Metamorphosis

Friday, May 6, 2011

Friday Flowers & Rosemary Oil

We had a gray and rainy day today... While I'm grateful for the rain for our yard, I was also happy I had brought some of our flowers inside to brighten the day! Our gardenias have started blooming and they smell so incredibly good!

I love this photo of Daniel and me - we took it on another dreary and rainy day in Ireland a few years ago... What a great trip that was!!

My dear friend, Amy, posted the anti-mosquito rosemary oil recipe on her blog for me and for all of you who are plagued by those pesky little bugs. I will start some oil this weekend! Click here for the recipe! Thank you so much, Amy! If this works, you will have made my summer so much more bearable...

I hope you all had and still have a beautiful Friday!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Drawing Class - Latest Project

Pencil drawing
on 18 x 24 inch drawing paper

First of all, thank you for all you great comment on all the things to do with rosemary! I am particularly interested in Amy's (Such a Wondrous Place this Faerytale Space) recipe for a rosemary/patchouli oil that works to keep mosquitoes away... I could certainly use that here! I have asked her if she'd share and if she does, I'll let you know!

Well, today was drawing class and we had to hand in our still life value study. This project was quite difficult and required a lot of patience (you know how I do in that department...). I think it turned out pretty well and really looks like it has some depth to it.

Quite amazing actually! I'd just draw the values and shapes I saw and when I'd step back to look at it, it suddenly looked three-dimensional. I did have to rework (and rework) quite a few areas to get them to look right in relationship to each other. Altogether I spent about 12 hours on this, which means I am so ready to move on to a new project!

Next topic: perspective! And we'll be drawing outside, which will be nice!

Speaking of outside, the cool front has moved through, it's gorgeous outside and I have to go water the yard since the rain totally missed us! I hope all of you in the flooded regions are doing alright!

Wishing you a beautiful Friday!! (Oops! Wednesday, I mean!)

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

A Delicious Marinade

We have four huge rosemary bushes in the garden and they are thriving here! So every once in a while, Daniel has to cut them back and consequently we have rosemary all over the house. It smells so good!!

On Sunday, we decided to use some of it and grill some chicken. We made this delicious marinade from James McNair's Grill Cookbook. Many years ago, when we lived in California, we collected all of his cookbooks and we still use them all the time!

I thought you might enjoy the marinade recipe as well, which is great for chicken breasts or fish:

Herbed Olive Oil Marinade
from James McNair's Grill Cookbook

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice or white wine vinegar (I use a little more lemon juice, probably 1/4 cup)
1/4 cup minced fresh herbs such a s flat-leaf parsley, oregano, thyme, or rosemary, alone or in combination (I used rosemary and oregano this time around)
2 teaspoons minced or pressed garlic
salt
freshly ground black pepper
ground cayenne pepper (optional)

In a nonreactive bowl, combine all ingredients, including salt and peppers to taste. Blend well.

Makes about 1 1/4 cups.

****************

The smell of the marinade is heavenly and the taste of the grilled chicken was wonderful! I probably let it marinade for four hours or so, but I'm sure you could marinade it all day and it would be even better!

With the chicken, I made a salad and our favorite sweet potato fries. For those, I preheat the oven to 425℉, peel and then cut the sweet potatoes lengthwise into 8 pieces and toss those with some olive oil and salt and pepper (or some spice rub or paprika - whatever sounds good to you). I then bake them in a single layer for about 25 minutes, turning them once after 15 minutes. At the end I turn on the broiler for a couple of minutes to get them nice a crispy.

Delicious!!

P.S. If you have any great recipes for using rosemary, would you consider sharing them? We have so much of it and don't cook with it nearly enough...

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Something amazing happened...

... on this May Day, right after I took the previous photos. Daniel was sitting on the back porch, when suddenly one of the wrens was hopping around him, very agitated and screeching. Daniel thought he'd better see what was going on.

When he got to the front porch, he saw that the baby wrens were leaving the nest and that our very lazy cat, Ramses, was outside and taking an definite interest. So, we got the cat inside (and were so happy that Mama wren went and got Daniel's attention) and spent the next good bit of time watching something wonderful!

As the babies left the nest, Mama wren guided them to shrubs and bushes with a worm in her beak as an incentive.

She brought them by the side of our house and straight through the fence into our backyard, which apparently they view as safe (at this point, we confined both Winslow and Ramses to the house).

There, she proceeded to show them how to move between the slats of the fence.

All tired out, the babies settled down under a few ivy leaves.

And Mama wren sat, preened,

and sang her heart out. I think she was calling for her mate, who appeared at some point and helped with the herding of the babies. They would each get a worm, put it in one of the babies beaks, pull it out again and hop away for the babies to follow. Fascinating to watch!

They are ADORABLE!! And as they were hopping around and trying to jump and fly up onto the fence, we counted them. We thought there were three, then we saw another and yet another.