Sidetracked & Bushwhacked

We are sharing in the glory of Florence's magnolia. Everything is popping so early. I hope it stays warm so no buds suffer.

Yea the forsythia!

 Our own star magnolia is looking nice aswell.

The cottage is done! One last before and after because we love them so much.

New roof!

We are showing the place and should have a tenant in there very soon.

The toilet is in and the bathroom is done and looking great I think!

The porch area is totally winterized and can be used as a room and should be used as a room because the cottage is small.

Soooo... we decided to paint it to make it look like more of a room. 

The pool deck is a chapter all itself around here. We have put it off because there just isn't enough time!!! 

Buuuuut we were working on the cottage the other weekend and needed a break and all of  a sudden we are in the middle of these insane weeds and that's when we invented our gardening show "Sidetracked and Bushwhacked".

Sigh...

We buried our  power lines last summer and finally there was a clear shot of the view.

No good. No more.

Instead these weed trees shot up and spoiled  it again. But after this episode of Sidetracked and Bushwhacked that is no more.

Good.

For St. Paddy's day we decided to make shepherds pie. 

First I made the mashed potatoes

Then...

Saute 3 carrots in olive oil.

Add a chopped onion and some chopped cabbage

Add 1 lb of ground meat

add frozen peas and 1 tbsp of butter

Sprinkle over 2 tbsp of flour

add 2 tbsp of tomato paste

2 tbsp of worcestershire sauce

1 glass of red wine

1 cup of stock (I had nice homemade stock from a corned beef and cabbage cook)

Put the mixture in a oven safe pan and spoon the mashed potatoes over it. Brush an egg on the top and sprinkle parmesan over. Put it in the oven at 200C/400F for 20 minutes. I did about 5 minutes in the broiler at the end.

reel from Linda Kallerus on Vimeo.

I  have to take every opportunity to market myself and I took this week to cut a reel together. A reel is what cinematograhers have to showcase their work. So these are bits from everything I've shot. The Conservatory, Caligola, Buster, Flabulous, Mando Diao's Good Morning Herr Horst, Waltz of a Dream, Scotty Karate's Patchwork Romance and Fractures. I picked the song Bees by Caribou to set it all to and had a blast editing. OK. That's enough shameless promotion for one post!

Now we gear up for the arrival of the Swedes!!! They will be here in less than 2 weeks!!!!! Along with a couple of friends who are New York first timers! Can't wait!

On their last visit we went tubing with Meg in Phoenicia. Among MANY other things...

Backyard Explosion!

It's time to take this blog on the road again. I'm leaving for Sweden tonight and as much as I have time this blog will go from designing my dream house/cooking madness/garden porn to production journal during the shooting of a limited budget horror short film in Sweden. 

As my job in Mexico proved, filmmaking is pretty much universal but our cultural differences lend themselves to interesting and funny situations. Also I will be shooting which is still a novelty for me and I'm so ready to jump right in and create. Lovisa, the director and I see eye to eye on most things and have had a long relationship as friends, travel buddies and partners in film crime and I am super ecstatic for this opportunity to work together again. For those of you who haven't been to the Buster site (what?!) please visit cause this is what we do.

So the last post is about the yard. That decided to go crazy a few weeks ago. I think that you can literally sit and watch the knot weed grow. 

It's outrageous. But other things are growing too. This is last weekend.

And this is this weekend. With a new camera mind you, so they are looking extra FINE. Yes, I finally did it. I bought a 7D and now I fancy myself (even more of) a photographer. Who is available for your special occasions. Babies and pets and parties and you name its.

Little Hostas are thriving as well.

Inherited creeping Phlox that is getting bigger and better.

Happy happy Hydrageas. I fertilized them about a month ago and today I saw little bud clusters. Praying for big blue flowers!

The lovely dogwood tree.

Rhododendrons came into their own but the flowers only lasted about a week unfortunately. Will they bloom again? They are looking very healthy and are sprouting new leaves like crazy though.

The first Azalea to pop was the powder pink one.

Cheery cheeky pansies in a pot.

So this guy still hasn't found his way home. I think he may have moved in for good. Is anybody missing a rooster?

My cousin Åsa makes these incredible cakes and pastries (her blog here) and on her page I found a link to the ultimate pastry porn blog. Linda writes in Swedish and English and if you speak neither you can just enjoy the photos. Most of her stuff is way too advanced for me, but there was a recipe for caramel that I remember from being a kid and making Christmas candy. We tossed some together last weekend just to drown our ice cream in. Super yums.

Boil 2 deciliters of sugar until it becomes brown and bubbly. Be careful not to burn it, it will take on the taste immediately. Add 1 stick of butter cut into small pieces. Finally 150 milliliters of cream and stir until you have the perfect consistency.   

I've been obsessing about my black bean soup and decided to make that our last meal together in the house for about a month. I think it's the tastiest soup I have made so far. Buuut I always want to take the opportunity to try something new even if it's just a little side thingy and I decided on corn fritters.

They are tasty just the way they are but can stand to be more savory OR more sweet so it's what you're in the mood for.

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp. baking powder
1 can of corn

Drop spoonfuls in to hot oil and fry until done. 

