Oven Woes

Short of stumbling blindly into a giant pile of money, I will never own this.  This beauty comes form Good Time Stove and sells for over 10K.  I would be hard pressed to spend that much money on a car let alone a stove, but I can dream a pretty dream about it.  I have not always been in the habit of pining over vintage appliances.  I believe that this habit has come with living without a working oven for about three years on and off.  First we struggled with burners that burned too hot and moved on to burners that didn't work at all.  Then we moved and found an oven that cooked our food as if it was angry that I would even consider asking it to bake.  It scorched our food in seconds.  I eventually learned that a 100 degree difference in temperature was the culprit rather than an irritable appliance.  Now we have the same oven deciding about half way through it's job, that it would rather not work.  I am back to the idea that it may be an irritable appliance with a distaste for people who ask it to work the occasional overtime.  I realize that baking all our own bread, and making just about everything I can from scratch is asking a lot of it considering it may not have ever been used by the previous tenant. Ever. In three years.  All the same, I once again have no oven.  I have had to be pretty creative about our meals as to avoid using one whole appliance.  The one that is used to cook most meals eaten in the home.  Therefore, stove-top suppers it has been.  I am running low on ideas though and have had my fill of rice and stir fry.  So for now, I fill my time gazing at pretty vintage stoves and dream of the breads that would come from those doors.  Cause there is none coming from mine.

On being annoyed

It is really hot.  So hot that they are sending kids home from school as to avoid baking them into child-raisins.  Due to this obscene heat I am forced to water the garden at least twice a day.  The garden that is slowly dying the death of too hot for those types of plants and not enough sun for the ones who can handle it.  I am dragging an always jumbled hose to the far reaches of the yard to water a garden that is now being digested by a small family of furred creatures.  I am down to one squash plant which is suffering due to a loss of many leaves.  I thought they didn't eat squash plants!? I never had a problem at the old house and really felt confident putting them out in an open space to spread and produce beautiful fruit to store away until winter.  I have two stems to prove how wrong I was.  The beans are being run down by squirrels and eaten by ants.  Half the plants have disappeared in a week.  The ones still standing look like one light breeze could topple them for good.  My best crops last year were the squash and beans and now I watching as they loudly hint at the fact that we will not be eating any squash in January or picking an aprons worth of beans with the sunrise.  I am annoyed.  I don't feel like there is any lesson to be learned.  I can't grow from this experience.  I can certainly bitch about it.  But even that isn't helping very much.  I could spend an hour searching for the right homeopathic remedy to keep me from tearing out every last plant and burning them in a funeral pyre sort of ceremony. Or I can call Liz, the friend who some how makes me laugh when I want to cry and let's me cry when I have needed to cry for so long that I can only laugh. There is something about seeing a mirror of your life to make it all see a bit easier.  I am sure that her lovely children are also up to no good, her garden is also being digested by small furry demons, she has also lost all control of the world we try so hard to keep spinning and most importantly, is completely okay with it. She is my Zen Mama Guru and I am so very thankful for her entering my world at a time when I needed anything Zen to keep me in place. I hope you all have a friend who keeps you from burning your life in a funeral pyre, they are priceless.

For the tummy

Stuffed Sweet Red Pepper with Corn Tomato Relish and Goat Cheese Sour Cream
This was beyond amazing and I will not be giving away the recipe.  You will have to come to me to experience this tasty treat.  I am not lying when I tell you that Matt was still "yumming"  on his last bite.  I will say that goat chesse makes the meal.  I was not a fan until I had the 'Adobo Goat Cheese Nachos' from my most favorite restaurant Blue Sage Grille.  It's known as the fancy restaurant(rentrant if you're Cora), so we only go when fancy is an option.  So not very often.  But I channeled up my inner sage and threw in the goat cheese and it was perfection.  It took a few hours with all the prep but I will make this for breakfast if it is ever requested.  The full extent of each element makes this recipe too difficult to even begin to make a tutorial but I will give the basics.
Tomato Corn Relish: Corn, tomato, lime juice, honey, chili flakes, green onions.
Goat Cheese Sour Cream: Goat cheese, milk,sour cream, adobo seasoning, chipotle spice
Stuffed Pepper: Jasmine rice, fire roasted sweet corn, onion, chipotle spice, red pepper
All served over grated kohlrabi and avocado.
I know one friend who will be tempted into a visit with this meal as bait.  See you soon Ali.

Green Cooling

It has come time to figure out how to live without air conditioning in 90+ degree weather.  Both Matt and I grew up in homes that did not have the luxury of central air and we made it out alive.  Though the last few houses we lived in were equipped with what I came to believe as the greatest invention of all time.  No more sleepless nights spent jumping in and out of the cold showers.  No more repositioning of the oscillating fan that seems to always miss you but hit your sister. Most importantly, no more sweating! I have no problem sweating while i run or dig in the garden, but I loath the sensation of effortless sweat dripping down my still body.  Nature's cooling system my ass! So now we must decided on fans, open verse closed windows, a window a/c unit or all turning into people-raisins.  So far we are people-raisining it.  One window fan that worked poorly 7 years ago and a couple of ice packs.  Pathetic right?  I even googled "how to stay cool without air conditioning". The results were poor.  Really poor.  Like: "take a cold shower" and "eat spicy foods".  Things that certainly won't help an overly tired 3 year old who can't seem to understand that she should just suck it up because this is what the homesteaders did.  Seriously, someone explain to me how people have lived this way and continue to in places much hotter and more humid that here.  I would love to live without the window unit, it would force us outside into the cool shaded yard and keep the bills lower.  I would stick to fan but am worried that after buying one for each room, we could have gotten a small window unit and had a summer family bed.  The drawback being that Emme is finally sleeping the majority of her night in her own bed.  A very, very, recent victory. One that has been too good to be true.  That could set us back another year which I firmly believe could cause emotional damage due to lack of sleep.  I have yet to learn the art of sleeping with a foot in my ear or more commonly a HAND ON MY NECK.  I can only hope that June is not as bad as May, funny joke right? Excuse me while I go for my third cold shower followed by my spicy dinner.