Hunny-Did List

The husband under our house installing insulation. He must really love me.

A month ago I compiled my hunny-do list before my dad and step-mom came up to enjoy the weekend with my husband and I. The above image was taken by my dad on another one of the weekends my parents spent “enjoying” with us. As predicted, before a round of golf, some of the list is able to be crossed off!

Men’s Work

• Install new interior doors & knobs
• Mulch
• Build wine rack (or find one) for over the refrigerator
• Remove solar panels from roof
• Make Alanna’s bike like new again

So, there’s the updated men’s list. And in the spirit of competitiveness, how did the women fare?

Women’s Work

• Spray paint frames white for hanging in the living room and/or dining room (finished project here!)
• Frame some art for the bathroom, maybe get frames for all the art I want to hang
• Pick out new bathroom hardware
• Get supplies for conquering the bathroom(sandpaper, tile sealant, paint, etc)

Not. Too. Shabby. I owe ya’ll an update on the bathroom but I haven’t painted the ceiling yet. I intend to this weekend and then will be able to show off the new hardware and the magic I worked on getting dried grout off the tile, recaulking, and more. As long as I’m at it, I’ll try and get some framed art work up in there!

As for the wine rack, it’s on our radar. Here is the picture of the above-the-fridge space that it will be occupying (before I got rid of the random things up there:

We had the refrigerator alcove– which took a small chunk of our garage– built so that it could accommodate a larger refrigerator or built in and one that also has those fancy water hookups. We, however, just kept our original basic refrigerator because 1) it’s just barely two-years-old 2) after doing a whole kitchen the last thing we wanted was to buy another new appliance 3) it works just fine 4) now I have space above it for a wine rack.

The wine rack thing has sort of been on our radar. The ones we’ve been seeing around are mostly not wide enough, though, at only about 4 bottles wide, and we haven’t taken time to measure the space. There are two kind of wine racks I would love to have:

This would be able to fit any size bottle from champagne to a more slender dessert wine bottle. Plus they can easily be removed.

This wine rack would have to be specially made to fit into the space and it may be harder to remove wine bottles that are stacked from this one.

There ya have it. I’m pretty sure my husband can whip up one of those wine racks no problem. It just may not be perfectly straight. And there would be a lot of cursing involved. But it’s the thought that counts.

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House before and after according to Google Maps

For those of you who haven’t heard the story before, our house is a 1947 tract home which was bought when it was still a dirt lot by a man who lived in it until 2007 when he passed away (in a hospital). His family tried to clean up a little and freshen things up to the best of their ability before talking to a real estate agent who brought in my now husband and I. We made an offer that was accepted before the house ever hit the market and are now the second owners of the house that had very few updates over the previous 60 years.

Enough of that background story! It takes Google Maps a little while to update their map images and so for a long while the image online was the house before we bought it:

We moved in and made mostly interior changes right away but made some significant exterior changes as well. In the above picture you can sort of see that there was plexiglass to make the porch sort of closed in, there was overgrown hedges everywhere, old rain gutters, old windows, old paint. Our neighbor’s house on the left of the picture is still what it looked like before it burned down even!

As an aside, you can read more about the house burning down here and in May 2010.

We made some serious updates that my husband noticed were now showing up on the internets! Plus it looks like Google shot the new images with a much better camera:

The new picture shows what our house looked like around spring time– I can tell because that left patch of grass is now dried up without irrigation. We also didn’t have the new fence on the right between our neighbor’s front yard and our own. This new picture shows that we removed a big tree in the backyard, removed a dead tree in the front yard on the right of the picture, trimmed up that tree on the far left, have all new fences, removed the hedge and replaced it with a fence, put in sod, mulched, installed new windows, painted, got a new fireplace insert which changed the chimney thing and new rain gutters. We’ve also added some more plantings and another round of mulch plus a new front door.

That front fence was supposed to be a picket fence but we nixed that when my husband and dad realized how much cutting there would be. It was supposed to also be painted white but we never got around to it. What do you think, does it need a coat of white paint or does the rustic wood appeal to you?

Thank you Google Maps for finally making it not look like we live in a run down house. And thank you for taking better quality pictures on a lovely, sunny spring day.

