Celebrations

PARTY PEOPLE: It's so nice to be sharing news of get togethers. A year ago, that was pretty much a complete no go 'thanks' to COVID.

Friday evening we ended up having a dinner party on rather short notice. It just happened to work out that various family members were in town at the same time, so we decided to have a get together here. As a bonus, it is just a few days until my dad's 80th birthday, so we decided to celebrate that. The balloons helped make it more festive. 

I thought some flowers were in order, as well, so I wandered out into the yard to see what nature offered up. I wound up with a big, eclectic bouquet. 

For dinner, I made about 10 pounds of potato salad, and we sous vide 14 steaks.

                                               

We didn't have time to bake any thing special, and it was hot out, so I ordered an ice cream cake from Ben & Jerry's. It was a hit!

Of course, we can't forget that the highly contagious Delta strain of COVID-19 is very real, so we were mindful of safety. Everyone in attendance was fully vaccinated, and we spent most of our time outside.

On Saturday, Christian headed down to Central Oregon for the wedding of a family friend. He carried four pizza boxes full of cookies Annabelle and I made for the occasion. 

The bride and groom are both musicians, so many of the cookies represented that fact. 

We even made a couple of cookies with the logos of taverns where they regularly perform.

TRIVIAL: Recently, the Seattle Times asked mayoral candidates some Seattle-centric questions to test how well they know the Emerald City. The Times also shared that test with readers. I scored a 9 out of 10, not bad for a non-native, I think. If you're so inclined, you can take it here: 

 https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/think-you-know-seattle-take-this-quiz-then-watch-the-mayoral-candidates-answer-the-same-questions/

DELAYED: The first headline I read on Friday morning was that the International Space Station was 'out of control.'

Well, that will quickly clear the sleep from one's eyes.

Turns out there was a major snafu with the new Roscosmos' multipurpose laboratory module Nauka  that had recently arrived on site. After it docked with the ISS, space station cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov prepared to open the hatch to the new module. During that process, Nauka's thrusters fired "inavertently and unexpectedly," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during a live broadcast of the docking on NASA TV. This moved the station 45 degrees out of attitude - kind of a big deal.

Fortunately, the ISS was able to get itself back into the proper orientation and orbit. However, the trouble delayed the launch of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft to the ISS for a few days, until Tuesday (Aug. 3). The Aug. 3 liftoff is scheduled to take place at 10:20 a.m. Pacific time. You can watch coverage on the NASA app, on NASA TV, or on their website: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

In the meantime, here's a preview of the mission.

Mixed Bag

SKATER CAKE: Last Saturday was all about Teen Feed. Sunday was all about Birthday Dreams, as we had a cake to deliver on Monday. The cake was for an 18-year-old boy who liked to skateboard. We went online to find some inspiration and found a cake we liked that had a silhouette of a skater on a ramp, and graffiti like letters for the name and age, so we went with that. 

We made gumpaste by adding tylose to our homemade marshmallow fondant. Annabelle carefully traced a silhouette I found online, and cut out the skater. The tylose made the fondant dry stiff enough so that it would be able to stand. (There is a post running down the back side of his leading leg into the cake to help hold it upright.)

She used her airbrush to paint the letters. (The birthday boy's name is changed in the photo to protect his anonymity.)

The ramp is a big Rice Krispies treat covered in buttercream and fondant. He requested a vanilla cake with vanilla icing. We did add some blue sprinkles in the filling, though (blue is his favorite color).

We hope he liked his cake!

THE OLD BALL GAME: Tuesday night we took advantage of great ticket offer (only $18 for a seat on the lower level!) and went to the Mariners' game. 

It was a beautiful night at the ballpark.

I couldn't help but notice this couple's jerseys - Griffey and Martinez, the two greatest players in the history of the franchise.

CJ was working the game, of course. He was able to join us for his half hour break, which was nice.

Unfortunately, the Mariners didn't win. The Houston Astros are tough to beat - so much power at the plate from top to bottom in their lineup.

PRODUCING: Our trio of sunflowers continue to impress. This one is our tallest, at about 5 feet. I'm always kind of amazed by sunflowers and how their single, rather spindly stem can support their weight.

Some neighbors gave us some zucchini. Annabelle use a handy tool to turn it into spaghetti noodles for dinner Tuesday night.

PRE LAUNCH: An email from NASA invited us to be their virtual guests for the launch of the 16th Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply Services Mission Launch.

