January 3, 2008

I cannot believe it is another new year! This past year brought many changes for us, and it (like all the years before) went on to prove that each year really does go by faster than the previous one. We have been blessed in 2007, and I hope and pray that you and your family have a happy and fulfilling 2008.

I'm going to backtrack a little: the following is from Christmas day...

After spending several extra hours in the airport on Christmas day, my brother's flight finally left the Rockies and headed toward Texas. My family happily pushed our Christmas Day tradition back to the 26th so he could be here for it. Harper and I invited my parents and brother to come have Christmas dinner with us after they picked him up in Houston.

While I cleaned and put some more Christmas touches throughout the house, Harper took over the kitchen. I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it smelled, but it made it difficult to wait for the guests to arrive! First, he wrapped perfect cuts of Axis deer venison with Monterey Jack and jalapeños in partially cooked bacon. After an hour of prepping, the poppers were ready for the grill. The wraps are simple and traditional for dove, duck, or even shrimp, but if you can get your hands on some great cuts of venison, I definitely recommend it! I promise, this is NOTHING like the country-fried venison you grew up with!

While the grill was getting hot, Harper worked on a variation of a recipe from Fired Up, written by the owner of Austin's Hudson's on the Bend. Harper's sister gave him the cook book last Christmas, and it's been one of his favorites to pour over, but this was the first time to try one of the recipes. Many of the featured recipes use wild game, and when I came home with mouth-watering tales of venison from Africa last summer, our interest was broadened. (We are actually going to a cooking class at the Hill Country home of the chef in just a few weeks! I'll have details and photos later this month.)

Back to the meal, Harper prepared "Rock Hen Riding Jalapeno Cheese Grits." The rock hen was a substitute for quail (we couldn't find any the day before Christmas), but the rock hen actually worked perfectly as a main meal since the quail version was created as an appetizer. The recipe included smoked tomato & blue cheese grits, Cholula Buffalo sauce, and smoked rock hen.

This picture doesn't begin to do the meat justice. I tried to adjust the color, but there were too many types of light to make it more accurate. The venison was a deep red that would have made sashimi-grade tuna envious.

Here is a quick, sloppy pieced-panoramic of the dinner. Our copper bar has definitely served us well since the dining room has yet to complete itself...  As delicious as the food was, the best part of the Christmas meal was spending it with family. I just wish my future sister-in-law, Lauren, could have been with us!

Hopefully I will have more of Harper's culinary masterpieces to photograph (and devour!) this year, but if you love food, check out Alisa's (my friend of fifteen years) blog, The Meat and Potatoes Foodie. The writing is entertaining, informative, and delicious! I can't wait to try some of her recipes, and I'm sure she'll be a popular name in culinary circles soon.

New Year's Eve...

New Year's Day    I knew we were about to have a couple of nights of below freezing temperatures, so I took advantage my last day off to cut some flowers. We brought the geraniums inside, but the calendulas, African daisies, and mustard greens all thrive in our mild winter weather.

January 9, 2008   

When we had the house painted a few months ago, I asked the painters to skip the front door even though it was a huge eyesore. I figured that it would prompt us to get the "new" front door ready and hung, but at Thanksgiving, the old door remained. I just couldn't put Christmas decorations up for our first time (at this house) without doing something about the door, so I painted a fresh coat of black to hide a multitude of sins. The replacement door is very similar with the stained glass on top, but the lower half is a little more Victorian. It belonged to my husband's family, and my father-in-law salvaged it for us from a building that was going to be torn down. It needs to be stained, and I would really like to use the glass from our original door to replace the "new" glass. I love the colors (red, cobalt, and chartreuse green); the picture below shows it, but when the sun is setting, it lights up the inside entryway and hallway, and it is beautiful. The newer Victorian door has amber, purple, and a lighter blue glass--it's nice, but not striking, and I LOVE the contrast of richer colors.

The ivy topiary to the right is the one I was making when the Io moth caterpillar stung me in December.

