Rice Shaped Pasta in a Salad

We had a neighborhood BBQ a week ago Saturday and the following Tuesday I was wondering what I was going to do with the big package of mulit-colored bell peppers that I had purchased at Costco. I'd been planning on roasting them and having that as a side dish, but I ran out of time (bet that has never happened to you!) so there they were in the fridge taking up space and getting older.

I decided to roast them anyway and use them in a side dish for Tuesday dinner. A nice onion was still in the pantry, so I peeled that and added it, plus there were some mini carrots and some sugar snap peas from the veggie tray to add. Since I had some freshly picked garden zucchini, a couple of those went in, too.

 My favorite way to roast veggies is to remove all necessary seeds and cores and ends (for zucchini for example), cut them into bite sized pieces and shake them all together in a plastic bag with olive oil, salt and pepper. This time I used my counter top oven since it was a hot day and heating up the whole oven to roasting temperature would be insane. That meant that the roasted veggies went into two foil lined shallow pans to roast at 475 degrees F. I cooked them for 15 minutes, then switched pans top and bottom and rotated them, too. After another five minutes I used a pancake turner to turn the veggies over. Then it was just a matter of keeping an eye on them and removing them once they had browned on the edges and were soft.

So what did I do with them once they were cooled? Half went into a storage container for a later meal.

The other half went into a pasta salad made with cooked orzo (rice shaped pasta) with a citrus based dressing. I also added a diced Roma tomato and some chopped cucumber for crunch. It was delicious! The recipe was loosely based on one by The Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. I included the basil, but left out the feta and changed the veggies some. Delicious and a great way to include veggies in your meal!

I've been spending quite a bit of time in the garden and also in my art studio. The painting that I've been working on...a seascape...is almost done!  Maybe I'll get back to baking soon. No time for it at the moment.

Painting

Haven't been posting of late because I've been doing some art work...acrylic painting to be exact. It has been a long time since I've painted with acrylics (except for murals, but they also used wall paint) and I have been struggling trying to adjust to this different medium. Prior I was mostly painting with watercolors, where you go from light to dark. With acrylics it is the opposite...dark to light. There is also the issue of how the paints spread...or don't. In watercolor painting you add more water...easy. With acrylics apparently adding more water can make the paint tacky which is the opposite of what I was trying for. I took a class on Sunday at Riley Street and found out that there is a product which is used to thin the paint and make it easier to work. The Sennielier brand (and the class was taught with that brand - thank you Camille!) it's called 'binder' which is a strange term for something that helps loosen, but it works!

For quite a while I have been trying different things on a seascape that I'm painting for K. It's pretty large, with three canvas panels joined together for the painting, although they will be hung with a little space between them as far as I know. 

Nothing was working, which is unusual for me. I tried going to visit other artists (ArtTrails) which helped some. I tried viewing YouTube videos, which helped some. The class on Sunday was the best help. I'm truly grateful to other artist who share their expertise.

Below are some thumbnails size photos of the painting as it has been progressing since Sunday. Having fun now! I think I'm about half done. Will be posting some delicious food soon. I have made the food and have photos, but the paint is calling....

Busy Times

Not sure why I used this title, since most times seem to be busy times in my life, but lately has been busier than usual and looks to continue that way for a while. Although baking and cooking are always near the top of my list of passions (along with Sweetie, Kate and Pi), at this time of year the growing season starts taking up some of my time and thoughts. I have flats of cells of soil with tiny seedlings in the sunspace and more seeds to plant in others.

Not only is the ground saturated from all the rain, but the nights have been cold, so it may be another month before anything goes into the ground. During the next week or so I hope to do the annual check-up of the irrigation system with Sweetie so that I know where I can plant things once the soil is warm.

My involvement with the women's scholarship group P.E.O. continues to be complex and rewarding and even more time consuming (is that possible?) since I'm currently wearing three hats, one at the local level, one at the regional and one at the state level. At the state level we just awarded over $76,000 in post-secondary education scholarships for the 2017-2018 academic year, and that was just my committee! Pretty gratifying to be able to help women reach for their educational goals.

Travel and picnics start to become interesting now that the weather is nicer, and home project are also coming to the top of the list. Hope to be posting picnic-worthy recipes soon.

I finally have a studio to paint in and a painting started, plus the next one being planned in my head.

I'm the Kitchen of the Month for the Bread Baking Babes in March, so be sure to check back on the 16th for that post! Sweetie has a birthday coming up and my brother from Denver area is visiting California, so we hope to see him in the Sacramento area this coming weekend. With luck that will be when I bake the cake for the Cake Slice Bakers, which is revealed on the 20th.

Last weekend we visited Kate in the LA area and had a great time. It was a very short visit, but we got to meet her excellent neighbors and their friends, have some cocktails and BBQ, play with some dogs and a puppy. We visited the Manhattan Beach pier and had breakfast with Adam, Julia and the kids on Saturday. There was time to talk, hear about  jobs and, later, watch some videos showing the good that EcoMedia does in the world, discover a new TV series, learn about Uber Eats, have a little birthday celebration with a tiny cake I brought along (I was too sick on my real birthday to even think about cake!), and we even helped hang some art. Good times!

So, as you can see, nothing earth shattering in all this busyness, but no time to get bored, either.

Hope that your days are filled with your own busy times, as long as those times are good times.

Mural

The kitchen remodel is coming along. The old front hall will become my baking center in less than a week! Because I have decided to get rid of grout as much as possible in this house, I was looking for another treatment than tile for the back splash between the counter material and the upper cabinet. A few months ago I began thinking about a mural. This past week I actually painted a mural, sort of a bird's eye view of the bay area water and hills, with some vineyards and golden summer fields, too.

I've never painted a mural, so I was really anxious about starting. I decided to do it in pieces, starting with a sketch, using a white paint pen over the pumpkin butter wall color. After that I used some wall paint samples that didn't work out, one in a very pale gold and one in a khaki color, to paint in the general design...sort of creating a canvas. The photo at the start of the post shows how that worked out.

The following day I used more paint samples and some acrylic paints that were a gift from Straight Shooter. This allowed me to put some color on those hills and in the sky and on the water, making them very much three dimensional.

Now I was feeling more confident, so the next day I added the golden fields, trees and shrubs near and far, other detail, depth, and even some washes of color.

The best part was later in the day when I was able to add the details to the fields and more shades of green to the trees, plus closer trees on the left (below). That really made it work for me. Sweetie suggested that I add a horizon line and he was right. The deeper gold out past the hills, on the left, works very well. The whole painting is about 48 inches wide by 20 inches tall. There is a window just to the left, so it gets light from that side. That's why I had the light in the painting coming mostly from the left. The very upper and very lower sections will be covered by cabinets and counter top material, so not much work needed to happen there.

Today I deepened some color, added a wash of blue at the top of the hills and over the right side to suggest distance, then used tiny dots of yellow and white paint to suggest flowers in the nearest field. No photo of that yet, but when the cabinets are installed, I'll take a photo that shows how it all turned out and share it with you.

It has been a lot of fun learning how to get the effects I want and letting the paint take over some of the time, too, and just enjoying the unexpected results. My experience doing watercolor really helped, and my love of color and skill with color mixing helped, too. I'm often glad that I have creative talents, but today I really felt like an artist when I saw the finished mural. The cabinets arrive next week and then I'll be able to see how it all fits together. Best of all, I can enjoy looking at it while I bake once everything is finished!