Home Exterior Photos

I took a few more pictures of the house for you guys!

Here is the front of the house.

This is our front door and porch.

We have a very cool little tile picture outside of the house, and I absolutely adore it.

The pool! (omg, it’s freeeezing even though it looks very inviting)

View of the ocean from the pool/this side of the yard.

Our back gated area where we’ll plant a garden + views of the ocean.

We have a little shower for when we get out of the pool!

Here is the side yard

The detached garage looks like a super creepy dungeon from the outside, but it’s really not that bad on the inside!

The back of the house

This used to be a pull-in garage, but it was sealed off and it houses a lot of spiders and some workout equipment now.

Coming back around to the other side of the house!

Now, I know these photos make it look like we’re in a tropical climate, but it’s really only in the 50′s and 60′s right now and it’s been raining for four straight days. These were taken on a particularly beautiful day though, so it’s making me long for summer already so I can take better advantage of that pool!

Once things are a bit more cleaned up around the inside of the house, I’ll load up some pictures of that!

Fruit & Vegetable Loss Prevention

Since Mike and I started shopping weekly at the farmer’s market, we’ve learned quite a bit about different vegetables that we’ve never bought before. There has been quite a lot of trial and error when it comes to how we’re storing our produce, how long it lasts, and how quickly we can consume or preserve it.

So I thought since I’ve learned so much from this experience, I thought I’d share my newfound knowledge to all of you who find yourself digging out rotten produce from your crisper drawer or out of your fruit bowl because you had no idea it would go badly that quickly!

1. Not all fruits and vegetables need to be kept in the fridge. Don’t refrigerate the following: Tomatoes, onions, pears, plums, nectarines, peaches (and if you’re lucky enough to live in an area where you get fresh, local avocadoes, don’t refrigerate those either). Refrigerating these items makes them lose their flavor and in some cases, break the fruit down more quickly. If you find that your produce is going bad on the counter, the refrigerator might lengthen their lives, but bring them back up to room temp before consuming.

2. What you don’t put in the fridge, put them in a bowl where they can get plenty of air circulation. We found that with our big bowls we keep everything in, the tomatoes that didn’t get the most air circulation went bad faster. Wire bowls are fabulous if you can get them.

While our tomatoes were beautiful in the bowls we registered for, the tomatoes at the bottom and sides of the bowl would go bad more quickly than the ones on the top, even if they had all been picked the same day.

3. If you buy too much of something or if your garden explodes with too much produce for you to handle, preserve it quickly. It takes time, and you usually have to sweat it out in the kitchen while your stove and oven are working in the heat of the summer, but trust me, having homemade salsa and sauces later when the growing season is over will make you ridiculously happy.

4. If you’re like us and are buying fruits and vegetables that are relatively new to your kitchen, it can be hard to know exactly how long you can keep each one around. If you don’t know how long each vegetable keeps, you might find yourself throwing an unnecessary amount of produce away. Here’s a guide for when you should eat your produce after you buy it:

1-3 days after purchase: Asparagus, cherries, basil, broccoli, strawberries, green beans, mushrooms, eggplant, corn. Of course, not all of these will “go bad” after this time period, but they’ll quickly decline after this–especially in taste.

4-5 Days after purchase: grapes, lettuce, other leafy greens

6-7 Days after purchase: Bell peppers, hot peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, stone fruits, pears, blueberries, cauliflower, most herbs if stored correctly, zucchini, cucumbers (if you’re pickling cucumbers, do it as soon after they’re picked as possible)

Beyond: Beets, apples, carrots, celery, potatoes, squash, garlic, onions

I hope this was helpful! Every time I’ve had to throw away something that came from our garden or the farmer’s market that I just didn’t use in time, I want to kick myself. It’s definitely a challenge to keep up with all of the produce in our garden and household, but I get so much satisfaction out of having beautiful, fresh and local meals that it’s worth it!