Vegetarian Baked Beans from Scratch

I’m not a vegetarian. Let’s just get that out of the way. In fact, I’ll try most foods and if I won’t then my husband definitely will. But when entertaining groups of people it becomes necessary to accommodate others’ eating restrictions so vegetarian food or at least options are a good way to go. This is the second time I’ve whipped up this recipe and it’s definitely a keeper. Anything that requires throwing a bunch of ingredients into a slow cooker and then having delicious results a few hours later is totally worth it.

I’m sure you remember all those beans I bought the other day.
This recipe uses pink beans and great Northern beans. The last time I made this I actually didn’t soak the beans because I have a slow cooker cook book that says you don’t have to. Honestly, I don’t think the soaking made any difference in the end so I’d probably skip this step next time.

Soaking beans is supposed to eliminate some of the stuff that makes people gassy. But who plans ahead for soaking beans?

After just a few hours look how much they expanded! This was actually the first time I’ve soaked beans and so this was a fun surprise for me.

Into a colander to be rinsed like lots of other people say you need to. Again, if you are slow cooking beans for an extended period of time you can skip these steps.

In terms of things you need, you need a slow cooker. I have two and used the other one for another bean recipe I’ll share soon. I used my 6-quart slow cooker for this recipe.

You will need a bunch of pantry staples, vegetable broth (or Better Than Bouillon works well, also) and fake bacon. My local Target carries Morningstar fake bacon. Yes, it looks weird. The thought is that it’s for the flavor but if you’re a pork-eating non-veg person, feel free to swap this out for the real stuff. Or if you don’t eat pork, try turkey bacon!

Chop the onion, chop the garlic, and chop the bacon into small pieces because it will not fall apart and you don’t want giant squares of fake bacon swimming around.

Throw everything into the slow cooker with 6-8 cups of water and broth (this whole recipe is listed below). Then you just turn the whole thing on and wait for the magic to happen.

About 9 hours later this is what you get (unstirred). At this point it smells amazing.

Stir it up and taste to see if you need to add anything like more salt, sweetness, vinegar, or an extra spoonful of love.
I’m thankful for these leftovers! The best part is they are very low in fat and sodium so it’s like a big pot of protein and fiber. How can you not love that!? As you can see above, after having soaked the beans I didn’t think about the fact that they would soak up less water than the last time I made them so these are a little soupy. I just left the lid off the slow cooker for an hour or two until the bean gravy had reduced and they were just fine.

Are you ready for my recipe? I would site the sources but, as usual, there were too many to source and I took a lot of creative permissions here.

Slow Cooked Vegetarian Baked Beans

• 2 pounds beans (white, pink or a mixture of the two)
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1 can tomato sauce or about 1 cup of ketchup
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
• 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire
• 1/2 pound of fake bacon
• 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
• salt and pepper
• 3-4 cups vegetable broth
• 3-4 cups water
• brown sugar (optional)

1. Rinse and pick over beans (soak if desired and if you’re cooking this recipe on “high”).

2. Add beans through water to the slow cooker. If you have soaked your beans, you should only need about 6 cups of liquid or enough to cover the beans and then an inch higher. If you added the beans dry, you will need enough liquid to cover the beans by two inches.

3. Cook on high for 5-6 hours or on low 8-12 hours.

4. Stir beans and taste once they are fully cooked. Add additional sugar or maple syrup if needed.

Pico de gallo from the garden

Tomatoes, cilantro from the garden. Lime, red onion, salt and pepper (jalepeno if you’re feeling spicy) and you’ve got pico de gallo. Beautiful.

Pink Pearl

My aunt brought over a lovely apple torte this afternoon made with these interesting apples:

Beans, beans the magical fruit

My husband is going to think I’m nuts but I’m so excited to start making my own beans and stop using canned. Okay, I might have gone a little overboard but I already know how to use most of these. Plus I can cut out a bunch of useless sodium from out diets. Something I didn’t care about until I read an article about how bad it is for you today. Mmm fiber and protein here I come!

Farmer Friday: The Beginning of the End

I’m not ready for fall yet. Here in Northern California we live for our Indian Summers in September and October. It finally stays nice and warm for a longer stretch of time instead of brief heat waves. It can be beautiful and sunny and warm through the end of October. Just like our wedding day at the end of October– oh, wait, that’s right. It poured like crazy. But it wasn’t freezing!

