It has been WAY too hot and humid to do much of anything outside, so we spent the weekend mostly indoors. Saturday afternoon we had a nice little storm roll through that took down several limbs from our northern neighbor's tree in their front yard and a good deal of the foam board that was underneath the old siding (which was removed last week only to find that the correct new siding wasn't what they had to put back up). The storm blew it all over the neighborhood in such a way as to make one think a mini tornado had hit somewhere. What lies underneath is truly ugly. I thought the yellow was bad!
Strangely, though, the condition of the wood siding seems good, so we're thinking that the vinyl siding was put up by elderly people who didn't want to paint, understandably. We are now wondering if it might be worth just tearing off all the old siding and painting instead of fooling with putting up new siding that we are going to just paint over anyway.
The storm also blew over my very small terracotta pot with a flower just starting to bloom and broke it all over the deck, so I had to quickly find another container to put it in. I ran out and grabbed it while the storm was still in full-rage mode and got soaked. Right now my little flower (I think it is a Marigold) is in a small glass candy dish, but will be transferred tonight when my dad brings me a larger clay pot. This little plant has been babied from a seedling that my youngest brought home from school, so I couldn't let it get pummeled by the storm :)
After gathering up pieces of styrofoam we all went back into the house and I went back to food preparation. I made Civeche and a Quinoa salad and hubby was also cutting up vegetables and chicken for meals over the next week. Hubby had a less than stellar doctor's report last week; his cholesterol was up and his blood sugar came back high so he has been put on a low cholesterol, pre-diabetic diet. The only thing that came back good this time was his blood pressure. Normally it's on the high side. So, we went through our cupboards and got rid of all canned vegetables that were high in sodium, all processed packaged foods that were high in sugar and carbs and took them to the local food pantry. We went to the store and bought fresh produce that we could make a variety of dishes with as well as whole wheat bread and flatbreads. He is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, and this is not going to be easy on him, so I'll be doing this with him. To that end, I am trying out some new healthy recipes.
The Civeche is really versatile as is the Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah). My niece gave me her Civeche (civ-ee-chay) recipe which is cucumbers, tomatoes, onion (my addition), cooked shrimp (small or cut up) and fresh parsley or cilantro, depending on your taste preferences, and 8 to 10 limes, salt, pepper, and hot sauce to taste. Cut it all up small and soak and mix together with the juice of the fresh limes. Don't use the lime juice in a bottle because it will taste nasty - just tough it out and use real limes if at all possible, trust me! It can be served with tortilla chips or pita chips and is super yummy.
The Quinoa salad has a lot of options too as I discovered. I made a zesty style salad with tomatoes, onion, parsley, and black beans. I omitted corn because, well, hubby can't have corn, but it would have been included otherwise. It also had red pepper flakes and the juice from two limes, plus salt and pepper to taste. I topped mine with chunked up avocado and mozzarella cheese - yum! Quinoa looks like bird seed, and in fact it is more of a seed than a grain, but super healthy and packed with protein. It's teeny tiny and believe me just one cup makes a lot more than you would think. there are lots of good versions of both recipes on the web, so definitely have a look. I'll be trying a Mediterranean version of the Quinoa salad later in the week that includes Kalamata olives, tomatoes, and Feta cheese.
Dinner was pretty good - we had the Ceviche as an appetizer, and grilled chicken and salad greens in a whole wheat pita pockets with the Quinoa salad on the side. My boys, of course, would only try the Ceviche because of the tortilla chips. I don't think they are too fond of the new approach to meals, lol. After dinner, I took Toby outside and had my eyes on the Eastern sky because it was very dark over that way and we were supposed to get more storms. I walked through the carport alongside the truck and got to about the passenger side door and saw what I thought was a somewhat curled strip of tar paper in the grass, something I had been seeing around town for weeks. I took about two more steps and realized it was a Black Snake! I ran inside and told Hubby and grabbed my camera. I only got one shot of him, though, because by this time, Toby had discovered him, and Hubby was trying to herd him away from going under the truck, the direction he was heading. In trying to keep Toby from trying to grab the snake if it decided to head through the fence, I was at the gate trying to get Toby's attention away from the snake and so missed getting any more photos.
He was about 5 feet long and although he is not poisonous, nobody wants to get bit, so I stayed back. Hubby doesn't like snakes. At all. All he could think of was getting it as far away as possible, and since it most likely came from our Wilderness Woman neighbor's house behind us, he guided it that direction until it disappeared into one of her numerous clumps of unmowed grass around a tree. If I hadn't looked down when I first went outside, I might have stepped on him. As it was, I got within three feet of him before I realized what he was. Now, every time we go outside, we are on the lookout for him. Toby never did bark at him, being more curious than anything else, but now he looks for him too when he goes outside. I'm assuming the storm is what brought him out, more than likely looking for any eggs that may have fallen out of nests. Black Snakes love eggs.
We are starting to see the empty locust shells now around in the yard. I saw one on the side of the foundation of the house in the back yard on Sunday, and last night I saw three lying in the gravel by the stairs to the back deck. I leave you of a shot of the one I saw Sunday. It makes you wonder how something twice that size came out of there! Kind of like giving birth, no?
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