June 2009 – Page 2 – The Beehive

June 17, 2009June 17, 2009

Winning Lemonade Stand Fare

With Steve working so hard in the yard pulling weeds last weekend, I decided to whip him up a refreshing beverage: basil lemonade. Ok, you caught me. I’m the one that craves the basil lemonade. He would be just as happy with his Country Time mix. I made it for me. That doesn’t make it any less tasty, though. Here’s how I make it:

Start by making a basic simple syrup. Combine equal parts sugar and water and bring to a gentle boil in a saucepan. Simmer it for five minutes and remove from the heat. Here’s where the basil comes in. Drop a handful of basil leaves into the syrup and let it steep until the syrup is cool. I use the not-so-pretty leaves that wouldn’t look nice on the table because as soon as they hit the hot syrup they will wilt and look not so pretty. When it’s cool, strain the basil leaves out using a sieve and you’ve got yourself basil syrup.

The basil syrup is what you will use to sweeten your lemonade instead of sugar to give it a hint of basil flavor. The proportions I use are 1 part lemon juice, 1 part basil syrup, and three parts water, but you can play with it to suit your tastes. When I make one glass, I use 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/4 cup syrup, and 3/4 cups water. For a larger batch, I’d use 1 cup lemon juice, 1 cup syrup, and 3 cups water.

basil3

So there you have it, a unique and refreshing beverage to quench your thirst on hot summer days. You can use the syrup for other beverages too, if you like. Basil infused iced tea would be great, for example. The technique also works for anything you can steep, so if basil is not your thing, try mint or another herb. I once made a cilantro syrup for cilantro infused limeade. Experiment and find what you like, but seriously, this basil lemonade is good. Salute!

June 15, 2009

Painting? There’s an App for That

The San Jose Mercury News published a tidbit explaining yet another of the iPhone myriad capabilities (can you blame them since the headquarters of Apple, Inc. is located in the heart of its service area?).

Think those peonies in your neighbor’s yard are the perfect color for your bedroom walls? As the iPhone commercials would say, there’s an app for that. At least two, in fact. Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams have both introduced free iPhone applications that let you shoot a photo and then match a color in the picture to a paint hue. Both also suggest coordinating colors and can even guide the user to the nearest retailer.

Pretty cool. I don’t have an iPhone, though, so I guess I’ll have to pick paint the old-fashioned way — old-fashioned meaning with online tools paint companies have on their websites to help you find coordinating colors and visualize your space.

June 15, 2009June 15, 2009

Our Productive Weekend or House Tour Part 1: The Family Room

I’m totally amazed by the amount we got done around the house this weekend. First, Steve made some amazing progress with the weeds in the back yard. I didn’t take any before and after pictures because I didn’t expect him to be outside too long, or to make too much of a dent in our forest of weeds. Boy was I wrong! He cleared a huge area along the back fence and around the patio, and the yard is actually starting to look, well, pretty. I also did a fair amount of weeding myself, and got started with a little painting project.

This is our family room. It sits just off the kitchen, and because we’re getting started with its make-over, it will be the first room on our house tour (although logically a bit out of order). We’re tackling the family room first because: (1) the family room and the kitchen are probably the two most used rooms in the house, so we want them to be comfortable places that we really enjoy being in; and (2) it’s pink. Really, really pink. And the seller left us some fabulous curtains.

We’ve got a whole plan for the family room here. This weekend, I started by painting the ceiling. Of course this involved a bit of prep work first. I removed all of the curtains and hardware, removed and/or taped off the light fixtures, and laid out drop clothes before slathering a coat of paint on the ceiling.

Just taking down the curtains made a huge difference and really lightened things up. I started with just the ceiling because we’re taking baby steps on the painting; neither one of us wants to spend a whole weekend painting, so we’re doing it one wall at a time.

June 14, 2009June 14, 2009

The Hive

This is our house.

housefront

It’s a spacious two-story house with a good sized yard. We’ll be taking you through room-by-room as we get each room camera ready. We’ll also have a page for each room documenting our progress (and hopefully keeping us honest so we don’t slack off on the work we want to do).

June 13, 2009August 10, 2009

One Tomato Two

We neglected our two tomatoes and burpless cucumber a little bit too long. Although they get regular water, they were getting too big for their little plastic containers, so we found a spot for them and put them in the ground.

Those seedlings are getting a little too big for those plastic pots!

There just happened to be a little patch of earth next to our lower deck that had nothing but weeds in it. I cleared ’em out. I turned the dirt over and mixed in some rich potting soil and in went the seedlings. Looks pretty good, no?