Do you accidentally let produce rot in your crisper? Do you have any additional storing tips to share?

Follow the Spiders

Okay. So.

EVERY MORNING I would run into a GIANT strand of spider web between the tomatoes and the peppers. It was like fishing line it was so strong and every morning as I went out to check on our tomatoes and peppers, I’d get a face-full of web. So I finally just accepted that the spider would keep rebuilding that one strand between the two garden boxes every day, and I learned to swipe at it before I walked between them.

And then last night, we let the dogs out and there was a HUGE web with a giant spider in the middle. We’re talking 2 feet across the main part of the web.

And a quarter-sized spider.

So I’m like…oh my god, this thing is going to kill me one of these days when I reach my hand into the peppers and it’s going to bite me and I’ll die and then what??

Mike got a broom, he gently swiped at the web to make sure he had control of where the spider went.

He put it on the ground.

WHAM. He smashed it with his foot.

I didn’t run into the web this morning.

Stimulating Conversation

One of my favey-fave blogs, The Daybook just wrote a post about taking the television out of their living space and centering their evenings around conversation and time spent together. At first, I really LOVED this idea. It made me think about how we often measure the time in our evenings by Anthony Bourdain episodes.

Source

When our DVR is dangerously tipping to 98% full, we feel like we have to have a Bourdain-a-thon to get the space back down to a level that can fit more Bourdain episodes.

Writing this down makes us sound insane. We’re really not. We also DVR House Hunters International.

I’d say we watch TV 5 or 6 days a week in the evenings, usually for about 2 hours. Mike watches TV when he works out in the morning, but I prefer quiet mornings without noise or distractions (from my computer, at least).

A lot of people will say that they either LOVE tv or that they “never watch tv” but I think we fall somewhere in the middle. I think that we try to watch shows that teach us something about the world or about food…but when the fall season starts back up, we’re all about Glee and Fringe, too. I see television as a way to connect with my husband over our shared interests–we genuinely enjoy watching these shows, discussing them and debating how we’d DIE to go wherever Tony went, or the fact that the parents of the Glee kids are NEVER around, or just how amazing of a show Fringe is and how it always seems to take us by surprise.

I think television brings about a lot of conversation in our household. It’s a great way to blow off steam, but we try to watch just the shows that interest us, make us laugh, and provoke conversation. We did catch an episode of the Kardashians once, and that provoked quite a lot of conversation too, but more of the “how in the world are these people famous” type conversation. (PS–how does Mike know more about the Kardashians than I do? Is it because they’re dating/married to sports stars?)

We also usually watch tv together as an activity, instead of one person watching a show they like while the other person is doing something else around the house. It makes it feel more like something we do together than something we just do.

So I don’t think that we’ll be taking our television out any time soon. We enjoy it, and while we could probably cut back in places, I don’t think we watch too much of it, and when we do watch, it only adds to the conversations around the house, instead of detracting from them. It’s also inspired us to go new places and try new things, so it can’t be all that bad, can it?

How about you? Are you a TV junkie? Hate TV? Does it stimulate conversation or hurt it in your household?

Guest Posting At Love & Renovations Today!

Hey everyone, Amanda over at Love & Renovations asked me to guest post on her blog today! It’s all about some pretty cool furniture I found while hunting Craigslist, so check out some of the pieces! My favorite?

This vintage Pop-Art Dresser!

Go check out the rest, and if you don’t already follow Amanda’s blog, you should do it!!

Pickling Peppers & Other Preserving Preparations

Over the past few weeks, our garden has exploded with a daily yield that we had no way of consuming all at once before the produce started to go bad. To give you a refresher, this year we planted 8 large heirloom tomato varieties (all different) and two cherry tomato varieties. We also planted three jalapeno plants, four cayenne chili pepper plants, some basil, thyme, chives and four zucchini plants. Not to mention our two blackberry bushes and two raspberry bushes around the side of the house.