Northrop Grumman is targeting liftoff of its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft for no earlier than 5:56 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 10. These launches are always a little different to watch, as the rockets rise from Pad-0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island.

Onboard Cygnus will be a variety of research experiments, including a demo of 3D printing in space using a material simulating rock and soil found on places such as the Moon. Also on board will be Blob, a European Space Agency investigation, which will allow students to see how slime molds’ behavior is affected by microgravity.

Space fans can participate virtually by registering online. Those who register will receive mission updates, interactive opportunities, and a stamp for your NASA virtual passport following launch. 

Smells like Bacon

FEEDING TEENS: This past weekend included the fourth Saturday of the month, so that meant Teen Feed time for us. 

This month's menu was a first for us:  big, beautiful BLTs (as well as some BELTs and TLTs) - more on that later.  

Various people sponsored the bacon, and one of the team turned tempeh into beautiful bacon-substitute strips for our vegan and vegetarian guests.  

We had beautiful "artisan" Romaine lettuce donated - it was perfect on the sandwiches, and the family did a great job prepping it into individual 'leaflets' ahead of time. Three people donated 10 tomatoes apiece. They were SO big and beautiful and bright red. 

Another friend donated six dozen eggs, which Kennedy fried up like a pro. The eggs boosted the calories and protein of the main entree.  

Another  friend brought some lovely avocado slices that we added to vegan guests' sandwiches. 

Others donated dozens of big sandwich rolls. Those helped make the sandwiches super substantial. 

The sides were something else! An array of astounding pasta salads (and some potato salad to boot)! Kennedy made a great Greek chicken pasta salad. 

We also had some sweet treats. My friend Ana made the prettiest fresh fruit cups. Guests gobbled those up! 

A couple of other people provided ice cream treats for the crowd. 

A mother-daughter team were the evening's sandwich artists. They assembled those things like seasoned pros. The teenaged girl made wrapping the sandwiches look easy. It is not. I tried to wrap a few after they left, and the fillings basically EXPLODED all over the counter. It was humbling.

The meal service was not without its challenges, however. When we 'cooked up' the idea of BLTs for the meal, I thought, "That will be easy! We can just par cook the bacon at home ahead of time, and do a quick heat up on site." The second half of that equation played out perfectly. The pre-cooking part? In case you're wondering, it takes about 6.25 hours to carefully par-bake 30 pounds of bacon two cookie sheets at a time. You can imagine how our house smelled on Saturday, and our neighbors probably think we're (more) nuts. 

That said, it was *totally* worth it! There were rave reviews from dinner guests and Teen Feed staff. My favorite quote of the night from one appreciative diner was, "That sandwich looks hella bomb!" Another teen declared, "That was a great sandwich - restaurant quality!"

All in all, we pumped out 40 sandwiches for the first service, and packed up another 40 for the Roots shelter, plus the abundance of sides and desserts. It was a great team effort!

POST EMAILS GOING AWAY:  Blogger has informed me (and others, I'm sure), that their "FollowByEmail" widget (Feedburner) is going away. This tool allowed people to subscribe to this blog and get email updates when there is a post. 

For whatever reason, they're taking that tool away in August (they didn't say what day). So, if you have been following the blog via reminder emails, sorry. :( You're going to have to come straight to the website to see if there's a new post. Alternatively, you could email me and let me know if you want me to send you an email when there's a new post. I could try to remember to do that. :)

Food and Fun

 

FANCY CAMPING:  Last week Christian and Annabelle headed down to Cottage Grove, Oregon, for a family camp out. (CJ had to work.) Annabelle was only able to stay for two nights due to her work schedule. She flew home from Eugene on Tuesday evening. Christian came home on Friday. It sounds like they had a nice time and that it was lots of fun. It was extra special because there was no annual trip last year due to darn COVID-19.

One night at camp, Christian managed to make 34 steaks for dinner. That's a lot of beef! We got the steaks ready ahead of time, here at home. We seasoned them and then vacuum packed them. He cooked them in a big brewing bucket using our sous vide. It's such an easy way to cook steak to a perfect 132 degrees (medium rare). Then he flash seared them on each side. Yum! He also made a green bean salad for the campers. The kids and I washed and cut the beans and I gave them a quick, short boil. Then they were combined with grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, feta cheese and a Greek dressing. A healthy, summery salad. He reports the dinner was a big hit. Kudos to him for pulling that off! 

