Weekend Update

We had a nice and quiet post-vacation weekend. Frank is getting along with his post-surgery pain, and can eat semi-soft foods quite well. This means, though, that our culinary adventures have been limited by texture.

Yesterday, we started out by spending some time with the yard. As many of you know, we have a "battle for the lawn" going between chickweed, clover, raspberries, and mint. So far, the chickweed is winning. However, we gave in and bought some nasty chemicals to at least keep the chickweed out of the lawn and only in our gardens and planters (those areas will have to wait for relief until fall turn-down). So I expect we will be down to mint and raspberries soon.

Because of our massive bounty of vegetables, berries and herbs, we have been trying to use them every way we can. So far, we've used the kale, chard, rosemary and fennel in kale and gruyere soup (it's soft enough for Frank to eat), and some raspberries in "raspberry semifreddo", which has the consistency of whipped cream but tastes like ice cream. Maybe later today I will try to make a raspberry pie or something.

We also went to Eagle River Nature Center for a short hike, since Frank is not to do any strenuous activity. The Nature center is beautiful and maintains beautiful trails. However, we got lost a bit on Crow Pass and had to backtrack a bit, costing us considerable time. By the time we got back to the car, we had been out for 3.5 hours! Needless to say, we were tired, and even puppy, who usually is a trooper, seems to have a sore hind leg.

Anyways, on the menu today is mulching, clover and chickweed killing, and running. This is my last weekend of non-structured running for four months leading up to the LV marathon on December 4th, so I intend on enjoying it. More photos up soon -- if there are any that you like, let me know and I'll put them up on Cafepress.