Magic garden and a paint job

What happened to "dinner for two?" 
If you have been wondering if I fell of the edge of the world -  I am still there!

Sure, I am still doing the daily cooking, otherwise we would be starved by know, but I was weary to continue writing about it.
After a year about blogging about our dinners I begun to run out of new dishes and, I thought it only would become repetitive and dull to write about  meals that were written about already? So, there you go.
But, I was kind of busy around the house and garden though.
While fall is approaching fast and all the projects are about to wind down I at least want to document what happened to my two "magic square" garden patches and what happened on the house renovation front.
Here are some shots, before and after, to prove.

my garden squares in early June

same squares a month later

all is so tall that I have to take a photo from a distance
Lots of peas, tomatoes, corn, broccoli and more.

The garden has been so much pleasure. What is called " the magic square gardening" in one of my garden books proved to be just like that: magic.
Except from the occasional watering job I left nature do all the work. Weeding was very little to do. It is not worth mentioning.
It was such and easy thing that I am inclined to expand my squares from 2 to 4 for the season to come.

The paint job was of course more work, with all the scraping, priming and painting.
But we cannot leave the house part red, part yellow, can we?

East side of the house in August 2009

and August 2012

whasp alarm!

If you now wonder why the top of the gavel isn't finished there are two reasons to it.
1.There is a wasps nest in the left corner of the house and, 
2. I need to climb onto ladders to reach the top part, and that I am not so fond of. 
A scaffold would be the better thing to have. 
And here comes my hubby into focus for help, but - he is too busy with his new sightseeing business. 

North view of the house, August 2009

view in August 2012, just one part left to paint

Well, it is not the end of the business, but I have to do it the British way: "wait and have a cup of tea" and enjoy my garden.:)

Filled Pork Roast

All this working in and around the house made us hungry.
The other day there was a filed roast on one of the blogs and I thought we should try something like this today.
J.P. bought a 2 pound pork roast and I cut it accordingly so that I became a flat piece of meat.
I used garlic salt and pepper on the meat surface before I layered the thawed spinach, some small garlic pieces and shredded mozzarella cheese on to the top and sprinkle herbs over the mixture

Filled roast, spinach, mushrooms and potatoes

The next step is to roll the meat up (like a cake) and bind it with cotton household twine. The whole thing has to cook in the baking oven with a cover for about 60 minutes and additional without cover for 30 minutes.  The fluid which cooked out of the meat was an excellent start for a sauce.
I could use up a whole package of frozen spinach in the roast. The rest was worked into the side dish. Sautéed mushrooms, onion and spinach.
Ingredients:
1 pork roast
1 small pc of frozen spinach, thawed, drained
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 garlic, clove, minced
1 tsp rosemary, dried, crushed
1 tsp italian herbs mixture, dried, crushed
garlic salt, pepper to taste
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375 F.
Cut the roast so that it becomes a big piece of flat meat. Season with garlic salt. Layer spinach and mozzarella cheese on top and sprinkle with garlic bits ( we like rather less than more.) Top with dried herbs.

Roll the meat, beginning at one end, into a tight roll and tie household twine around so that it stays in shape. Season the surface with garlic salt.

Slightly oil the bottom of a oven-proved dish and put the roast into it. Cover and cook for an hour. Remove the cover and cook for another 30 minutes.
While the roast is baking for the last 30 minutes prepare the side dish.
1 onion
5 mushrooms
rest of spinach

Slice onion and mushrooms and sauté in 1 tbls oil and 1 tsp butter. Add the spinach and simmer until the roast is done. Season with salt and pepper.
Take the roast out of the dish and thicken the stock with 1 tbls starch.

Before slicing the meat carefully remove the household twine.
Enjoy!

Chicken on a bed of spinach

What I like with this kind of work. It shows. You can see what you have done.
Very satisfying.

Before and after (per today)

Did finish the walls the hallway walls and cleaning the stairs off paint that the former house owner left behind. What is still to do: sanding the floors and getting the mouldings on, ceiling and changing the light fixture. With J.P. busy preparing for his new job I guess he won't have the time to do it all before our guest from Norway arrive.

I would rather stop now, get ready for the guests and do the rest later in in the fall.
We will see what happens.
There wasn't going on much in the kitchen corner. Not that we starved, but nothing to write about.
Today, though we shall have baked chicken on spinach.
Ingredients:
1 pk frozen spinach, thawed, drained
 1/4 cup chicken broth or vegetable stock
 2 chicken breast halves, boneless, sliced
 Worcester sauce
 salt, pepper
 1 large tomato, diced or 1 small can diced tomatoes
 2 green onions, with green, sliced
 1/2 cup Feta cheese (optional, I happened to have a rest goat cheese)

Instructions:
Heat oven to 350°. Put spinach in the baking dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add chicken broth. Sprinkle chicken with seasoning blend, salt, and pepper; arrange over the spinach. Sprinkle with the diced tomato and green onion. Crumble the cheese over the whole, cover the baking dish with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake for 30  minutes longer, or until chicken is cooked through.

Served with boiled potatoes.

Now I have to get out and give Molly a bath. She rolled herself in something fishy. Yakk!

Just a grey day

Done with the Queen's Jubilee I went on to see if I could get a glimps of the Venus traversing the sun.
That was "nixed". No sun, just a heavy cloud cover. Now I will have to wait until 2117 before it happens again! Uhg.

That was all of the sun we saw today...

What did I do else? Washed down the ceiling and walls to prepare for the painting job. The next thing will be to give the ceiling a new coat of paint.
Then I will move on to the walls.
Stripes or no stripes - that is the question.
Not really.
Hubby doesn't want to sleep in a striped bedroom. There is no question about that. End of discussion.
The good thing is that the small room will look good in white. That way I can change the curtains and bedding colours any time.

Not much more happened.
I had a nap in the afternoon. When I awoke J.P. had come back from shopping and a pizza was sizzling in the oven.
Easy dinner for me.