How did it get to the be back half of July already? Time is flying by, and for a lot of it, I'm behind the wheel of a car, driving CJ and Annabelle to and from work. I guess I didn't quite realize how time consuming that would be. There have been many days where I've spent more than two hours driving them around. But that's OK. It's great that they are each experiencing their first summer jobs.

Annabelle received her first paycheck recently. That was a memorable moment. 

MEGA MESS: While Christian was camping, I took on the front yard. Well, not the whole yard, but the really big planting bed that stretches from our front door down to the street. In the photo below, only about 1/4 of the garden is showing. 

I was on a mission to pull out hundreds and hundreds of daisies. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a daisy hater, but they had completely taken over the space. I didn't learn until recently that perennial daisies have a fibrous root systems that continue to grow for years, even as newer roots develop.

Given that, I have no doubt that despite my pulling every last daisy out last week, they'll be back next year, at least to some degree. I mean, yes, I did dig and did pull up as much of their roots as I could, but there are still plenty more in the ground, I have no doubt.

In the end, I filled eight 30-gallon yard debris bags. That's a lot of dead daisies. 

PAINTING PROJECT: This last Saturday was our neighborhood block party. We ended up putting in a lot of hours to help make it happen, hauling tables and chairs, cups and condiments, plates and napkins, and providing all of the burgers and hot dogs and dozens of buns. 

Oh, and we made cookies. I decided to go with a Seattle sports team theme. So we made Kraken, Sonics, Seahawks, Storm, Mariners, Sounders, and Huskies cookies. 

It was a ton of work, but very appreciated. 

Below is a work-in-progress shot, including moose who need eyes and detail work, some blank slates, and the Sounders cookies Annabelle painted. 

I really loved the Kraken cookies (the big S and anchor) and the Seahawks' eye that Annabelle painted.

There was one woman at the party who came up to me and said, "I was walking with a friend today and I told her I had to cut it short, because I had a block party to go to and there are these people who bring cookies." 

That made me chuckle. 

Space and Daisies

SUN TIMES: This week shall be declared The War of the Daisies. There are hundreds and hundreds of them lining our driveway and  beyond. When we first moved in - four years ago this week - the daisies popping up here and there in mid summer were a nice surprise.

Now, they basically have overtaken the whole front planting bed, from street to front door, and some of them - in fact, most of them -  simply have to go. The photo above is just a four foot swath of what is about 40 feet of driveway to door daisies, plus the depth of the bed from the driveway to the front yard retaining wall or our front door ranges from three to about 15-feet. 

If you do a little Googling you find out that daisies have a fibrous root system. Basically, they grow like grass. To quote one site, "...  perennials have roots that continue to grow for years, even as newer roots develop."

Super.

For the past three days, I've spent a couple of hours or more a day battling the daisy invaders. 

All the while, I can't help but wonder if all my sweaty efforts will seem for naught next spring, when those fibrous roots start ramping up again. I mean, sure, I'm digging like crazy and working SUPER hard to get as much/many of the roots I can, but the network is ridiculous. I feel like I'm getting *maybe* 50 percent.  Time will tell. 

In happier garden news, we have a 4-plus foot sunflower about to come to fruition. 

                                  

And a wee little sunflower planted from a seed has already blossomed for us.

SO SPACED OUT: We made sure to tune in early Sunday morning for the manned flight of Spaceship Two, with Virgin Galatic's Richard Branson on board. 

Branson has been trying to get to space for what feels like decades. With the successful flight of SpaceShip Two, Virgin Galactic has finally made a giant leap toward commercial suborbital spaceflight. 

This flight was nearly two-decades in the making. It was 2004 when Richard Branson first announced Virgin Galactic.

Branson was joined by three crewmates and two pilots for the historic flight, dubbed Unity 22, which started when SpaceShip Two was carried by Virgin Galactic's enormous plane VMS Eve. This mission was the 22nd flight of Unity, but only the craft's fourth launch to the edge of space. 

The take off and landing were at the company's homeport of Spaceport America near Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The craft flew to an altitude above 50 miles (80 km), which NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. military officially classify as space. Given that, each person on board earned "astronaut wings." 

You can watch a reply of CNBC's coverage of the event here:

Virgin Galactic already has a roster of future customers, many of whom have already reserved trips to space at $250,000 a seat. Paid passenger flights are expected to commence in 2022, after a few more test flights.