Since we detest letting things go to waste, I decided it was high time to start preserving some of the produce that was coming from our backyard.

First up: The Jalapenos!

I pickled 6 jars of jalapenos–four that were sandwich-slices, two that were chopped into relish. The little pink things you see floating in the jars are pink peppercorns, and I think they make the jalapenos look much happier!

Here on the left, I have one of my jars of roasted jalapeno pepper paste. I didn’t use a recipe for this, but I might create one because this is SO good. It adds a great, flavorful kick to so many dishes and keeps for a very long time. On the right are frozen roasted jalapenos, so I can make more paste when needed.

All in all, I’ve used about 130 jalapeno peppers so far in our preserving, and we still have more growing outside.

Next up: Zucchini!

I’ve mentioned before how much I love zucchini for its versatility. I’ve prepared a few zucchinis in our favorite ways and frozen them (raw).

Top left: Zucchini pasta, where I used my vegetable peeler to make “ribbons of pasta” with the zucchini. I also prepare this with a mandoline/julienne slicer, but the peeler was a bit easier (and safer!). If you saute it for a few minutes with some salt, pepper & garlic powder and add some sauce, delicious! Top and bottom right: sliced zucchini for chips. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and parmesan cheese, roast @400 until golden, you have a healthy and delicious side dish! Bottom middle & left: shredded zucchini for zucchini cakes and zucchini bread.

These are the products of only 6 zucchini since we used up the zucchinis pretty quickly as they came out of the garden!

Next: The Tomatoes!

Two jars of tomato juice, ready for drinking, bloody mary’s, or adding to soups (I like it in veggie soup).

Left: What’s left of the salsa I made yesterday. Middle: Creamy Tomato Soup. Left: what’s left of the tomato sauce we made & used a few days ago.

And instead of canning tomatoes, I figured freezing would be just as effective, especially since we won’t be able to pack up our canned anythings with us to Spain. Since we’ll have to use them in the next couple of months, freezing seemed like the simple solution. So, I have whole roasted tomatoes (three bags), tomato sauce (two bags) and crushed tomatoes (two bags).

All in all, I probably used about 75 tomatoes just in what you see above, but we’ve used many more in sauces and soups that we’ve already consumed.

It’s almost August and we haven’t even gotten any ripe cayennes yet! I will tell you that we have HUNDREDS (no lie) of green cayennes hanging on our four bushes, waiting to turn bright red for us.

We’re always amazed at how much yield we get from just three 8′x2′ garden boxes! It’s a lot of work, but very rewarding!

Do you preserve extra food from your garden? Would you want to?

Saturday Brain Dump

Since I was in bed moaning and groaning and whining about my wisdom teeth pain most of yesterday, I didn’t take the time to write a post. So…let’s give it a try today! I thought I’d give some quick updates.

1. Wisdom Teeth: The first two days were pretty awful. Yesterday, I was swollen like crazy and there was quite a bit of pain from just the pressure of being so swollen. Today, I am still swollen, but it’s not quite as bad. The pain has receded significantly from three of my four teeth holes (I have no idea what else to call them) but my bottom two are still the worst. Hopefully, today will see some significant improvement.

You can see my jaw is a bit more swollen on my left side (since the photo is a mirror image, it’s also the left on the photo). It was much worse yesterday, but I didn’t get a photo of it!

2. Weight Loss: Maybe this is the wrong time to post this because…lets face it, I’ve been eating nothing but liquids for the past few days, but I’ve lost more weight! More than in just the last two days, but my official weight loss is now up to 17 lbs. I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of soups I’ve been eating lately. It was never really intentional, but I’ve also been living largely on a vegetarian diet as-of-late, and that might have helped. Of course, I won’t become a vegetarian any time soon, but I don’t think that meat at every meal is always necessary.

