You may never have guessed it, but we here at Seven Ten Clark love to cook and bake. Honestly, Kevin is the better cook and I’m the baker in the household. I mostly love making breads and desserts, while he loves throwing together yummy meals, especially on the grill. We’re hoping to be able to share some of our culinary delights, starting with tonight’s strawberry sorbet.
The Farmer’s Market in Iowa City runs on Saturday mornings and Wednesday evenings, and we decided to go after work last night. While there, we picked up a fresh pint of strawberries, and we when we got home we discovered that they were perfectly ripe. Perfect for eating on the spot, but not so perfect if we wanted to stretch them out over a few days until we could get some more. I considered making up another batch of Paula Deen’s strawberry shortcakes, but I didn’t have all of the ingredients I needed and didn’t feel like going to the store tonight.
It’s summer, and the weather is beautiful, and I just happened to have received this recipe book for Christmas and hadn’t gotten to use it yet, so I decided to make some strawberry sorbet.
It gave me a chance to use my awesome juicer
Multipurpose kitchen appliances FTW!
And the recipe:
Half pound strawberries, hulled and sliced
3/4 cup sugar
Juice of 1 large or 2 medium lemons (I used a lime instead, since I had it on hand)
1/4 cup corn syrup
2 cups water
1. Combine the strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice in a mixing bowl. Refrigerate covered at least 1 hour.
2. When ready to freeze the sorbet, mash the strawberries until pureed. Add the corn syrup and water and stir until blended. (I left my strawberries a little chunkier)
3. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer’s instructions.
June 4th, 2009 in
Food |
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Last night after work, Kevin and I made some more progress on the dreaded front yard. Sunday, he had tilled up the dirt a bit with a lawn rake and then actually planted the broadleaf hostas that had been waiting out front for a few weeks. The poor things would wilt sadly, and then we’d water them and they’d perk up again, and then wilt some more a few days later. I’m glad they didn’t die while we waited for a spare moment to plant them. Anyway, Kevin had also picked up a truckload of free mulch, and we unloaded it around the hostas. We also spread some grass seed in the dirt area between where the hostas are planted and where the grass actually starts, which is a good three foot divide. Those bushes sure took up a lot of room, and we’re glad to be rid of them.
Hostas planted
The current front view
Cosmo helped by meowing out the window
Oh hey, we're also going to paint the exterior this awesome green color, with white trim
I'm going to tear out all of this ridiculous grass
Existing hostas that we're going to divide and use some along the front
June 2nd, 2009 in
Yard |
5 Comments
We currently have two different planting areas in the backyard: a large vegetable garden at the bottom of the yard on the long skinny side, and a smaller herb garden situated right alongside the current patio (spot that will someday soon be enveloped by the bricks we’ll be using to extend the patio quite a bit). I got a chance yesterday to snap some pictures of both areas.
Catnip blooms!
Herb garden:
Oregano
Rosemary
Chives
Sugar snap peas, with their viny fingers twisting around some fencing
One of several tomato varieties
And veggies!
Squash
My poor dead watermelon
Jalapenos, nrom nrom nrom
The watermelon seems to have been the only casualty in the garden so far, although I was afraid of losing my squash on a few occasions. The veggie garden doesn’t get as much sun as it probably should, so the plants are a little shorter than they might be otherwise, but they still seem to be thriving. I’ve noticed a few nibbles on the jalapeno leaves, and I suspect the bunnies in the neighborhood are trying to infiltrate the fence. My dear friend JoAnn gave me a haircut on the back patio last night, and I took all of the cut hair (there was A LOT, man) and tucked it in close to the outside of the fence to keep the rabbits away.
June 1st, 2009 in
Garden,
Yard |
3 Comments
Apparently, an organization has been started in Iowa City very recently that will help promote and improve environmental sustainability here in town. I just found out about it on Facebook, and I’m already extremely excited about it! It’s being managed by the Iowa City Public Library & the City of Iowa City Public Works Division and funded by the International City /County Management Association, and they’ll be focusing on urban composting & local food, energy conservation, urban stormwater management, and smart waste disposal. Some of the services they’ll be offering here in town will be:
- seed and start give-a-ways
- coupons for free Iowa City Community Compost
- free compact fluorescent bulbs and winterizing kits
- mini-grants for compost bins and rain barrels (apparently, they’ll be selling these at the Iowa City Habitat for Humanity ReStore)
- free smart waste disposal events
If you want more information, please visit the website here, or the Facebook group here.
