Still Hoping For That Call From The Ellen Show

I was watching the Ellen show the other day and they showed one of the winners in their home makeover contest.  Well, it was not me, but it was a nice young couple that had neither central heating or central air in their home.  I at least have heat and a few window fans and a very ancient shiny brass and fake wood ceiling fan......Can you say envious.......

I wrote up the To Do list for This Summers Projects.  I keep hoping a little public accountability will goad me into doing some of these projects.  Things like painting I can do all by my lonesome, things like tiling/renovating the bathroom....well, I can do the demolition, just not the renovation.....

You can see the list below, looking at it, I've forgotten to add in some of the yard projects, more pavers for in front of the runs, re-seed lawn, work on flower beds.......

I could also use a really, really skinny person who does not mind the creep crawl space and the crawl space in the attic as well......

Sigh, the contest is not over yet, I will keep my fingers crossed, light a saint candle and think happy thoughts!

You Can Never Have Enough Pasta~ Sunday afternoon or Sunday Night

I work weekends away from my home. I sometimes say "I have a weekend place in Massachusetts" . While it's bigger and slightly better equipped than my house (ie it has a washer and dryer), there is no place like home for cooking. I do cook there on the weekends with the occasion order in for pizza or take out Chinese, but I still love a good Sunday lunch

I do however, have about an hour and half drive home on Sundays. I try lock up and be on the road no later than 5:35 PM, sometimes I stop for a bottle of wine at the local packy, sometimes I don't. My goal is to be home, with all the dogs, laundry, food, etc unloaded no later than 7:30 PM with a pot of water set to boil for something for dinner...

I grew up eating macaroni on Sundays for Sunday Lunch it's what Italian Americans did. They went to church and then had macaroni and gravy for your mid day meal. The two greatest Sunday afternoon meals are the Italian American macaroni and gravy and the English Roast Meal.  Both I love.   Since it would take too long to do a Roast Meal when I get home on Sundays, I stick to a pasta dish.  The leftovers are usually my Monday lunch.

This past week, I made a dish that I saw on Pioneer Woman cooks blog.... It a chicken Florentine pasta, you can see her dish and the directions here.  I made this on Sunday when I came home and as I did not have any chicken, I just added extra spinach. I had the cherry tomatoes in the house and I had the end of a wedge of really good locatelli romano cheese that I shaved into slivers for the pasta. You could use grated cheese if that is all you had in the house... It was soo good I made it again on Monday. I was out of wine, so I just doubled the chicken stock. It was still tasty. I also used a little chopped onion as I was trying to use up things from the fridge. Yummmm

Sort of Chili

It's Chili inspired I should say.  I had planned to make burgers last week, but it was going to be a couple cool, chilly (no pun intended) days and I wanted something hearty for dinner and I wanted something leftover that I could freeze.  I had a bunch of leftover canned beans and chopped peppers in my fridge from my lunch salads. They were not getting any younger, so I grabbed a can of tomatoes out of the cupboard and an extra can of beans and made a chili inspired  dish.



Recipe

1 lb of ground beef (I use an 80/20 mix)
1 onion-a little smaller than my fist, diced
1-3 cloves of garlic, depends on your taste
1 large sweet pepper, diced (red or green)
1 can red beans
1 can white beans-rinsed
1 can black beans-rinsed
1 can diced tomatoes-rinsed
1 can of canned corn or 1.5 cups of frozen corn-rinsed
1-2 TBS of tomato paste
1-2 chipolte peppers in adobe sauce * optional 
Canola, corn, or vegetable oil
salt
pepper
1 T. cumin
Cayenne powder to taste
chili powder to taste

Put a few glugs of oil in a large pan (dutch oven, large saute pan).  Add the onion, garlic and peppers and let them saute until soft.

Add the ground beef and let it cook until its no longer pink, you will have to break up the ground beef as it cooks. 