3. New Computer: Last weekend, Mike and I went to Delaware and I picked up a new 15″ MacBook Pro! I still haven’t transferred a lot of the stuff from my old computer on it, but it’s beautiful and I loooove it. The screen is so much bigger & brighter than my old 13″ MacBook!

4. Pinterest: I thought Pinterest deserves a mention because I joined a couple of weeks ago and think it’s just about the best. thing. ever. I can bookmark anything I want through it, it’s SO easy to keep track of the things that I’m inspired by, and as a blogger, it’s an awesome way to keep track of sources. Plus, it’s just so darn pretty! Wanna follow my pins?

5. Spotify Music: My good friend TJ sent me an invite to Spotify this past week, which is also just as awesome as Pinterest. I have SUCH a hard time committing to buy an album on itunes or amazon or whatever, so listening to an album by almost any artist I want has been an awesome way to “try before I buy.” Since I’m just streaming the albums, it isn’t illegal like The Pirate Bay, Limewire, or Napster were. I also enjoy it more than Pandora because sometimes, I just want to listen to an album instead of a mix of artists.

A screenshot of the Spotify software, where I’m listening to Young the Giant’s album.

6. Tomatoes: Thank you for all of your tomato recommendations!! I was surprised by the amount of people who would eat so much caprese salad! Unfortunately, I had to preserve a lot of them before they started going bad, so while plenty of caprese salads have been eaten, I’ve also made some sauces, just roasted & frozen them, I made soup, and when I pick up cilantro at the farmer’s market tomorrow, I’ll certainly make some salsas. Great recommendations!

Okay, that’s all for now. I hope everyone has a happy weekend!

Keeping Clean

My mother is like, the best cleaner in the world. Her house is spotless. You could eat off the floor. She enlisted my sister and I as slaves helpers when we were kids, and our work was often inspected (mine rarely stacked up to her standards).

I was never great about keeping things clean, though. My room had clothes everywhere, my drawers would overflow with carelessly tossed in shirts my mother had worked so hard to iron. I always assumed that when I grew up, I’d magically inherit this cleaning skill my mother has and executes with such precision.

Guess what? It didn’t happen. I have my own household to run now, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that I am NOT my mother in the way I run my household cleaning schedule. Sorry, Mom…it just isn’t gonna happen. I often feel bad about this, because I really do try to keep things tidy and clean, but every time I pick up a toilet brush, I feel like I’d rather stab myself in the eye.

I’m not being melodramatic about it or anything, either. I absolutely can’t STAND cleaning and equate it to some of the worst torture you could put me through. (Organizing things, on the other hand, I adore.)

Adding to the issue of simply hating to clean, my dogs make sure to keep the floors constantly dirty as they track in dirt and dust in their wiry, velcro-like fur. It makes the house very very dusty–I could probably dust once a day and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Mike is actually a much better cleaner than I am–at least, he soldiers up and does it without as much complaining and melodramatic sighs. Still…things could look a little nicer around here.

I’ve been toying with the idea of hiring someone to do weekly cleaning. I’ve never had any experience with this though, as my mom was freakin’ superwoman when it came to this stuff.

Doesn’t she look like Superwoman?? Hahaha sorry Mom, please don’t kill me.

Here she is, looking lovely with her slaves children a few years ago

Does anyone know how it works? Any good service recommendations? Do I have to leave the house when they come? On second thought, I’d probably prefer to not be in the house when they’re here since I think I’d die of embarrassment to sit at my computer while someone literally does the dirty work for me.

Also, any ideas about how much it costs? I suppose I need to just start calling people, but again, the sense of shame and embarrassment that I can’t clean my own house is kind of overwhelming. I guess embarrassed, but with a clean house is better than nothing. Please tell me that I’m not the only one who has such trouble keeping things spotless! What are your cleaning habits?

