Without You, What Do I Do With Me?

That makes a great blog title. My thanks to Tanya Tucker who actually had a hit with a song named "Without You, What Do I Do With Me?"

So what do I do,,, I have a lot of little around the house projects to do. Some will have to wait for cooler weather and some for a rainy weekend, but until I get motivated or the weather cooperates I do what I do best,,,COOK!

I started out on Sunday by cleaning the second floor after my house guests left and got it ready for the next round. I think I have two sets of overnight guests next week.


First up I made a Blueberry and Peach Cobbler for my co-workers. They love when Richard goes out of town because they know I will bring in some goodies.



At one point I had both ovens on. This is really neat having two ovens to play with.



I had purchased a beautiful eggplant at our local farmer's market on Saturday so I decided to make some parmigiana with it. Instead of frying the eggplant slices, I bake them on cookie sheets that have been sprayed with a non-stick cooking spray,like Pam. Bake them for a few minutes, turn them over and bake for a few more.



While I was playing with eggplant I had a tart crust in the lower over and used it for a Lemon-Blueberry Tart for dessert for my dinner company on Sunday night.



As I was putting the eggplant parmigiana together I went out and picked some fresh basil from the garden. I put several leaves in between the layers of my parmigiana. When I eat this I will remember the abundance of fresh basil I had.



In the end one eggplant yielded 4 individual portions of parmigiana. They are now wrapped and frozen, awaiting a cool day when I can pull one out and bake it for my dinner.

The Rest of the Story,,,,,,,

A few posts ago I talked about all the hard work Richard and Fred had done, splitting and stacking wood in the shed for us.

Richard has since pointed out that I did not post any photos which showed all that firewood they split and stacked,,,,,so without further ado,,,,,,,,,,

Below is a shot of all the stacks of wood as seen from the front of the shed,, but that is only part of the story


Here is a shot showing how they stacked the wood all the way to the ceiling of the wood shed. Every stack is piled this high in the shed. Wish I had all this wood last winter.


Great job guys!!

The Symphony at Chetola

Every year we have been together Richard and I head to Blowing Rock for "The Symphony at Chetola". We have a wonderful time seeing friends and enjoying the music and fireworks. This year however Richard could not attend with me,,,,(huge sigh) but I did my best to have a wonderful time.


Below is our table which is our little red wagon with a folding top on it. This was during the cocktails and appetizer portion of the evening.



Here is Debra and her husband toasting Richard,,,


Peggy saying "Hi Richard"


This year there were 5 minute hot air balloon rides.


But after a few minutes we all started digging into all the food. We had deviled eggs, guacamole, grilled shrimp with sausage, cheese, some wontons and pickles. Stella made a killer relish tray with pickled carrots, asparagus, huge martini olives, artichoke hearts and marinated mushrooms with garlic and black olives. As I said this was just the appetizers.



Our good friends Harry and Melanie were able to join us this year and I am pretty sure that they will be back next year.


Here is a group shot with the balloons in the background.

A Lot of Work

We were lucky that Richard's friend Fred stayed with us for about 10 days. The guys got a lot of work done, some of which I am not allowed to do anymore. In an earlier post I showed them splitting firewood, By the time they were done 2 1/2 - 3 cords of woods had been stacked in the woodshed. For those who are not sure what a "cord" of fire wood is here are the dimensions: 4 feet tall, 4 feet deep and 8 feet long. That's a lot of wood.

One of the projects they completed was to build a small wood holder for the chiminey on our back deck.



After a long day of work Richard built a fire in the chiminey and and we all relaxed on the back deck when I got home from work.



Three days after Fred left Richard got a call that he had gotten a job as a ship's Captain helping with the cleanup in the gulf. He will be gone a minimum of 30 days, possible as long as 6 months. So, he went to work making sure I would be okay for the winter if he was not back by the time the snow starts to fly.

We still had more logs which he and Fred had not split so while I was at work Richard split even more wood. One afternoon when I got home from work I changed by clothes and helped Richard "stack-in" the wood he had just split.

Usually we do what is called an open stack but this time Richard decided that we would just stack the wood and get as much as possible on the hearth. There is quite a pile on the Family room hearth.



Below is the hearth in our bedroom. What you do not see is all the wood stacked in the wood box which runs through the wall from behind the TV in the family room into the bedroom. That holds enough wood to keeps us going for probably 3-5 days depending on how long the fires burn.



As I get photos from his life in the the gulf I will try to post them here and give everyone updates on how he is doing. He called me last night to let me know that he is being moved to another motel and is getting a new room-mate who just happens to be from Oriental. NC where we keep our boat. It really is a small world.

My July 4th Weekend

This weekend the old Aesop fable came to mind about the Grasshopper and the Ant. The grasshopper would play all day while the ant toiled, working on being prepared for the upcoming winter. This weekend we played and did some serious work for the upcoming winter.

The photo below is how the outside wall of our new mud room turned out. We had some leftover tongue and groove wood from the inside walls and used it here. I am very happy with how it turned out.



On Saturday, the 3rd Richard and his high school classmate, Fred fired up the chainsaw and cut some trees into fireplace lengths. Then they fired up the tractor and started splitting firewood for the upcoming winter. I know we have a few months of summer weather still.



At then end of Saturday they had split and stacked this much wood.



While they were splitting wood I was working on making new seats for these antique beach chairs that Richard has. I had purchased some Sunbrella for them and needed to cut it to length and hem the sides. When they were done with the splitting for the day the guys attached the fabric to the chair frames and Richard gave one a test "sit". Thankfully it held him and he did not go crashing to the deck.



When the chairs are folded up the material is supposed to pull tight. Richard was proud of my work as they turned out perfectly.



Sunday Richard replaced the rear brake shoes on the Land Rover and then we cleaned up and went to a 4th of July party. No photos, sorry. We had a wonderful time and met some nice people and got to watch some fireworks.

On Monday the three of us went back to splitting more wood. I would help roll the logs over towards the tractor where Fred and Richard would split them. Once the logs were split the guys would toss the pieces into the woodshed where I would stack them. This is what we got done before lunch time.



After lunch the guys followed me up to our friend's house where they loaded up the bed of the pick-up truck with more wood to be cut and split. We will soon be ready for a cold winter,,,,which I hope does NOT happen.