Cheery And Cheer: What The Rain Drove Me To

Friday, June 5, 2015

What The Rain Drove Me To

I gotta tell you, I was really grateful for the rain we received for 2 1/2 days; steady, cold, miserable, much needed rain. Sunday I was very excited as it began and of course it was still warm outside when it did and I was in great spirits. And I made a list of what I would do when it rained with a couple lines of what I would do if it didn't because you can't always trust the weather forecasts.

I have quite a bit of yard work left to do so I was slightly annoyed that it wasn't warm enough to work outside; in fact it was very chilly, like the high 40's here at the seacoast so we turned the heat on. I felt a sense of urgency to do a bunch of indoor stuff because once summer is here I don't spend much time inside if I can help it and indoor projects have to wait until winter. Inside the cozy house I spent a couple hours in a big linen closet sorting and filling five huge contractor size hefty bags to haul to the Salvation Army. Then I made curtains for the Ocean room and the Queen room. And mopped all the wood floors. And watched a movie on my iPad. And then the dark, overcast gloom got to me and I had to do something to make me feel cheery and cheer so I decided to bake. And I kept baking. Whole wheat bread, whole wheat chocolate chip banana bread, double chocolate banana bread (we had a lot of super ripe bananas in the fruit bowl), Road Trip cookies (chocolate cookie dough with lots of peanut M&Ms - recipe from the cook book "Death By Chocolate"), gluten free chocolate chip cookies (experimenting for three family members who have wheat allergies so to have cookies for them on hand) and these gluten free cookies were amazingly good! Like really delicious! I would eat them just as eagerly as regular because they were that good. You use a combo of oat and brown rice flour and potato starch in place of all purpose flour and let the dough rest in the fridge over night before baking. I baked chocolate chip walnut biscotti (let's see if it keeps in the pantry for two years and still tastes good like the ones we bought in Italy). You can see that just about everything I made had chocolate chips in it. Oh, and a lime pound cake. And meatloaf, and the start of ham and bean soup for a friend who just had surgery. All of the baked goods went into the "happy" or "sugar Sunday" freezer - we didn't just sit around and eat this stuff (though we wanted to!). I also had to spend some time at the Yellow House because the old wall oven around which a brick hearth was built from around the 60's finally died for good. I searched for months while it was dying to find the smallest full size (24 inch) wall oven possible and when we went over to place it in the hearth we needed 1/2 inch in width to make it fit - drat! By a miracle I found a stone mason and electrician to both come over the next day to both widen the space with a mini jack hammer and install the oven. While they worked inside, I stayed outside and pruned the driveway roses, the hydrangeas, weeded, pruned rhodies, and dug up several hostas and astilbes to take back to the Rye house. The renters are pleased with a new oven and I am relieved. After all that drama and then success, Dan took me to see a movie matinee, Far From the Madding Crowd - I highly recommend this movie and being swept in to the English countryside helped with the rainy day's gloom. Now the rain is gone away and has done its magic on our parched earth and I've been back out in the yard planting more perennials in the newest flower borders. And climbing trees. Here are pictures of all the week's activities.