Wildflower

There is some sort of weed flowering outside of our house. It is pretty and kind of looks like a plant that would grow by the edge of water. I was trying to get a nice picture of it. I tried once but didn't get a good picture. So I tried a couple more times.  A friendly creature inserted himself into the last photo.

Camera Rebirth - Part II

Earlier this month, I wrote about pending (FREE) repairs to my Canon A75 camera in a blog post. I am happy to say, I received the camera back yesterday. As my camera died photos got progressively worse and worse. They went from clear and crisp to halfway clear, this picture shows how the problem started.

Then things got worse as shown here:

Then even worse:

Following this, the LCD Sensor finally died for good and there was only blackness. As I mentioned before, I loved the camera. So I was very excited to get it back. The following are a couple of pictures I took in my backyard today after the camera came back from Canon following repair.

What a difference, no? (I wish that were my yard, but it's not. It is a school yard. I took the picture because that darker clouded area to the right of the picture was giving off a lot of thunder but the sun was shining brightly where I was. I thought that Charlie Brown must be sitting somewhere under that cloud, melancholy as ever.)

Smoldering July

What a hot week it's been in Michigan with temperatures in the 90s and humidity up there as well. From what I can gather, the whole country is feeling the heat.

My brother and sister-in-law are in from L.A. and rented a small cottage on Wamplers Lake in Brooklyn, Michigan. The cottage sleeps six, but the lake site was perfect for my siblings, their children, and our parents to visit during the day. I have some adorable shots of my nieces and nephews, but I will not share those without their parent's approval. So, in the stead of those photos, I will share some shots of the great outdoors as taken around the cottage. I am linking this to A Southern Daydreamer's Outdoor Wednesday event.

 The view from shore.

The glory of the heavens.

Behind the Cottage.

An old abandoned dock also resided behind the cottage. In my opinion, this added visual interest.

Pasta Salad

My brother and his wife will be renting a cottage in Michigan over the next week, and my parents, two sisters, their spouses and kids, and me and my husband will all be converging to spend time with them. It is on an all sports lake, so they've rented a jet ski and boat as well. I'm pretty excited and have been busy preparing food to take out there tomorrow. The grape leaves were the start a couple days ago, today I made a cream cheese, sour cream, habanero,  and spring onion spread that will be put on tortillas, a pasta salad, a red velvet cake with blueberries on top. Next, I preparing a potato salad and a self-designed garbanzo/avacado/tomato salad. I'll leave a cucumber salad, hummus, and tzadziki for tomorrow.

In honor of Foodie Friday and Vegetarian Foodie Fridays, here's a picture of the pasta salad (the dressing is homemade). This time I put zucchini and summer squash in the salad, which is unusual, but I'm sure it will be good. One of the things I do that is a little different is that I like to put poppy seeds on my pasta salad because it seems to add visual interest.

Camera Rebirth

Years ago I got a Canon Powershot A75, and I LOVED it. It took most of the pictures I wanted it to take, even doing a halfway decent job at close-ups. But toward August of 2008, the display started to intermittently become problematic, showing lines across the digital display, eventually making things look like they were melting, and then not displaying anything (or taking pictures).

I called our local camera shop and found out that it would be more than $100 to fix. Since a new basic digital camera is hardly more than that price, I felt the best thing would be to buy a new camera, which we finally did last August. We purchased a Nikon CoolPix L20 to take on our honeymoon. It was great for that purpose and took lovely pictures of the scenery and of us. However, I've never been happy with it in my day to day life because I like to take pictures of animals, flora, fauna... With the Nikon I get a ton of blurry shots before I get a clear one.

I was bemoaning my situation the other day, and thought I would take another shot at figuring out whether the Canon was salvageable. While on the Canon website today, I found that there was a special notice with respect to the CCD image sensors in the Canon model I bought. Canon is replacing these sensors regardless of the warranty status of the camera, and is paying for shipping. This type of customer service is unheard of now-a-days. (Sometime let me tell you about my unsuccessful dialogue regarding a Sharp Microwave that quit working after one year. It runs, but won't heat anything probably because of a faulty magnetron , and I got no help from the folks at Sharp.) I will be giving Canon more of my business based on their courteous and responsible manner when faulty parts are involved. And, the ONE contact I had to make (not 5-6) to get resolution.

Grape Leaves

We haven't had an opportunity to go grocery shopping on a big trip in quite some time, so I've been eking out meals from the random sundries in the pantry. I have beans, rice, flour, but I've run out of pasta and bread so you see, the cupboard is not entirely bare, but it's on the way. When thinking about what I might still be able to make, I realized we also have grapevines growing along our back fence, and some type of wild mint mingling with our bushes. (AKA ingredients for vegetarian grape leaves!) So, armed with this knowledge I went in search of recipes. I didn't find one that sounded right so I just added what I thought would make sense. First I harvested the goods from outside.

 Can you see the mint hiding in the middle there?

Next I brought them in and cleaned the leaves off.

After washing the leaves and mint, I boiled some water, removed the pot from the heat and soaked the grape leaves in the hot water to soften. While the leaves soaked, I made some rice (about 2 c. cooked), and selected the healthy (unmolested by bugs or beasties) leaves from the stem and chopped them.

I pressed three cloves of garlic, added some olive oil, parsley, dill, vinegar, lemon juice, a small onion, some sea salt, fresh ground pepper and a dash of paprika to the rice.

And, I wound up with this:

I removed the grape leaves from the now fairly cool water using the stem, clipped each stem off and placed the leaf vein side up. I put a bit of the mixture onto each leaf and rolled it tight. I placed the finished grape leaves in a pan oiled with olive oil.

I added a little water, a little more olive oil, and squeezed a little more lemon over them. I cooked for about 1/2 hour at 300 degrees. I've packaged them away after drizzling them with a bit more olive oil for use within the next week.

 I had enough of the rice mixture left over to eat for dinner. It was surprised by how delicious it was. It tasted buttery, but there was not a stitch of butter in it, and hardly any oil either since most of it was added to the pan and finished grape leaves. The mint, onion, garlic, dill, parsley sure did their jobs. And then, halfway through my meal, and even though I've used the mint in my lemonade before, and checked before,  I freaked myself out and needed to make sure there was no poisonous mint that grows in Michigan. I couldn't find any reference to any mint being poisonous to humans, and I learned something. Did you know that mint stems are square?

Rednesday in Rimini

For our honeymoon, my beloved and I visited Italy, the land of lovers. We chose to bide our time slowly, to relax, to appreciate, rather than to rush, rush, rush (which is our normal modus operandi). Thus we ventured to a resort town named Rimini which is off the traditional beaten path for a non-Italian tourist. It was a fun city, that's for sure. This town is but 20 or so kilometers from San Marino, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, and is the birthplace of Fellini. We had a wonderful time at the beach, at the pubs, the clubs, at the sidewalk diners, and walking through the park that bisects the city. While in the park, not only did we see an arch from 27 a.d., built in honor of Agustus, but also a war memorial for Canada. Yep, Canada-we were surprised too. I'm posting this as a part of the It's a Very Cherry World's red themed event Rednesday.

How we wish we could return soon.