The hummingbirds are back with a vengeance. We saw more dudes yesterday than we saw all of last summer. They are incredible to watch.

They don't take many breaks but we've seen a lot of them perch this weekend. I would be tired too if I flew all the way from Mexico on those tiny wings.

These photos are quite bad but they are hard little buggers to catch and I have all summer to get some good shots.

I will leave you with a house for sale. This one has a twist to it! I am linking you back to one of my earliest posts so you can read about our history with this absolute turkey!

Weston Road has finally been vacated and is going for $74,000. Here's the amazing listing! Look at the photos - these people left in the middle of the night. Notice the open drawers in the kitchen and one dish glove on the counter and one on the floor. The only details missing are some raccoons going through left over garbage and a tumble weed rolling across the floor. I love how they describe it as a "summer project". Oh boy, more like all year round for many years. I CAN vouch for the amazing property though. That is what we really fell in love with. But sometimes James and I look at each other and at our beautiful house and and say "Thank gawd. Thank somebody that we didn't buy that house."

Instead we bought 19 Maple Ave. I'm at the airport and I already miss it. But on to great things!

Let there be light! And soup.

I'm making a pit stop in Clintondale between random midwestern gigs. Cleveland was lovely. Worked on a commercial for a brand new hospital. I love shooting in hospitals because we can roll our gear everywhere and the elevators are BIG. We also tried the best of Cleveland dining and ate at Michael Symon's Lola's. Holy guacamole. Sam, Niki and I did it up with oysters, deep fried bone marrow and Asian style pork belly as appetizers. My entree was smoked Berkshire pork chops on top of cheesy polenta. The desert - mini donuts and cinnamon hot chocolate and mini french toast with bacon ice cream. Fun as a novelty but in the end, you got bacon and you got ice cream and they should never really be together. The rest of the meal - out-frikkin-standing. So everything that was made GOOD by fasting was made BAD by this meal. And it was worth every calorie.

Next week I head to Milwaukee with Lisa Rinzler to help shoot B roll for a new Alex Gibney documentary. I'm excited to be a part of this VERY important project.

My favorite thing to eat in Mexico was Sopa Azteca. Catering served it a couple of times and whenever we had dinner at our Zapatista coop this is what I ordered. Of course I had to learn how to make it! Turns out I needed some special ingredients but it also turns out I got a super special Mexican grocery near the apartment, Tehuitzingo. Most importantly - dried Guajillo chiles and Epazote leaves.

So with everything in  place I made yesterday my Sopa Azteca day.

I roasted 2 big tomatoes in the oven. Just made a little cross hatch on the bottom and poured some olive oil over them and put them in the oven for about 1/2 hour at 350 degrees. Meanwhile I chopped 1 small white onion and 2 garlic cloves and placed in the blender. I also softened 2 Guajillo chiles in warm water. Once they were soft I used scissors to open them up. Deseeded, deveined them, clipped them into small pieces and put in the blender. Once the tomatoes were nice and soft I took them out of the oven, peeled the skin off and deseeded them. They also go in the blender. I heated up 1 quart of chicken broth. I added a little broth to the blender so it would puree easier and the rest simmered in a separate saucepan. The puree then goes in a sauce pan along with 1 tbsp of corn oil and simmers for 15 minutes. After 15  minutes add the chicken broth and let it simmer for another 15 minutes.

During the 2nd 15 minutes I got my fixins together. There's fried tortilla strips, feta cheese (which should be Oaxacan cheese or queso fresco but a mild feta also works), fried Guajillo strips, crema, which is NOT sour cream, more like creme fraiche and avocado. Other possible fixins are shredded chicken or pork rinds.

I finished off the soup with salt to taste.

I wish I could have stored the flavor of my Chiapan Sopa Azteca experience and compared it to my own making but I think I got real close. Improvements would be fire roasted tomatoes and home made chicken broth.

While I was in Clevetown, our electrician Rene came in and hooked up the electricity in the pastry shop and bedroom. Yes we are sosososos close and it's looking oh so beautiful.

We finally have light by the little porch. In the  back is a little lamp in the box window. Cute cute and cute!

And by the new side entrance.

And this is one of the bathroom fixtures in place.

A test patch of Farrow and Ball's Citron. Very lovely indeed.

It's been a year now with this renovation. We are due for some reflections back in time I think. The J's (to whom we these days refer to as: REALLY?!) started gutting the pastry shop and the new bedroom around this time last year. Around the same time as we spotted our first Robin in the yard!

Last year we had no idea what was going to pop out of the ground come spring time. This time around it will be like seeing old friends. I'm just hoping everything survived the winter. It was the first one for our Hydrangeas, dappled willows and Rhododendrons. 

Our little pink Dogwood is already budding.

So is the Star Magnolia.

The daffodils are on time.

At least the Rhododendrons are looking healthy. 

I've been quiet about the birds lately but that doesn't mean they're not hanging around. We've been feeding them throughout the winter and they've stayed faithful to us. The other morning I saw 5 Lady Cardinals at one time.

There's still a little snow on the ground but it is disappearing quickly. We are very ready for spring. And for our GREEN HOUSE!