Hooray, sustainability!
…with non-up-to-date pictures. These are the latest shots we’ve got of the garden, but since we took these, we’ve fenced in this plot, planted veggies, created an herb garden planter next to the patio, planted herbs, and done more work on the front. We’re behind on updates, I know! Here’s some preliminary eye candy:
Kevin sweeping up the back sidewalk
Our pile of apple wood (great for grilling!)
The sidewalk, that I edged by hand with a hook knife
Our vegetable garden plot, about 4'x25'
Ahh, tulips
I promise to get some more current photos of the progress tonight.
We have so many projects going on, people. No joke. Actually, we’re only ever involved with one project at a time (obviously, home renovations aren’t really good venues for multitasking), but we’ve got so many backburners that it’s getting out of control. To be honest, we might have developed a little bit of house ADD, since we keep starting projects and almost finishing them, and then leaving them to languish. Like the bathroom. Oops.
Anyway, one of the projects we’ve got waiting in the wings is the kitchen. We’ve been smart about this room, though, and we’ve decided not to even start on it until we have all of the pieces we’ll need to finish it collected or purchased, so we can do it all in one go. It’s such an important room of the house that we can’t afford to lose use of it for longer than it’ll take to do the work. In the meantime, Kevin’s workshop has slowly been filled with bits and pieces that we’ll incorporate into the room. Want to see what we’ve got so far?
This is the sink cabinet that we picked up for free from the owner of the stove below. Metal cabinets with a sink in great condition.
Check out this fabulous original Chambers stove! It's in great condition, and I can't wait to see it installed in my house.
Remember these guys that we picked up over the winter? Original Youngstown Mullins kitchen cabinets from the 50s. We'll paint them all white and put on matching hardware.
Things left to collect for full kitchen assembly:
black and white checkered ceramic tile flooring
Formica laminate countertops referenced here
Dishmaster kitchen faucet referenced in the same post
Lots that I’m forgetting
There is currently a petition online in support of the movement in Iowa City to allow urban chicken keeping. If you’re from this area and support this cause, please sign the petition to show your support and help us out. Change is on the horizon!
April 23rd, 2009 in
Iowa City |
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In fact, we were able to accomplish this much in just a few short hours this evening. I stayed home sick today with some variation of the Martian Death Flu, but I was feeling well enough by the time Kevin got home from work that I was able to help a little out front. Here’s what we (mostly Kevin) did:
Before and after
Glorious progress
You can see the rest of the set of pictures here.
April 14th, 2009 in
Renovation,
Yard |
2 Comments
To give you an idea of what we’re working with, here’s a collection of photos of the yard and exterior of the house. If you want to see the whole set, click here.
April 11th, 2009 in
Yard |
No Comments
So, I really did go to Lowe’s last week and picked up that paint that I had planned. I found a great green color that’s going to look fabulous in the bathroom alongside the fabric that we picked up many moons ago in order to make a window curtain and shower curtain. I got the grey and off-white paint for the bedroom. I even picked up some yucky (but cheap) white mini-blinds to hang in the windows of the bathroom.
And all of it has sat around gathering dust since then, 10 days ago. Ten days of laziness! Okay, so the ten days weren’t totally lazy. We had a scooter get-together last weekend, Kevin’s been working hard getting a friend’s Vespa on the road, and I had a very important concert to attend (Simon Joyner, John Vanderslice, and The Mountain Goats were all outstanding). Also, yesterday there was the death of a beloved pet of mine who still lived at my parents’ house, which led to another night of lying around doing nothing. I think that one is excused.
Other than that, however, we’ve got one big excuse for everything: we’re BROKE as a JOKE. Seriously, after paying 6 months’ worth of property taxes and paying down our debt, we have no money left over. What does that mean? It’s time to put some sweat equity in our little abode. Since the weather is going to be halfway nice, I’m enforcing the following to-do list:
- Pick exterior paint colors (main color and trim)
- Price replacement of storm windows and doors, which are now on clearance
- Tear out plants around the outside of the house that we don’t want to keep (there are many)
- Clean up yard debris like leaves, pine needles, etc
- Take measurements of back patio and price wood for building pergola
I may add a few items to this list, like sewing up a window curtain for the bathroom or prepping the wall for paint, but for now, since Easter is on Sunday and we don’t get Monday off, I’m trying not to be overly ambitious. We’ll see. I promise to update with pictures over the weekend!
