New Year

I didn't get to make it to Oklahoma for the holidays; I flew to Vegas to see Jason and family, and it was a blast. We found mountain lion footprints in the snow up in the Mt. Charleston area! Eventually I will figure out how to post pictures here...

I had a convention over New Year's weekend, and it went well. I've got 2 months of down time (more like prep time) before my spring season starts. My goal: organize *everyting*. I've lived in this house for a year and a half, and non-essential things are still where I stowed them to get them out of the way when I moved in. Which means a lot of my materials for making the more interesting jewelry and leather items are not accessible, so I want to change that so I can really engage my creativity with metal and leather, rather than just only making the simple stuff that sells (and pays the bills, albeit). I've bought a bunch of plastic storage bins (conveniently on sale, at least the ones with red or green lids, post-Christmas) and will get a few extra shelves here in the next couple of days.

In addition to making room for the second motorcycle in the garage (I find myself loathe to part with my first bike, as it is so much fun to ride... it's like the difference between being a falcon and being a horse - the new bike is a workhorse and will get me places far away in relative comfort; it just doesn't accelerate or corner like the first bike), I would like to have easy access to my many cubic feet of lego bricks. They remain my sculpture medium of choice.

Today the temp was in the high 60's, so I got some gardening done... got the tulips planted (they had sat forgotten in the garage until today, when I noticed they were sprouting - oops!) and cleared out all the dead stuff from the veg garden. It is now a carpet of green, with much of it juvenile carrots (nothing like eating fall-planted carrots in the spring!), and volunteer cilantro and parsley. Those two herbs do fantastically down here, and like the carrots and sugar snap peas, don't mind getting frozen at all.

I'm about to dig up a strip along one side of the front yard and move a bunch of the herbs there; the neighbors took out a fine mature hedgerow for no apparent reason, and now the yard looks like a wasteland. I have a handful of mature beets I am going to harvest and eat within a week or so; it's weird, they only grew along the edges of the garden... guess they didn't like something with which I amended the soil? No idea.

Made some vegetable soup to eat during the convention:
8 cups water or stock
2-4 T. olive or vegetable oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
6-8 cloves garlic, minced / pressed
3 carrots, chopped
1/2 cup uncooked pearled barley or brown rice
1 14.5 oz can of tomatoes, however you like them
1 small potato, diced
4 oz frozen green beans, steamed to almost done in the microwave
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
1 15oz can peas or beans (I used baby peas)
2 tsp dried herbs, at least two different ones (I used thyme, sage, basil, oregano, parsley, and rosemary, in order from greatest quantity to least)
2 bay leaves
1/2 t. ground black pepper
1/4 t. cayenne or red pepper flakes
salt to taste - depends on whether you had any in your stock to begin with. I think I wound up with a teaspoon of salt from the stock and added another 3/8 t. after that. If you use 8 cups of regular store-bought stock, you will not need to add any additional salt at all. I used 4 cups of low-sodium store-bought stock and 4 cups water.

Saute onion and celery in oil over medium heat for at least 3-5 minutes. Add garlic, herbs, and spices, and saute for another 2 minutes. Add water/stock, barley, bay leaves, tomatoes, carrots, and potato, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to med-low and simmer for ~35-40 minutes, until the barley is almost done.

Add bell pepper, zucchini, and green beans. Simmer covered until these vegetables are as done as you'd like them and the barley is done; I did 5 minutes. Add the can of peas / beans at the very end, stir, turn off heat, let sit 5 minutes before serving.

Any vegetables will do, you just have to get them in the pot at the right time so they're cooked but don't turn to mush.