Has anyone been having a crazy hot & sunny week like we’re having in Upstate NY? I’m glad for the sunshine, but doing yard work is more difficult with the heat, as well as the bugs that keep attacking me. My sister also gets a ton of bug bites and calls them “noseeums,” because you really can’t see what the heck is biting you!
Checked the thermometers around 4 o’clock in the afternoon: one on the south side of the house says 95, the one facing west says 105, and another is 120! I felt more sorry for the cats, especially Wolfie, who’s more equipped for cooler weather (see below pic.) I waited until the sun was behind some trees to do some weeding and redo the stones by “the gateway”:
Wolfie, guarding his catnip plants.
Last month we got an unfinished wooden picnic table that started looking pretty yucky after a few days in the rain. It needed some color, even a neutral color would be an improvement. I had the hardest time deciding on a paint color at the store when Fate stepped in (or was her name Karen?) and put a few gallons of “reject” paint on the clearance shelf. A $36 can of exterior paint marked down to $8? Works for me! I painted the picnic table gray, then dry-brushed and damp-sponged it with white. I think it turned out pretty great!
A little neutral color goes a long way
– This also turned out to be a good background for my photos. Here you can see the white over gray brush/spongework:
Peony in silver vase
Peonies in silver vases
I was planning to make some curry for dinner (following the “Flavor of the Week” theme) but it was so incredibly hot, I needed something cool and refreshing. There was some leftover quinoa, veggies, and chicken that needed to be cooked so I made a miso-based sauce with a healthy squirt of fresh lemon juice for this pretty tasty quinoa chicken salad:
A light, refreshing salad that’s also filling: quinoa, tomatoes, water chestnuts, chicken, green onion and a dressing made with miso paste, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and lemon juice.
We also had some kale massaged with salt, lemon juice and sesame oil. Delicious!
What are some of your favorite summertime salads?
T h e F o o d e r y 
June 26, 2012 at 20:41
Love your new table! And that salad looks delicious! Can you tell me your measurements? I’ve still got the (white/mild) Miso I bought a couple weeks ago and haven’t settles on a use for it yet! Just a little useless fact about No-Seeums…they don’t bite…they actually pee on you!! Their urine is like acid and that’s why it burns so much and feels like a bite. They are hugely prolific here in Florida especially during the early morning and dusk hours and have huge hatches after significant rains. They are evil, evil critters!
June 26, 2012 at 21:03
Urine?? Great, now I feel even more defiled. :P I have bites all over, and I even got one on the back of my head where my hair was parted when I was wearing pigtails (pesky little rassafrackin cotton-pickin’ bugs!)
Okay, with the miso paste you can start off with 1 part miso, 1 part rice wine vinegar (optional,) 2 parts lemon juice, and 2 parts sesame oil. Give it a taste and see what needs to be adjusted. Konbu (seaweed) adds flavor & texture, same with the shiitake mushroom, and slice them in small, thin pieces rather than squares. Sliced water chestnuts are awesome, they’re super crunchy and very neutral tasting. Green onions also give a lot of flavor, I like them sliced kind of big, and diagonally. :) Hope you give it a try, the lemon really works well with the “umami” taste from miso.