Add the rinsed  beans, corn, canned tomatoes,  tomato paste, chipolte peppers if you want them. Stir well. Add a healthy pinch of salt, black pepper, Cayenne pepper and chili powder to taste. If you are not a fan of very spicy food, you only need like a teaspoon of the cayanne or chili powder.  If you like spicy, add more.  

Turn the heat to low and let the mixture simmer for about 45 minutes. 

Serve over white rice and with hot sauce on the side.  You can also serve it with tortilla chips!  Freezes well and reheats really well.

Scallion Pancakes

I was lucky to find scallions on sale at the place where people have never seen food (The Market Basket).  I decided that for meatless monday, I'd make Scallion Pancakes.   Not difficult to make at all, pretty tasty and they reheat really well The worst part about making these in my house, no kitchen fan so my house does smell a bit of fried food....

The recipe is below the photos

The dough rolled out

Scallions and sesame oil -put as many scallions as you like!

 Rolling up the pancake like a burrito,

The pancake before it becomes a pancake! You have to smush it flat and roll it out

Getting ready to fry the pancake!~

 The finished product with 4 different dipping sauces......

As always, stolen from The Kitchen.   

Notes:  I use more scallions than The Kitchen recipe.   Your dipping sauces are up to you. I use soy sauce, peanut satay sauce, sweet and sour sauce....what ever strikes my fancy and what ever I can make up. I even used the leftover packet of orange sauce from a bag of Trader Joe's Orange Chicken one day.

What You Need

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups white flour
1 cup warm water
Canola or vegetable oil
Kosher salt
1-2 bunch scallions
Sesame Oil to brush on the pancake

Instructions

1. Mix 2 1/2 cups flour with 1 cup water until it forms a smooth dough. Knead by doubling the dough over and pressing it down repeatedly, until the dough is even more smooth and very elastic. Coat this ball of dough lightly in oil and put it back in the bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let the dough rest for about 30 minutes.

2. Cut the dough into 4 equal parts. Lightly oil the back of a large metal baking sheet. Roll out one part of the dough on the back of the baking sheet. Roll until it is a thin rectangle at least 12 x 9 inches.

3. Finely chop the bunch of scallions and have them ready, along with a small bowl of kosher salt.

4. Lightly brush the top of the dough with the seasame oil, then sprinkle it evenly with chopped scallions and kosher salt.

5. Starting from the long end, roll the dough up tightly, creating one long snake of rolled-up dough.

6. Cut the dough snake in two equal parts.

7. Take one of these halves and coil into a round dough bundle.

8. Roll out the coiled dough bundle again into a flat, smooth, round pancake.

9. Heat a 10-inch heavy skillet or sauté pan over medium-high heat, and oil it with a drizzle of canola of vegetable oil. When the oil shimmers, pick up the pancake dough and lay it gently in the pan. It should sizzle, but not burn. Cook for 2 minutes on one side.

10. Flip the pancake over with a spatula and cook for an additional 2 minutes on the other side, or until golden brown.

11. Cut the pancake into wedges with a pair of kitchen scissors, and serve immediately with soy sauce or another dipping sauce.

Ellen! Please Pick My House to Redo!

Ellen! Here are photos of my house! I so need a home makeover.   Please send your team ( or at least Nate Berkus) to help me! Please!

The sleeping nook-very cozy, but not very exciting

 

The closet area-the only closet

The Bathroom

The kitchen-it's like half the house space and I have no counter scape, I'd love to have a little U shape kitchen area with a breakfast bar.

The kitchen

My office

The Stove

The living area-with  my free to me very large, very heavy TV that I can't move...

the back of the house

the girls!-you can see the lake!

the front of the house-you can see the lake in the background

I would love to win a home make over from your show.  I moved back to Connecticut 13 years ago and bought my little 450 SF house 450 SF and 2.5 rooms plus a bath.. It’s called a cottage, but I call it the studio house. I live here with my dogs, it’s a tight fit and my decorating scheme is what I call grad school design.

