hpk today

21 Things To Do When I Retire AND Win the Lotto

2012-01-29T18:15:00.000-08:00

I think everyone always has a wish list of things they want to do in an indeterminate future. For us it used to be, "When we move to the Verde..." But now that we've bought a home in the Verde, our undefined future wish list has has turned into, "When I retire AND win the Lotto..." The Lotto bit is because much of this wish list requires more $ than two gov't annuitants are likely to bring in. For the record, I will retire on June 1st, 2015. Many of my co-workers think I will keep working until my mandatory retirement date when I turn 57. But in 2015 George will have been retired 14 years, and I don't think he's going to want me to wait any longer!

So here's the dream list, in no priority at all. Mind you this is my list, not George's, though he may share a couple of them.

Update the kitchen. New Silestone counter tops. A white sink. A white dishwasher.

Take a 2 to 4 week dive trip to Tahiti, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands. Swim with real sharks, and see the technicolor fishes.

Buy a Fiat 500 or a Mini. My dream retirement vehicles.

Install a sidewalk from the driveway around the back porch all the way to the potager. Be able to walk all the way around the property barefoot.

Get a skilled river rock and concrete worker to concrete in the drainage ditch in front of the house so it's easier to clean out, and we don't have to re-stack the rocks every year. This will kill me when I'm 70.
Install pavers between all the raised beds in the veggie gardens so we can just sweep to keep the area tidy, and never get muddy. Put up a cute picket fence around the garden.

Raise all of our own produce. (Totally unrealistic, but still a dream.)

Redecorate the master bedroom and bath. Elegant, simple, and luxe.

Install an elegant fountain at the front entry.

Decorate the back guest room.

Learn Adobe PhotoShop.

Learn to Surfboard.

Visit every island in the Caribbean. (Oh yes, also totally unrealistic.)

Make tamales for Christmas.

Make Bread and Butter Pickles from home grown cucumbers.

Scrapbook all of George's pictures.

Make a scrapbook of all of Jessie's childhood.

Scrapbook all of my childhood pictures.

Make a beautiful scrapbook of our dating, engagement, and wedding.

Learn a martial art.

Become a yoga instructor.

I have the BEST job ever. I love my job, but it sure gets in the way of all the other stuff I want to do! What's on your bucket list?

Thai Basil Chicken Fried Rice

2012-01-29T17:34:00.000-08:00

Amazing! Another success story in the kitchen for me! I made this last weekend, and it was so good, and healthy enough that I'm making it again this weekend. You know it's healthy because it's from Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Diet Recharged book. That means it's got equal portions of lean protein and healthy carbs, and very little fat. So here's the recipe:

4 T coconut butter or olive oil

2 shallots finely chopped

2 scallions, whites and greens, sliced

4 cloves garlic, passed through a garlic press

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into 1/4 inch strips

2 Thai red peppers

2 T fish sauce

2 T oyster sauce

1/2 t sea salt

1/2 c Thai basil

2 c cooked brown rice

1 handful cilantro coarsely chopped

Red pepper flakes

Heat olive oil or coconut butter in a large wok over medium-high heat

Add shallots and scallions, and stir-fry for a few minutes until fragrant.

Add garlic, chicken and red peppers. Stir-fry for four or five minutes.

Add fish and oyster sauces and sea salt. Reduce heat slightly if too hot.

Add basil and rice. Stir-fry until heated through.

Serve hot, garnished with cilantro and a pinch of red pepper flakes.

Again I had to make modifications. Thai basil? In Camp Verde? Not. So I used regular basil. It's probably a totally different taste, but it was good anyway. (Maybe I'll have to grow some Thai basil this summer.) Bon appetit! If I can make this tasty dish, anyone can!

Better Homes and Garden Weekend

2012-01-29T15:45:00.000-08:00

This has been a Better Homes and Garden weekend for us. Fortunately, one of our favorite things to do is work on the house. A couple of weekends ago I was cooking, and even though I had all the spices on my second shelf alphabetized I was having a hard time seeing and finding what I wanted. So George dug into his woodworking catalogs, and found an after market spice rack insert for our spice cabinet. It's a slide out contraption that makes a custom spice rack. This morning he did the install, and it turned out great. He had to do a few modifications since our cabinet wasn't exactly the right size, but of course! He made it work like a charm!

Oh yeah! Now I can see all of the labels and find exactly what I'm looking for! There's some loss of cabinet space, so we have a bonus bin of some items in the pantry, but I love it.

