in the kitchen

We've had more dry days. Notice I didn't say the 'R' word. No sense in invoking the gods since the last time I used it it rained the next day. Marc might actually get the yard mowed today. Or not. Mower won't start. He messed with it some more today and yay, the yard is mowed. Should help cut down some on those black flying monsters mentioned next.

Once again the mosquitoes are just fierce. Big black ones and they swarm you almost immediately. Even with mosquito repellent on, so says Marc. And I swear, they know where the doors are and hang out by them.

I spent all day Saturday in the kitchen dealing with butternut squash and peaches. I roasted the biggest one,

scooped out the flesh from the peel and mashed it and put it in the freezer for a future casserole, roasted the 'twins', because they flowered the same day and grew right next to each other on the same vine, and peeled and cubed them for the freezer. Then I picked out four of the larger ones for two neighbors, two each with recipes. Picked out and skinned the nine ripest peaches and made a peach cobbler and while that was cooking delivered the squash to my neighbors. Then I made a butternut skillet dish with bacon, onion, spinach, and pecans for dinner with the cubed squash I had put up last March.

Gotta use the oldest first. Still have nine small ones, all in the 6” – 7” range.

I used to make peach pies every season but there's just two of us and by the fourth day the last two slices were pretty soggy. Then I switched over to crostatas, courtesy of Joanne from Cup On The Bus, because they were smaller and quicker to make but since my last blood test showed high blood sugar I switched over to peach cobbler which is even easier and quicker to make because I thought it uses less sugar than the crostata but I think really, it's the same amount, the difference being with a cobbler the sugar is in the dough instead of in the fruit.

Sitting here at my desk, getting my working drawings ready for wax work model making I looked up to see a red shouldered hawk sitting on the top rail of the fence on Sunday. It sat there a while but flew off before I could creep around to the door to get a picture through the glass.

Here're the drawings for the next two pieces.

I got my work table over at the studio cleared off and the base slabs of wax poured today. And I think I've decided on a luna moth for the small stand. I did one many years ago on a vase form and I still have a backup shape in wax that I've been shuffling around all this time. I think maybe I rejected it because it was too small. Here's the vase, luna moth on one side, dogwood flowers on the other.

6”w x 6”d x 7”h

Typical summer sky these days

unless it looks like this.