…but I’ll take it!! It started raining today, slow and light rainfall but it is most welcome. We need 90 days of this.
Little helper.
It’s Saturday!! Keeto loves to help out with making the grocery list. 🙂
My other helper made awesome daiquiris at the end of the day. I wish every day was saturday. Cheers!
Nailed it.
My risotto-eer has been at it again. Tonight he made Basil Risotto, with fresh basil and tomatoes from the garden. Delicious!
The recipe book is Risotto, by Clive Tring. Lots of good risotto recipes, with lovely photos of the dishes.
Mid-week lake run.
We headed to the lake after work tonight to meet Lynn, Dan, and their niece Paige at the marina. We headed to the cove for a float and dinner on the boat. A good time was had by all. This is a shot after sunset with Venus to the right of the crescent moon.
Pretty sky.
Tiptoeing through time.
I’ve spent the entire day today jumping back into my genealogy research. I have recently connected with distant cousins in my same generation, all of who’s grandparents were siblings born in the late 1800s. It has rekindled the fire in me to transfer the myriad of notes, stories and photographs that I have compiled over the last decade or so into a cleanly documented family tree. And we are pooling our research.
It is especially challenging to research my ancestors because virtually all of my grandparent paths on all sides start in Ireland. So I’m enjoying joining forces on the research.
Once I make a pass through my ancestors’ part of the tree, I’ll do the same for Monte’s, for whom I have significantly more information.
50 year low.
We spent a second night on the lake last night. Nick and family had peeled off, so we had the anchor to ourselves. Today I paddled around the cove again. I went all the way up to where Arky cove ends. This is as far as I can go. As much as we still enjoy the lake immensely, in spite of the low lake levels, it’s hard to imagine that just a few years ago we would be able to sail up in here and beyond, to anchor, with about 40 or 50 more feet of water above where my head is. The lake is at its lowest in 50 years, right now: 625.5 feet above sea level, as we speak. Very sad. The lake is dropping as rapidly or more rapidly than it ever has during the summer… a foot or more this week, already. I don’t know what to say at this point other than this really sucks.
Pray for rain.
Happy July 5th!
We anchored in the cove last night. Camelot joined us for the night with Lori & Doray. Kalliopi joined us with nick, Isabel, their kids and about 4 other girls. Quite the raftup! We grilled cheeseburgers off the back of the boat, in true July 4th style. Because of the drought, fireworks were few and far between. But we caught a glimpse of some.
We brought the kayak and the sailing dinghy. They’re getting used quite a bit.
And, here’s the obligatory arky cove sunset shot:
My neighborhood rocks.
Happy July 4th! Monte and I are packing for two days and nights on the lake. It’s going to be great! As we were getting ready I heard the Stars and Stripes blaring down the street. We went outside and caught our neighborhood’s annual parade. I love it. Small town awesomeness in the middle of Austin! They do this every year, but this is the first year we have been home on the 4th to see it (!).
why yes, that IS a mop&linen Statue of Liberty going down the street. Don’t you have one of those?
Homegrown.
This bouquet comes straight from our garden: Zinnias, basil, rosemary…
Happy Friday!!!
Pasta night.
Rob & Jen came over for dinner tonight. It was great to see them, it’s been a long time.
On the menu tonight: Homemade ravioli with ricotta & cheese filling.
Recipe for the pasta:
Mound flour on a hard flat surface. Squish in the middle like a volcano- shape and add the eggs in the top of the volcano. 🙂
Using a fork, beat the eggs and grab a little flour on each stir. Keep doing this while trying not to let the eggs run out of the volcano until flour is incorporated.
Now it’s time to knead the pasta dough. Scrape the surface clean and lightly flour and knead for 10 minutes.
Wrap dough ball in plastic and refrigerate for 30 mins.
You’ll need a pasta roller, like this one to roll the pasta to the right thickness. We have a pasta roller attachment for our kitchen aid mixer (like this one) so we use that.
Roll the dough into rectangular strips about 5″ wide.
Recipe for the filling:
Place a row of tablespoonfuls of filling on dough about 2 inches apart on the lower half of the strip of dough. Leave room to fold dough over to cover the row of filling blobs, and room to seal each side of each ravioli square. Before folding dough over, lightly brush water along edges that you want to seal to form each ravioli (on all four sides of each ravioli). Then fold and press edges of each ravioli square to seal, while trying to get as much air out of the pocket before sealing.
Then cut each ravioli free.
Place in salted boiling water for 4 minutes. Scoop them out and serve with whatever sauce you crave.
I realize now that I should have taken pictures of how we made these bad boys. But I didn’t. Next time.
Memory lane.
I dozed off on the couch tonight. No surprise there. But I woke up as the movie The Goodbye Girl was starting. I snapped awake with memories of the first time I saw this film. It’s a great, great picture. I watched the whole thing.
I saw this movie shortly after it came out in 1977. I was just a kid, really. I went to see it while visiting my sister who was away at college at the time. It should have been too grown up for me, but I loved this movie. It is the quintessential romantic comedy – in my book. This has to be one of the best examples of Neil Simon’s mastery of writing dialog. Loved it.
Now the movie is over and I’m left to think about all of my experiences since I was that kid way back in 1977. Holy cow….that was 36 years ago!! Well, I’m still a kid, really, but all the wiser, now.
Holy schmolies!
We had a great time on the lake this weekend. We anchored in Arky south last night. Rory and Greg joined us on Sapphire for the night. Lori, Dave and Jake stopped by on Camelot and tied up for several hours; to swim and grill up dinner on the boat. Boy was it a hot one!! 107+ in the city. Was probably hotter out here. But floating in the lake is the best way to beat the heat.
Back at the marina, we met up with Marty and Sue and floated for a while. It was great to see them. We saw Nick, Dmitri and Kelly, too. Nice day!
Made it back home by about 6 pm or so. As we were unpacking we heard all the bluejays in the vicinity urgently squawking and dive bombing something outside the kitchen window. This went on for a while, so I walked out to see what it was. There were about 10 or more jays in the oak tree joining in. I walked around shook the bushes a bit, but didn’t see anything. So I walked back to the front porch, when I saw a 6′ snake slithering up onto the porch about a foot away from me and my bare feet and legs. YIKES!!! I guess I should be more careful.
A google search later leads me to believe this is a Texas Rat Snake.
New bar toy.
While antique shopping in Tennessee last weekend, I found an old seltzer syphon, Sparklets brand. I’ve never used one of these before but we’ve talked about trying one for a while. So we took this one home.
We quickly realized we were missing a part or two. Most importantly the part that holds a CO2 cartridge / charger. Prairie Moon online carried parts that fit. So this morning we tried it out. Works great!
Cheers!
Channelling Aunt Voula.
We have lots of funny movies we love to quote for moments that would only be funny to others that share a love for the same movie humor….. from Caddyshack, Captain Ron, The Princess Bride, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Young Frankenstein, to name a few. One movie quote that comes to mind tonight is from My Big Fat Greek Wedding:
Aunt Voula: What do you mean he don’t eat no meat?!
[the entire room stops, in shock]
Aunt Voula: Oh, that’s okay. I make lamb. 🙂
Yesterday Monte de-boned and marinated a leg of lamb, and tonight he put it on the grill. Add some quick pasta and insalata caprese (with basil and tomatoes fresh from the garden), and VOILA! I think Aunt Vuola would approve.
Oh, and also: TGIF!! It’s been about a month since we’ve been out to the lake, given our travel schedules. Tomorrow we will make up for lost time.
Sheila365 