I snapped a few pictures the first day that the workers were here to work on the new roof. The rain this week has slowed things a bit, but they still think it will be finished by Friday. I will try to get home early enough on Thursday to get a better picture.

Don't adjust your screen--the egg is really blue! Well, it's blue-ish green, anyway. My Araucana hen finally started laying again after over 3 months. I didn't realize how long molting (the yearly loss and replacement of feathers) could interrupt laying, so I was starting to wonder if Scuzzelbutt would ever give us another egg. She's my only Araucana, and she was always my most reliable layer. I always look forward to her eggs--kind of like finding an Easter egg every day.

January 11, 2008

 January 12, 2008

In November, our new "neighbor" next to our lot at the back of the yard surprised us by tearing down the fence and cutting all of the trees on, and even near, the fence line. As much as I've wanted to post/vent about the situation, I've tried to use self-control. Luckily the ordeal is almost over, and although the privacy that the row of mature trees provided (one was over 2' diameter) cannot be replaced, the owner has put up a privacy fence and is going to pay for some new shrubs and a couple of trees. On Saturday, Harper cut down some of the small junk-shrubs that were left behind to prepare for the new ones. I know it doesn't help anything, but it still makes me sick to look back there--before, none of the houses/buildings that are now visible could be seen. Anyway, if you're thinking about taking out a fence, trees, or anything on your property line, make sure you talk to the other property owner so it's all legal...

The picture below is taken from (almost) the very back of our yard. It looks more like a place in the country than a house just a few blocks from downtown.

I love this shot of my Flowering Maple (also known as Chinese Lantern, Chinese Bell Flower, Parlor Maple). Although its leaves are shaped like a Maple, it's actually an Abutilon striatum  that belongs to the Mallow family of plants (Malvaceae) and includes among its close relatives the Mallows, Hollyhocks, Cotton, Hibiscus, Okra, and Rose of Sharon. According to everything I've read, it should not survive a frost, but it is still blooming like crazy. The other tropicals in the same flower bed (Angel Trumpet, Coleus, potato vine, banana trees) have been dormant for a while--we've had multiple freezing nights, and a couple that lasted over eight hours. Since most of the leaves from the pecan tree canopy above have disappeared, it gets a bit more sun in the winter, but it blooms the same way in filtered light/partial shade during summer and spring. It grows easily from cuttings, so if you live close and want one, let me know.

January 14, 2008

I have to give Harper props for the new name. I've been wanting to give my blog/journal a name other than "Home & Garden Journal" or "507" but all the names I came up with made it sound like a farm, and while I would love to have more, our property is only one acre. Harper perfected some of the keywords I had been toying with, and like ourselves, "The Shady Acre" falls somewhere in-between sophisticated and silly.

Since we moved in almost two years ago, we have upgraded to HD TVs, but we decided to wait until we had a new roof to have the HD dish/receivers installed. Well, TV is pretty low on my list of priority expenses (it's the devil when it comes to being productive!), but it is one of Harper's few indulgences, so a weekend without it is a sacrifice. Like anyone who has ever dealt with the five-hour window that the cable-guy is promised to arrive, we have more than a few hair-pulling testimonies. Imagine our surprise when our man showed up at 2:30 instead of 4:59! But, of course, the fortune was too good to last. Even though the roofers left a ladder going directly to the old dish, our guy said he couldn't get to it, so he was going to put the new dish on the lower part of the porch roof (on the driveway side). Remembering how difficult it had been to find a signal last time, I reminded him how much fuller the trees are in the spring and summer. He said the trees would not be a problem in the new place. You can probably guess how this ends. At 7:30 (yes, five hours later), he finally finished installing the dish where the original one had been. He figured out a way to get to it when the trees were blocking the signal to the completely-installed dish at his chosen site... Unfortunately, most of the big games were over by the time we could watch TV, but there will always be more!

January 26, 2008

More from Ant Street Inn...