I’ve hit some financial, job, and personal issues, my job working as an assistant for a real estate broker has gone from full time to part time to less than part time (12 hrs). Heck, I did not even get a card on Administrative Professionals day this year.  I’ve lost all my benefits (paid vacation/ holidays, insurance) with the reduction in hours; I have picked up a second job on the weekends. I split my time ½ of the week here at home ½ of the time in Oxford ,MA. I am doing this to pay my mortgage, car payment, and life’s other bills. The reduced hours mean reduced pay and I’ve also spent my savings and emergency fund on the basics. And sods law, just when I think I am making a little headway, things like my car unexpectedly breaking down happen.

I know what you can do for the winner of the contest, do a beautiful home makeover, but this is what I do for you.   I can pay this forward.

 I can and will happily volunteer on a project to help another deserving person or family.

I can chip in by doing some of the work, I can paint and I can do demolition.

My house is very small, so you can also help another deserving person or family get a home makeover. Two for the price of one!

 I can cook for the workers, I’m Italian and I love to cook for people. I can host a BBQ at the end of the project for the workers, we can borrow canoes and we can all go canoeing on the lake.

I can blog about the renovation on this blog,

 I can post about this on my facebook page.  My friends and family would get a kick out of this

I hope you and your staff will give serious consideration and pick me for the Ellen home makeover!

The Puppy Proof Pen Project

When I was in dog not coming into season hell, I decided to use a little Law Of Attraction. I have this short chain link pen that I call the Puppy Pen.  It actually stinks as a puppy pen.  The chain link is about four inches wide, perfect for small puppies to crawl through and perfect for not so nice PRTs to stick snouts through to terriorize puppies.It also had embossed pavers in it, perfect to catch lots of puppy poo.

One day this spring before Skye was bred, I decided swap out the smooth pavers in front of the big dog run for the embossed pavers in the puppy run.  It was dirty kind of heavy work, I had to move the pen, pick up the pavers, move the pavers, pick up the other pavers, move then, set all the pavers in their new spots and try to level them out  (If it sounds like I'm whinging, I am!). 

But I managed to get it done and celebrated that with a large gin and tonic and a handful of generic Advil.

There was one last thing to do, which was to puppy proof the pen.What it needed was some hardware cloth to surround it.   I had a number of people say they had extra hardware cloth that I could have for free. I love free, what I don't love is people who don't deliver on free.

A trip to the Home Depot to pick up a twenty five foot roll of 1/2 inch hardware cloth.  I did look at poultry wire for half the price and plastic hardware cloth.   I ended up with the hardware cloth. I just felt better using that instead of something else.

I got my tin snips, a bunch of cable ties and proceeded to wrap the cloth around the pen. I was pretty proud of myself, I managed to cover any and all escape options and fasten the cloth to the pen with the cable ties and very little swearing.....

I also ended up taking one of the spare panels from the old PVC ex pen and made an additional door behind the door to keep the puppies in. Do you know HOW hard it is to keep 5 active Lakie puppies in the pen when you try to do things like put food in or add or subtract pups?  

The Pen Before The Wrap

The Pen After The Wrap.

The pen is not quite as spiffy as the "big dog"runs, but it is paved with smooth pavers (easy to scoop poop, bleach and shovel snow out of).   The damaged Mason end panel with a tarp over it makes for some shelter from the rain. I will see if I can find a small dog house at Tractor Supply Company for better shelter.   

Time start to finish for both parts of the project, about 3 hours.   But the pups now have a nice safe place to hang out in the yard.

The New Mail Box

One of the projects on my ever growing to do list was to replace my crappy  dented  mail box.  When I moved to my little house years ago, there was no mailbox. The previous owners had a post office box at the village post office. Our little road with 5 houses has all the mailboxes at the end of the road in a row. It's pretty common when you live in a rural area to have this sort of box arrangement.

When I moved to my house,I WANTED a mail box, my own personal mail box for my own personal mail.  I bought a box and a friend of mine installed it for me oh so long ago as part of a housewarming present. 