If you want to hop on board but dropping a quarter million dollars isn't in the cards for you, consider entering a contest to win a seat on an upcoming mission (deadline to enter is August 31, 2021). Link here: https://www.omaze.com/products/virgin-galactic-2021

Meanwhile, Boeing's Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) is taking off soon. Scheduled to lift off on  Friday, July 30 from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:53 a.m. West Coast (US) time, Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 is the CST-100 Starliner’s second uncrewed flight test. If all goes as planned, it will dock to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. 

The uncrewed mission will test the capabilities of Starliner and \ United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket from launch to docking to a return of the capsule to Earth in the desert of the western U.S.  While there won't be any humans on board, Rosie the Rocketeer, Boeing’s anthropometric test device, will be in the commander’s seat inside the Starliner for its second uncrewed Orbital Flight Test.

You can register online to follow along with the mission here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nasas-boeing-oft-2-launch-registration-159640257307?aff=invite

Home and Garden

HOW GROWS IT?: It's been awhile since we've posted any campus garden photos. 

We have dozens of tiny green tomatoes on the vine and plenty of blossoms, as well. It will be interesting to see what they eventually produce. We kind of (well, entirely, actually) lost track of what's planted where, so it will all be a surprise in the end.

Yesterday Annabelle and I transplanted the pepper plants, which seem to be doing pretty darn well. Peppers don't usually really thrive in Seattle gardens, so we'll see what happens with these. 

We have one lone dahlia bush along the driveway. The early June heat was hard on it, but it has managed three OKish blossoms.

These popped up along the driveway, as well. I don't recall them from years past. Google Lens tells us it's Mirabilis jalapa, also known as "the marvel of Peru" or "four o'clock flower." The latter name is apt as its flowers usually open from late afternoon or at dusk (between 4 and 8 p.m.).

Wikipedia reports it's "the most commonly grown ornamental species of Mirabilis plant, and is available in a range of colours. Mirabilis in Latin means wonderful and Jalapa (or Xalapa) is the state capital of Veracruz in México."  

The plant arrived in Europe in the early 1500s. I have no idea how or when it wound up along our driveway.

And then out of nowhere this four- to five-foot tall giant goldenrod offered itself up this season. 

According to the website illinoiswildflowers.info, "This perennial wildflower is 3-7' tall and largely unbranched, except at the apex, where the flowering stalks occur."

According to the Heart of Uwchlan (a township in Pennsylvania) website, "Goldenrods are an important fall nectar source for many pollinators including the Monarch butterfly, so it is unfortunate that these fall blooming natives are mistakenly blamed for hay fever. The pollen of Goldenrods is transported by insects. The pollen is not airborne does not cause pollen related allergies. Goldenrods are a critical habitat species in the fall landscape. Include them in the garden and landscape for their important ecosystem services as well as their glowing beauty!"

So, I guess we'll let the volunteer goldenrod stay.

We brought some of the outdoors indoors in the form of daises, of which we have hundreds.

They seem just perfect for my VW convertible planter.

ON THE MOVE: Yesterday when I was out watering, I noticed a *lot* of activity around one of our hives. Eventually, the bees started flying in a familiar tornado like cloud, and I knew they were swarming. Our westernmost hive is overpopulated, so the queen and hundreds of her minions took off, looking for more space.

Fortunately, they didn't go far. They would up clumping in one of our umbrella trees. 

Christian rigged up a way to try to get them into a box. The trick is you have to get the queen, so that the rest of the swarm follows. He tried yesterday afternoon, but apparently didn't get the queen, because the bees in the box returned to the tree. He tried again this morning, and the bees seem to be streaming into the box, so it seems like he captured the queen this time. Now, we need to get them into a new hive.

NICE BUNS: Yesterday we had company over for dinner on short notice, so we went with a super easy menu, burgers and brats. 

They were kind enough to bring the meat, so we made a big ol' batch of potato salad and Annabelle made some homemade hamburger buns.

She found a recipe online that promised it was simple and would take only 40 minutes.

We topped some of the dough balls with black sesame seed furikake, and others with Maldon salt.

They looked terrific fresh out of the oven. I didn't eat any, but others report they were great.

I found this video from the Guenther Bakery in Belgium about how they make 1.5 million (!) buns a day.