Hot! Humid! This morning it was 30C in the shade on the back porch, at 9:00 a.m. The temperature rose from there. Both Attila and I chose to do indoor projects today.
Attila is working on the last stretch of basement wall, building studs, installing insulation, then vapour barrier, then drywall, then painting. He has to do this one small section at at time, because there objects that have to be moved to give him access to the wall are big and heavy, and some of the this wall is behind the furnace. Yesterday we moved 4 drawer filing cabinets, full drawers. Of course my contribution was removing the rollers as Attila tipped the cabinet, not much, but significant. Today Attila is working on moving two cupboards full of tools, so that he can work on that section of the wall. In a few weeks the entire basement insulation project will finally be complete! As usual these projects take a lot longer than planned or hoped.
My day consisted of trying some new foods in the kitchen, and back porch. The first item on the agenda was to find a way to use large Zucchinis from the garden. I found a recipe for Koolaid Zucchini, which involved water, sugar, a packet of Koolaid, and diced Zucchini. There is no Koolaid here at Mist Cottage, but there were a few boxes of vintage Jello in the cupboard. Cherry was the chosen flavour. So the diced Zucchini was simmered for about 25 minutes in the syrup, until it was translucent, and is now spread out on the racks of the dehydrator, drying, on the back porch. It will probably take until tomorrow for this to finish up.
Since there are now four beautiful organic English Cucumbers, from the garden, sitting in the refrigerator, it seemed desirable to use them for Falafels. One of the issues with Falafels is that the Pita Bread is too high sodium for me, I can’t eat the store bought Pita Bread. So today, so that we can have Falafels with our beautiful Cucumbers, I decided to try baking my own Pita Bread for the very first time. It is a bit fussy to do this, particularly on the second hottest day of the summer so far, the temperature going up to 34C, and the humidex weighing in at 44C… baking Pita Bread in a 500F degree oven seems a little over the top, but that is what I did. If I had thought this Cucumber harvest through, I would have made the Pita Bread earlier, and on a cooler day.
At the end of the day we have had a chance to sample my two new recipes. The Koolaid Zucchini, made with Cherry Jello for flavouring because that is all I had on hand, is a success. We both like it, and it is a great texture for usiing as dried fruit in my sweet bread recipes. Attila wants orange flavour next. The Pita Bread baked as promised in the recipe, nice pockets in side the bread. But the recipe needs tweaking. The bread was too thick, and the Pitas were not large enough to hold all of the ingredients for the Falafel Sandwiches. So back to the drawing board on the Pita Bread, I will try again but make much larger, thinner Pitas.
The oppressive heat today brought a thunderstorm. We received a good amount of rain, but not so much that Attila won’t be watering the garden tomorrow evening after work. We may receive rain overnight though, so there is still a chance Attila won’t need to water tomorrow.
Well that’s us on a Sunday evening, full of Falafels and hoping for rain, life is grand.
Worldly
Weather
25°C (34 earlier this afternoon)
Date: 8:00 PM EDT Sunday 19 July 2020
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 100.7 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 25.2°C
Dew point: 21.0°C
Humidity: 77%
Wind: WSW 24 gust 36 km/h
Humidex: 34 (44 earlier this afternoon)
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“Well done is better than well said.”
Benjamin Franklin
1706 – 1790