About three years ago, some of the degenerative youth of my town did what degenerative youth have done for years, they took a baseball bat to a bunch of boxes and smashed them up.   Given the fact my mail box is in the middle of 5 others, what were the odds that mine would get hit as compared to the ones on the end.   Well it did.  See what it looked like below. Note, the other boxes which are just out of the photo were NOT damaged at all......

The front door was missing, the side was all bent, no package hook and the flag was useless.


I started to look for a replacement mail box.  Your basic metal mail box was expensive, like way more than I remembered paying for the first box.  Plus I had myself convinced that it would be complicated to replace.   And I wanted one that was not basic black and it had to be metal.   

Wandering through the Home Depot a few weeks ago, they had these bronze colored metal mailboxes on sale for $9.99.  I grabbed one without thinking. I got back to my car, slapped my head and said "What was I thinking?"   I don't know if I can replace the mail box all by myself.

Huh, silly me.  I had to remind myself of my new mantra, girls with power tools rule.

Off I went to the mail box with my cordless drill, two screwdrivers, a crow bar and a hammer.  It was easier than I thought.  The box was screwed to the wood base with some very old, very rusted, very small and very easier to remove screws.  I dusted off the wood base, and went back to the house to get the new mail box and some wood screws.  I dropped the new box on the base and used a couple new wood screws to fasten the box on the wood base.  Never had to use the screwdrivers, crow bar or hammer. Yeah a bit of overkill to bring them all up to the box. 

Total time start to finish,  about 12 minutes including the short walk from the road back to the house. I now have a nice new mail box with a door that closes so my mail will stay nice and dry. I have since added new stick on house numbers to make it complete! 

One thing off my list and done all by my lonesome!

Another Project Bites The Dust

I've had this old cast iron fire grate for a couple years.  I had originally had it in the house to store shoes, but I could never find a good spot for it. So out the front door and at various points it was a leaf collector, shovel holder and dog toy holder. It was getting a bit drab and a tiny bit rusty and in need up a face lift. Here it is in pieces with a coat of primer on it. 

I had a can of leftover Rustoleum High Heat black spray paint.  I got it to spiff up my old gas grill, but I figured it should be ok to use on the grate.  Here is the finished product!  I'm going to get a nice potted mum to put into this.   I'm thinking yellow would look good against the white clapboards and blue trim.  Total time start to finish, less than an hour including dry time!  

Laboring Day

While the rest of the US had a BBQ, hung out, watched baseball, I used my one day off to get chores done.  The list of things to do is long and lengthy. I have been taking inspiration from DIYDiva and attacking my list of stuff that needs to get done.

The first chore was re-organizing the shed.  When you live in a house that is 476 sf with no attic, basement or garage, prioritizing what goes in the shed is paramount.  For me, it's the excess of dog crates. I counted, I have 21 crates of varying styles, types and sizes. I only have 4 dogs, but 21 crates?  Yeah a bit much

This is all the crap, uh stuff, out of the the shed. Under the blue tarps to the right are the rubbermaid bins I store other "sutff".  I pulled out almost everything, less the plastic shelving unit, that was easy to just stick in a different spot. I swept the floor, made a pile of stuff to go the town dump and pounded a few nails to hang "stuff".

Why do I have a photo of the rotted corner of the shed? Well that whole soffit was filled with nasty biting yellow jackets. I had dumped a full can of bee killer spray the night before. I saw them going in and nesting a few days before and I had visions of opening the shed door and getting swarmed.  

The right side of the shed, all the crates, chairs, coolers, tent, cones and the back seat to the Escape are neatly stacked. You can also see the Tule Rack I still want to sell.

The left side of the shed, on the shelves, miscellenaous things, to the left where you can't see it, all the rakes, shovels, brooms, pitchforks and assorted gardening items.


The whole process start to finish only took about an hour.  I should be able to keep this pretty tidy.  I could use a much bigger shed, but this will do for now! Maybe later this fall, I'll slap a fresh coat of paint on it.