A Picture Problem

I’ve had my Macbook for about 5 years now & it’s served me well, but…well…I’m ready to move on. It’s getting to be a bit slow, some of the plastic has chipped off of the case, it’s dirty, the mouse clicker thing is permanently half-depressed at all times making it difficult to click, and I only have about 6 GB of storage left on my hard drive.

So, my lovely husband agreed that I need a new computer! Macs are my love even though they’re ridiculously expensive, so this time I’ll be getting a 15 inch macbook pro. Since we’re planning on buying it in Tax-free Delaware (score!) very soon, I’m faced with the decision of whether or not I want to transfer the information I currently have on my macbook to this new computer.

And honestly, I really don’t want to.

Mostly because of my pictures. See, every time I take photos with my camera, I take quite a few in quick succession. Then, I weed through the bad ones and pick the good ones that I want to share/post/whatever IF I even do that. And I don’t delete the bad photos. Mostly, every picture I’ve taken in the last five years, good or bad, is sitting on my computer doing nothing. Five years of this behavior and a LOT of pictures later, I’ve completely clogged up my computer with pictures that don’t mean a whole lot anymore.

Seriously?? Seriously??? How many of the EXACT same picture do I need on my computer from us in 2008? Multiply this problem by a million. A billion if we’re talking about pictures of our dogs.

So. I have a lot of reorganizing to do because a)I would like to bring SOME photos over to my new computer and b)it’d be nice to free up some space on this computer so we can use it as a backup computer/personal computer for Mike since he only has a work laptop.

Do you keep your pictures organized, or is your computer a mess of the same photos over and over again as well? Do you have any tips on how to go through these in the most efficient way?

The Things I’m Making Lately

Since my unemployment, I’ve made a vow to step up my game in the kitchen by trying new things and making more labor-intensive meals. Well, I’m happy to report to my internet friends that I have been working hard in the kitchen!!

The other day when I decided to make hamburgers, I thought…why not make my own buns? Every time we buy a pack of buns, they always ALWAYS end up stale and hard in the back of the cabinet because we didn’t eat them all. Plus, I wanted to get over my fear of yeast, soooo…I did it!

They were dense and oddly shaped, but for my first time, I don’t think they were too bad! Mike really loved them and proceeded to eat the leftovers for breakfasts after that, spreading jam, butter, or (farmer’s market) cream cheese on them. I used this recipe with a mixture of whole wheat flour and unbleached all-purpose flour.

Yum.

I know I already showed it to you, but seriously, it was so good it deserves a second mention. I made a New York cheesecake with blueberry topping for the 4th of July!

It was delicious. Seriously. I used this recipe and substituted the cherries in the topping for our fresh blueberries.

To continue my madness, I thought it’d be a good idea to make my own flour tortillas. Omg, it was SO time consuming, but they were delicious. They kept for quite awhile and they were so soft and yummy.

I used this recipe and thought it was wonderful with the mix of whole wheat flour and unbleached all-purpose flour. Would I do them again? Not sure…rolling these out to paper-thin discs was a frustrating and long process. My tortillas finally started looking like tortillas around my 10th one…the ones before that kind of looked like amoebas. If I get a tortilla press…yes, I’d absolutely do it again.

To put on the flour tortillas, I made two kinds of hummus: a garlic scape and basil pesto hummus and a roasted red pepper hummus:

I didn’t use any recipes for these…I kinda just winged it. It was also the first time that I had ever bought dried chickpeas–be sure to cook them a looong time if you do this!

My next big undertaking?

Pickle the jalapenos that have been growing like crazy in our backyard!! I have about 50 of these suckers that I need to preserve since we can’t eat them fast enough!

Aaaand…

This week, I entered Big Apple Nosh’s Chef’s Challenge where I have to use two secret ingredients in a recipe. The secret ingredients? Peaches and Mint! Perfect for this chick who’s been spending a LOT of time at the Farmer’s Market. I’ll be posting my recipe by Sunday, so keep a look out for that!

Have you been adventurous in the kitchen lately? Do you like trying to make new things?