it didn't make any sense!!!! I hate things that don't make sense. It didn't make sense to my son either. And he knows EVERYTHING. (ahem)
Everything was still on my computer....right behind that dang gray screen. We just couldn't get there.
The hard drive did not get run over by a bus. It's was still intact. All my stuff was still there. I knew it was.
ALWAYS GET SECOND OPINIONS. Eventually I found someone that knew how to surgically remove my hard drive, put it into another computer and access all my stuff!! It's all jumbled up, no rhyme or reason to it, but it all appears to be there.
I found this scarf on a blog I stumbled across a while back. I knew I wanted to make it. I even pinned it onto my Pinterest collection.
The blog is called Katy Did and she has some neat ideas in her blog. (And the cutest little girl!)
Check it out. (although she seems to have stopped contributing to her blog after an unfortunate copyright incident......)
Anyway, here is the scarf. As you can see, it's all thick, soft yarn and it's stitched together!!
I used gold yarn and I happened to have some shiny gold thread left over from another project. I used that for sewing it together.
I left a bigger space between the stitching than Katie did.
It wasn't easy stitching across the yarn. I couldn't keep the yarn as wide apart as I wanted to. The sewing machine kept smooshing it together.
For the first few sections, I used masking tape to hold the yarn together, but it was a bull to pull off without shredding the fuzziness of the yarn. If I had had some of that less sticky blue tape, it probably would have worked better.
By leaving bigger spaces between the stitching, I am able to interlock the scarf halves to wear it without tying it.
I made it the same length as one of my regular scarves.
I love defying superstitions right in their faces.
I will sit in seat 13, I will walk under a ladder, I will pick up a piece of lava/pumice from the parking lot of Mount St. Helens.
I heard on the radio this morning that there will be 3 Friday the 13th's this year and they are 13 weeks apart from each other. Yippee!!
But I didn't really care because that night I went to see.........
........at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine at 8 PM.
And I went all by myself. (well, there were other people in the audience, but I didn't know them.)
The previous weekend I went online, found a decent SINGLE ticket and got it. Mr. Downeastdoingstuff was nice enough to think about me walking around, all alone, in the dark in the big city, so he actually drove me to the door and then later, picked me up!! Very, very nice.
That's the way he is.
All day long I could see the trucks parked in a parking lot near my school. Three big mother suckers.
My seat was in the Terrace section...not too bad!
Curtain call. (shhh, we were warned that taking photos was against the law. I don't think curtain call counts, do you?)
It was very enjoyable. BUT I didn't care for the guy that played Sam Carmichael.
Thinks he 'all that', ya think? There just was no chemistry between him (gag) and the leading lady. at. all.
Who would pose for a photo like that? I don't think it's at all sexy or anything.
Take a breath already.
Here's who played Sam Carmichael in the movie...Pierce Brosnan aka James Bond.
You decide....
But, other than that, it was great fun. I still think I like the Movie better. Being in actual Greece with the aqua water and all that, well, I like that better.
My program. (Black and white? Run out of ink in the color cartridge?)
I love doing things with my hands. My hands need to be busy all the time.
There's a fantastic blog out there that I love. This inspiring woman also keeps her hands moving and does lots of hand sewing. If it didn't take so long, I'd hand sew everything.
Anyway, she had a post about knitting with thread. Since I don't know how to knit, crocheting was my attempt at this unlikely scenerio.
It was NOT easy. Check out the above photo. Just making the chain stitches in the first row was interesting. Thread is very slippery.
Then adding to the chain stitch felt like trying to make bows out of wet spaghetti covered with sauce.
Thread does not hold itself in place or keep it's shape very well.
I stuck to it and ended up with the above....and that's at far as I've gotten. What could I make out of that???
So then I tried two threads at a time. A little bit easier. In about 6 years, I will have a scarf.
So I went back to my Infinity Scarf with real yarn. I have to make 56 inches of this pattern, the directions inform me. Mine might be a bit shorter.
I thought it was going to be a mobius strip, but I don't think it is.
That's good. I like things to have more than one side to them.
All images and text on this blog, Downeast Doing Stuff, are original unless noted otherwise. Please do not copy, use or distribute without my written consent. All rights reserved 2009.
