Weekending 8/8/22

 Hello Friends,

How are you this Monday morning?  And, how was your weekend?  My weekend was nice, filled with many good things.  My first conference call last Friday morning was cancelled and the second one went faster than anticipated, so that was a nice start to the weekend.  Then Saturday morning I met up with Dee for some chatter, knitting and sipping of coffee.  That always does my soul good.

What else?  I decided to harvest the eggplants.  Our plants were laden with fruit and the leaves had become spotted with some kind of fungus or mold.

There are 15 eggplants here!  Yes, some are small, but they will be so good sliced, broiled or grilled and then put on pizza!

Then I was telling Katie that I thought it was interesting that she, in New Hampshire, has a blooming hibiscus and that I, in Pennsylvania, do not...that ours was only budded.  Well, I was wrong.  Fletch told me it was blooming.  I had missed it because the bloom was hiding behind our fig!

What a gorgeous color!  So rich and deep.  There are more buds ready to open.

We also discovered that we have a resident frog by our water feature.  Such a little guy!

Here's hoping that Mabel does not discover him/her.  Froggy though is quite adept at hiding in the shadows and he/she is quite a good jumper and very, very fast.

Finally, it's been hot as blazes here (again) and what did I do?  I made soup yesterday for dinner!  Yup, I made soup on a day where the temp was easing up into the upper 90's.  I used the winter melon that Bonny and Zhongren had brought to us the other week.  Noodling around the Internet looking at various recipes for Winter Melon, I learned that the Chinese consider it to be a Yin Food meaning that it is good to combat the effects of heat and humidity.  It is also high in fiber and has been known to help lower blood sugar and cholesterol!  In my book, a super food.  By itself it is bland tasting, but it absorbs the flavor(s) of what is cooked with it.

Our version started with cooking the chunks of Winter Melon in water - simmering them until tender.  Then I added a large carton of veggie broth, a bunch of diced fresh ginger, several carrots cut up and a full container of sliced shitake mushrooms.  I also added about 1/2 Cup of diced ham that was left over from the other week.  We scattered cut up scallions over the tops of our bowls.  We loved the soup.  It was very delicious and quite satisfying.  We had some garlic bread to go with it.  There was enough left over that I put a container of it in the freezer for another meal down the road.

I think today is going to be another hot one.  We are having salmon for dinner and for a change I think I will poach it (and therefore avoid putting the oven on).  In a bit I'm heading to the office - I need to take care of some things early this week...no luxury of taking my time!  I'll stop at the library to drop of a couple of books on my way (more about them on Wednesday!).

Cheers to the week ahead - hoping it's a good one for all of us.