Another project this weekend was continuing to double up our eight raised beds to make four beds that are 20 inches high instead of 10, and to gopher proof them. I did a bunch of prep yesterday that entailed moving the massive mulch pile of the leaves and grass clippings that George had shredded since it was right where the new beds were to go. And I also uprooted the remaining four frames from the old beds on the right hand side of the potager so they were ready to work with today.

The next step for each new bed was to line the bottom with hardware cloth. Gophers move to new territory by burrowing underground, not by cross country travel, so by putting hardware cloth on the bottom of the bed they can't access my potatoes! (They ate up all the lovely tubers as well as the tops of the plants last summer, the dirty rascals.) The taller beds will also be good as I get older so I don't have to bend over as much. Not a problem now, but when I get into my 60s and 70s I'm sure I'll appreciate that. Of course, there's the issue that we'll have to replace the frames before then anyway due to rot and termites, but I'm pretending that won't happen. :D

Ah, and here we are at the end of the day. We totally filled one of the new beds with dirt from the old right hand beds, and filled most of another one. It looks great! So the vision for the future is to make 2 to 3 more double high beds for the right hand side, and someday put in 16 inch pavers in the pathways instead of the free AstroTurf that's there now. I even have visions of having a little picket fence around the whole potager, either a rustic wooden one, or a white one made of materials that never have to be painted. The pavers and fence are not going to happen any time soon. They're just dreams right now.

This last project we've worked on the past two weekends with our neighbors across the street, and it's finally complete. We got two big loads of cheap gravel to line Salt Mine Road, to make our entry way more inviting, and we "planted" these faux shrubs. Yup, they're plastic shrubs. We don't have any way to water any plants out at the entry way, so these are plastic cedars. Hopefully they look real enough that nobody swipes them, and they hold up for a few years. In all, I have to say our entry gate is much more inviting now.

MLK Day

2012-01-16T17:16:00.000-08:00

Today we:
Didn't do nearly as much as I expected to do on a day off.
Watered plants.
Played with the kitties.
Sent our follow up emails from the HOA meeting yesterday.
Explored the roads and trails of Copper Canyon practically in our back yard.
Delivered salt from our old water softener to the neighbors across the street.
Delivered our wood pile to the neighbors next door because I decided that having a campfire at our place stinks, and I spend too many days smelling like wood smoke as it is.
Spread steer manure in two raised beds in the veggie garden, mulched them down and watered them.
And, well, that's just about it.

Curry Noodle Soup

2012-01-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

Today I cooked this recipe for curry noodle soup that was in the food insert in the newspaper. It tasted so good and looked so pretty I had a rare, "Wow. I cooked that?" moment. (I l i k e to cook, but honestly I'm pretty mediocre at it. My mom did not pass her cooking gene on to me. Successes like this one are the exception, not the rule.)

Here's the recipe, which is originally from a cook book by Nirmala Narine, titled In Nirmala's Kitchen: Everyday World Cuisine. 8 servings.

3 cups canned unsweetened coconut milk

3 tablespoons Thai red curry paste

1 tablespoon turmeric

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts sliced into 1/4 inch strips

1 cup reduced sodium chicken broth or vegetable broth

2 tablespoons fish sauce

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 pound egg noodles (preferably Asian style)

3/4 cup loosely packed Thai basil leaves

2 green onions, thinly sliced

In a large saucepan, bring 1/2 cup coconut milk to a boil. Add red curry past and turmeric; stir to combine. Cook until mixture starts to thicken, about 3 minutes.
Add chicken strips, and turn to coat them well. Add remaining coconut milk, broth, fish sauce, and soy sauce. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook chicken about 8 minutes.
Add salt and egg noodles to boiling water. Cook until al dente. Ladle hot soup over noodles, and garnish with basil and green onions.

Per serving: 458 calories. 26 g fat. 72 mg chol., 22 g protein, 38 g carbs, 4 g fiber, 1212 mg sodium.

(For convenience I used 2 13.5 oz cans of coconut milk, and a whole 14.5 oz can of chicken broth, so there weren't any partial cans left over. I had to use regular No Yolks egg noodles and plain old basil since the Camp Verde grocery store has a limited amount of specialty items. It was still good!)

1st Day of Pre-School!

2012-01-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

Today George headed to Cottonwood to help Jessie, my step-daughter, send our eldest grandson, Marshal, off to his first day of Pre-School. I look at this picture, and he's already more grown up than when I last saw him just before Christmas. He's got a more defined chin line, and looks so long and lean. Fortunately grand kids do not grow up as quick as our kittens have, but still sometimes you wish they could just grow up a little more gradually.