In any case, while the rest of the country is getting ready for the leaves to change colors (and a hurricane), I’m hoping we still have more sunny outside time but our plants don’t look convinced. Some plants have already had their best days but others are just getting started. I can tell we’re in transition.

That sunflower is ready to open up soon. It was planted later than the others so it’s taking its sweet time to open and has stayed shorter as well. The next picture might be a little icky for some of you…

This guy was hanging out between that sunflower above and connected to my tomato plant. Building a web to collect bugs! I have no problem with spiders doing their thing outside. They’re on my “good bugs” list only outdoors, but after taking my pictures and getting ready to make dinner I returned outside to get some tomatoes for my salad. And I immediately stuck my hand in for a tomato and broke the web. Oops. Sorry, spider.

The yellow rose bush is still blooming wildly. I don’t want to admit that I’m waiting for cooler weather, but I am looking forward to rose bush pruning season to get the more than a dozen roses around the house under control.

These roses are huge and they smell nice, too!

This is a fuchsia. Or a ballerina flower if you’re like me and believe your grandma about these things. Hard to tell in this picture but whoever planted the fuchsia planted it right on top of a rose bush just about. Or someone planted a rose bush on top of the fuchsia. Either way, it’s not cute and I just know I’d kill one, the other or both if I tried transplanting. They’re like Siamese twins.
Finally, my little accidental sunflower growing under where the bird feeder used to be. Guess we’re going to have some sunflower seeds from this plant! I can’t wait!

Butchered Tomatoes

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tomatoes

This is a non-recipe kind of recipe. Let’s call it a very modern wife recipe– you know, easy and simple. So easy and simple you don’t really need a recipe. It’s tomato salad. Or marinated tomatoes. It’s a piece of cake. And I used the tomatoes and basil from my last post. Yup, I butchered them.

Slice up the tomatoes even if they’re cherry tomatoes so that the flavor can get in there. It’s okay to mix different kinds of tomatoes and cut them in different sizes. In fact, it’s encouraged. Go crazy!

Did I mention these are from my garden? I still can’t believe it. Throw those bad boys all together. The more colors the merrier! Then throw in some chopped basil, good olive oil and a splash of vinegar. Finish with fresh pepper and kosher salt. Who need’s mozzarella!?

This is also pretty amazing over a bed of lettuce (and even with mozzarella). See? No recipe needed! Try it out some time and let me know how it turns out.

Love letter to tomato and basil

Dear tomato and basil,

Before there was Bert and Ernie, before there was Captain and Tennille, before there was even Bonnie and Clyde, there was tomato and basil.

Hey look you can see my reflection in the colander!

I’ve got to say, it’s definitely a match made in heaven. The sweet pepperiness of the basil up against that tender, juicy, sweet tomato acidity is no match. Mother nature made sure that you were star crossed lovers. Even on the plant you look amazing ripening up.

Tomato, even when you grow a massive, scary, seven-foot tall plant that tries taking over my side yard all for a few lovely little yellow tomatoes, I’m totally okay with it. Scared. But okay with it.

I’m really excited to have another tomato join the family in the tomato basil love fest here soon. Basil, look out. It’s going to be three on one but I think you can handle it. After all, the reds and the yellows really are your best color companions.

Oh, tomato and basil. You go great with balsamic, with mozzarella, in a salad or as a vinaigrette. You are great alone as soup or sauce or mixed in with pasta. Tomato basil sandwich? You pull at my heart strings. Tomato, basil and mozzarella grilled cheese (or “panini” if you must)? Sometimes I just ignore all the options and stuff you right into my mouth, a leaf of basil on a lovely slice of tomato. I can’t help it. You are a match made in heaven.

Love,

This modern wife, Alanna

 

Welcome to the new blog: thismodernwife.com

Congratulations on making it over to the new blog! I’m excited to start introducing new features and hopefully being able to more easily share with everyone my home garden, cooking and recipes, and of course share about all the house projects that are always going on around here. Those of you who subscribe to the RSS feed should have been forwarded to this new feed, but if not, there’s a link to join the RSS feed (or sign up to receive posts by email) to the right!

Make sure to keep checking back as I add more pages which you can access at the very top of the page. Check out the new About the Author section and look forward to new pages soon.

There’s a new post right below this welcome post and I can’t wait to start sharing even more here in the next few days! Please feel free to make requests on what you would like to see and join the discussion right here in the comments.