So this is a long time coming.....

Oh man, I don't even know how long it has been since my last blog post, you guys. Way too long, you're right. Sorry buddies. We have had a hectic couple of months. We closed on our house, and we are now homeowners with a mortgage and everything. Like real adults. Seems a little weird, but I guess I am not a kid anymore. I taught summer school, and Desmond is continuing his job as a research assistant.
On the home front, we have been renovating our kitchen. So far, we demo-ed it. To the studs. Since then we have run new electrical, new plumbing, installed new windows, insulated, and widened a doorway. We are doing everything ourselves, with the help of lovely, talented family members. Well, except we are paying a guy to do our countertops. We have been hanging drywall and are hoping (praying, even) that we will get to install our new flooring and new cabinets this weekend, which is almost-brings-a-tear-to-my-eyes exciting. Renovating a kitchen is exciting, and I like being able to customize things to meet our needs, but I have been washing dishes in the bathtub for 6 weeks, you guys. I have been cooking all of our meals without a stovetop or oven. Everything we own is in the wrong place, and everything in the house, including me, is covered with drywall dust. We are working really hard and it is tiring. exhausting. Hence no blog posts. And I can't figure out how to put pictures on the blog from this computer, so sorry. No pics. I wanted to outline the whole kitchen remodel on here, so we would have a record of this project. But I am not so sure I want to remember this project when I am done--I will never renovate anything again, and we definitely have some fixing left to do in our house!
Garden-wise, I have been amazed how well our garden grows without our help....just turn sprinkler on the garden for like 15 minutes a day, and our garden continues to produce plenty for us. Mostly, we have been eating big salads, fresh from our garden. I have a grocery bag full of Kale waiting for a day with a stovetop to blanch and freeze. Our cabbage is also looking awesome, calling out for a cabbage roll (just looking for a really appealing crock-pot recipe)! And we are starting to get good tomatoes and cucumbers. If I could be friends with any produce, it would be tomatoes and cucumbers, so I am pretty excited. I have canning plans for those two buddies. My awesome mother-in-law helped me find the supplies I needed to can stuff, so again, we are just waiting for a stove (patiently, for the most part....).
So here is a "recipe" I can share with you. Since my cucumber plants are freaking insane, I harvested out all of those awesome carrots. Our half-pack of carrot seed strips netted us roughly 7 pounds of carrots--we have sandy sandy soil, which really helps our root veggies.
Creamy carrot soup, made without a stove:
5 or more pounds of chopped up carrots (I made 1/8 inch coins)*
1 quart chicken or veggie stock
1 coffee cup full of half and half (I used fat free and it worked fine).
3 tbsp finely chopped onion and garlic (just a mix of the two, to your taste)
1 spoonful of unsalted butter
1 small handful of rosemary
1 small handful of sage
*Measurements are totally, totally approximate
In a crock pot or the microwave, cook carrots in stock until softened. Stir in butter when the carrots are warmed but not yet soft.
Blend the carrots with some cream or half and half in the blender. Make sure not to blend it while it's really hot and make sure to blend it in small batches to avoid any potential danger.
Add sage and rosemary. Or, do nutmeg. Yum, that would be good. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Heat it up. Eat it and be happy.

There you go, if you grow carrots, sage, and rosemary, your soup is delicious and almost free. It makes tons of soup.

I promise we will try to write more, but I gotta say, I have a feeling I will be washing dishes that are already clean because I will be so excited to have a dishwasher. :)

Any good recipes involving basil? All three of my (store bought) basil plants are HUGE....and we have pesto for days......

Ok, until next time,
Happy planting (wait, it's August....) happy weeding!!

The fumes were getting to me....

So, as you may know from reading this blog before today, the Jensons are in the process of buying a house. In fact, we just got our official closing date of Tuesday. We have a "unique situation": 1 full time student, my not being paid in the summer, the mortgage industry people being extremely nervous about loaning money (which, by the way, is their entire job), and the tax credit (aka $8,000 worth of improvements to our little house). Our "unique situation" translated into a HUGE PAIN IN THE MORTGAGE. Anyway, we are closing on Tuesday. Officially. Yahoo!

That's just background for what I was going to write about. Our second bedroom had wallpaper from the late 80s or early 90s on three walls. Not terrible, just not really our style. So, I decided to take it down. We used spray bottles full of either 1:1 vinegar and water or 1:1 fabric softener and water. Came down pretty easily. The fourth wall was covered with plywood paneling. It was actually pretty rough to the touch, not ideal for a potential future Jenson's bedroom. So, I pried that sucker down. With a hammer. It was very good stress management for me while waiting for the mortgage people to figure out whether or not we are worthy. Glad to know we are.

Behind the paneling was the original (or what we think is the original) wallpaper the original owners put up in 1940. They pretty much just welded the paper to the wall back in the day, so it took me two days to get it down. Two days of staring at the little blue-purple flowers.

Got me thinking. We are buying this house and making some changes--renovating the kitchen and bathrooms, finishing the basement, refinishing the floors, stuff like that. We own this little piece of turf. But really, this house has a life far bigger than we are. We are more apart of it's life than the other way around. 70 years ago, a woman picked out that wallpaper. A husband agreed to it. Someone told the contractor not to add texture to the plaster walls, so they could hang wallpaper. That contractor put up wallpaper paste and attached the wall paper to the walls. Babies fell asleep staring at that wallpaper. Someone else took the wallpaper off three walls and painted them blue. Another person put paneling over the one wall and left us this weird jumbley time machine of a second bedroom. and the next owner after us, whether it's in 5 years or 50, will look at things we have done and wonder what we were thinking as they roll paint over our color choices or rip up the floor we chose. Because we are more a part of this home's history than the home is a part of ours.