: After

Hopefully this will turn out to be a good spot and they will thrive.

Of course I always check on the topsy-turvy when I’m outside.

topsyturvy3 topsyturvy4

I’m pretty surprised that the main stem is twisting up, rather than growing down as it seems to be in all the example pictures. There are a number of blossoms on it, though. Hopefully we will get lots of tomatoes.

The strawberries are ripening too!

redstrawberry

June 11, 2009

Soup’s on

dinner

Yesterday I broke out the new slow cooker so we would have dinner (mostly) ready (mostly) when we got home from work. I made Italian sausage soup, which turned out pretty tasty.

1 lb. bulk Italian sausage (I used mild)
1 large onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 14 oz. cans of chicken broth
1 8 oz. can of tomato sauce
1 10.5 oz. (I think that’s the size I used) can of diced tomatoes
dried oregano, basil, and rosemary
1/2 cup orzo pasta
Parmesan cheese

The night before I browned the sausage in a saute pan with the onion and garlic. Then I added it to the slow cooker pot with the carrots and celery and put it in the fridge over night. In the morning, I dumped in all the canned ingredients and the dried herbs (which I sort of ground up in my palm first). Set the cooker on low for 10 hours and go about your day. After 10 hours, turn it up to high, add the orzo, and cook for an additional 20 minutes. Serve and garnish with the Parmesan cheese.

Next time I make it, I think I will add more orzo, or maybe even use a slightly larger pasta. It just seemed like it was barely present in the soup. Other than that it was quite good.

Of course, soup never quite seems like a complete meal to me, so I made some bread sticks to go along with.

1 can refrigerated pizza dough
pesto sauce
Parmesan cheese

Lay out the pizza dough (which conveniently unrolls to a rectangle) and spread pesto over half of it, then sprinkle Parmesan cheese generously over the pesto.

Fold the blank half over the half with all the cheesy pesto goodness and cut into strips (I used a pizza wheel). Twist each strip and lay on a backing sheet sprayed with no-stick spray.

Bake according to pizza dough package directions, but keep an eye on it as it might cook faster since it’s not covered with pizza toppings. Voila!

Next time I do this one, I will go heavier on the cheese.

June 10, 2009June 10, 2009

Summer Days

topsyturvy1

topsyturvy2 I think it’s so strange to arrive home at, say 7:30 and still have plenty of daylight, but it’s a great opportunity to get out in the yard (and weed, what else?), something that would normally have to wait for the weekend. I like keeping an eye on plants as they grow. In this case it’s pretty much limited to the few veggies Mrs. B gave us, since virtually everything else was here when we moved in, and not of our choosing. So I tend the topsy turvey, the tomato seedlings, cucumber, and strawberry pot when I get home.

It’s hard to see when you look at them every day, but when I look back at the pictures I took when I first planted, there has definitely been some growth. There are actually tiny green strawberries on the strawberry plants!

porchplants greenstrawberry1

June 10, 2009June 11, 2009

The Hat Rack is Operational

I went to HD yesterday and bought some 2 inch wood screws to secure our hat rack into the studs. I thought it would be pretty simple to replace the 1.5 inch screws one at a time. Not so much! The thing pulled out of the wall while I was replacing screw number 1. With Steve’s help, we got it back in to place and got all three screws secured into the studs and the rack is now ready to accommodate hats, sweatshirts, etc. Sweet!

: It can hold up hats (and other things)!

June 9, 2009June 10, 2009

Pet Peeves

You know what I hate? Following a link and getting trapped because the writer has added HTML that won’t let you leave the site via the back button. I mean, do you think your content is so bad that the only way people will stay is if you won’t let them navigate away? Isn’t the way to fix that really better content? Rest assured, if you don’t like what you see here, or if you just happen to finish whatever browsing you planned to do, you are free to back out.

That is all.

June 9, 2009June 10, 2009

Super Succulents

This lead certainly drew me in:

Spice up your garden with unusual, low-maintenance plants from the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society’s annual show and sale next weekend in Golden Gate Park.

We’ve spent so much time weeding since we moved in, a low-maintenance yard sounds like a dream. I’ve actually been thinking about xeriscaping for a while. Low maintenance + low water bills = good. I don’t know that I really want to tear out the existing landscaping, though. Maybe as we make small changes over time we’ll consider more draught-friendly alternatives. In any event, it wouldn’t hurt to learn more about it.

See “Darlings of the dry garden” for more info about the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society’s annual show this weekend.