Saturday, February 6, 2016

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  On Thursday afternoon, we made a mess of roasted fresh veggies (and, in my case, a couple of Trader Joe's chicken sausages).  My pig bowl is in the photo at right, but in my defense, Debbie's was about the same size :)

What's in that lovely looking thing?  Well, there are Brussels sprouts, asparagus, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and Shiitake mushrooms.  All of those, after chopping, we threw into a big plastic bag along with a little olive oil, roasted garlic salt, and fresh ground pepper.  Shake, spread on a foil-lined cookie sheet, and roast at 350°F until the veggies are done.  How long it takes is mainly a function of how big the chunks are; ours took about an hour.

Deeeeeelicious!

Oh, and the glass full of milk is, of course, our wonderful Rosehill Dairy Creamline milk.  My brother Scott is now a fellow lacaholic...

Speaking of that milk...  Debbie and I are going to try making our own mozzarella cheese (using that milk!) this afternoon.  We got us a little cheese-making kit after reading how easy it is.  We'll see if that was just cheese propaganda, or if it's true :)  We're going to have the cheese on toasted black pepper Parmesan bread (from Crumb Brothers), with some more of those roasted veggies...

Yesterday we visited a property in south Hyrum, close to our home, on behalf of our friend Kevin P.  He and his wife, after visiting us, decided that they'd like to live up here someday as well.  They've had a sort of background search for a place ever since they visited, and this property popped up in the search.  Mainly I've got it here because I used that occasion to take the first panoramic photo I've made with in iPhone 6:


That photo encompasses about 220° of the view from where I was standing.  I'm pretty impressed with the job the camera did of stitching all that together, automatically.  The only thing I did to this photo was to color-correct it (I've noticed the iPhone takes distinctly bluish photos in snow scenes).  Otherwise, it's just like it was straight out of the camera.

A couple of years ago, a married couple bought the vacant lot right next to my mom's house, near Charlottesville, Virginia.  We've never met them in person, but right after they bought it they managed to start being obnoxious, via letters demanding all sorts of compensation for all sorts of offenses, both imagined and real.  We accommodated where it was the right thing to do, and refused where it wasn't, and they remained steadfastly obnoxious.  My mom has (rightly) been dreading the day they moved into the house they were planning to build there.  Well, a few days ago a realtor posted a sign by the front of that lot – it was for sale.  I contacted that realtor, found out that the asking price was basically a fire sale price (the obnoxious couple needed the money to fund construction on another property they bought), so I put an offer in on it, at a very attractive (to me) price.  They accepted.  Now I have to figure out what to do with two acres of Virginia forest, with one edge along a pond...

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