So I hear tell that Marshal is in a class of seven students, and he's the o n l y boy. With two little brothers it's probably not a bad thing for him to get "some girl time", but we hope he doesn't come home with phone numbers too soon! The report from Jessie is that he loved his first day, and loves his teacher. It can't get any better than that.

Today we..

2012-01-02T16:44:00.001-08:00

...raked leaves. Wow! How big is this pile? Next weekend we "get" to chip all this through the chipper/shredder. Hoo Boy!

But the yard is so tidy now after a long fall of messiness. Love it!

One of George's Christmas presents was the pewter sign for his shop. It came without an apostrophe in "George's Shop", so he added a silver screw as the apostrophe. Perfect!

In my pocket...

2012-01-02T07:37:00.001-08:00

...at the end of New Year's Day I found:

the clip to a glass bird ornament from my childhood that I found while putting away Christmas decorations. (Will make that repair today!)
a sparkly cat toy found while cleaning up all the glitter and other bits of Christmas decor detritus. (Had to hide it or Felix would have me playing fetch a l l day.)
ChapStick (almost always have one of those in my pockets).
car keys. (Puzzling since I didn't drive anywhere yesterday.)
spare Kleenex. (Still coping with the nasty cold we contracted at Christmas.)
no evidence of watching the Cardinals win in overtime, a g a i n, to finish the season strong, despite their 8-8 record.

And here's a look at the journaling project my sister asked me to join her in doing this year. Each month we're to make a calendar using bits of paper from here and there, and fill in the tiny blocks with doodles, thoughts on the day, or bits of this and that for each day of the year. Since I already keep a planner, and a daily exercise and diet log, I'm not sure how long I'll keep this up too, but I'm giving it a shot!

Happy New Year all!

Verde Perspective

2011-01-16T20:33:00.000-08:00

Here we are on the top of Squaw Peak, looking down on our little town of Camp Verde. Down there by the river it's easy to imagine we don't live in the desert, but there's no denying it from up here!

Stuffed bell peppers - Lovely, but no...

2011-01-16T19:24:00.000-08:00

Yum. Don't these look yummy? Peppers stuffed with ground turkey, spices, rice, onions, and topped with a bit of cheese? Actually, they were pretty bland. I've got the presentation down; I just need to work on the taste.

Me...

2011-01-05T18:27:00.001-08:00

...this morning, at the beginning of what turned out to be a long, hectic, marginally productive day at work. I foresee a lot of days like this in the next couple of months, as I try to get some big, high priority, planning projects done. I'll definitely be ready for vacation in March, and a nice busy fire season out of the office this summer!

January Garden Dreams...

2011-01-03T18:27:00.000-08:00

Today I received the email confirmation that my seed order for the vegetable garden has been shipped. As cold as it is outside today, it's hard to get excited about those little packets coming in the mail! Gardening season seems eons away. But I imagine in just a few months we'll find out if the all the wheelbarrow loads of dirt and compost that we scavenged and hauled from hither and thither will support plant life.

January 2nd, 2011

2011-01-03T10:26:00.001-08:00

Whoo! We're having a cold spell. My sister Lisa in Flagstaff was dealing with frozen pipes. It was even cold down in the Verde. The snow we received Thursday, Dec. 30th is still in the yard, and even two of our outside hose bibs froze. It doesn't often get this cold in the Verde, much less stay this cold. It did make for a nice wintry view of Squaw Peak out our back window. The pine tree in the neighbors' yard and the snow on the mountain give the illusion that we still live in the high country instead of down in the desert. But nlike our old cabin in Kachina Village, at 7,000 feet, this house lies at 3,160 feet, and the summit of Squaw Peak is only at 6,525 feet.

We did some housekeeping in the morning, and my vanity looked all fresh and clean. I just love it. So much of our house is decorated with comfortable, functional, gender neutral things, that fit both George's taste and mine, but I love this little feminine corner of the bedroom, and our bath, pictured yesterday - all silver and white and girly.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T16:14:00.000-08:00

So I'm back to posting, as least for a bit. There's a scrapbooking challenge that comes up at this time of year, to take a picture a day for a whole year. George thinks that's a little ambitious (and he's probably right), but that a picture a day for a month might be doable. So I'm going to give it a go for the month of January, and post the pictures here! Wish me luck!

What caught my eye today is the pot of narcissus on the vanity in our bath that just developed its first flower bud. Nice to start the year with a thing of beauty!