Watercress and Blue Cheese Pesto

Seriously, you can make a pesto out of anything green. Just had some nuts, garlic, olive oil, and cheese. I had mezzaluna pasta stuffed with blue cheese so I wanted to make a complimentary pesto. Two minutes later, it was ready:

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of watercress
• 1 oz blue cheese
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 oz walnuts
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced

Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet for about 3-4 minutes. Chop finely and add to a bowl. Cut off the stem-y part of the watercress and chop the rest up. Add the watercress, blue cheese, minced garlic, and olive oil to the walnuts. Mix to create a paste, adding more olive oil as necessary. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Extra pesto can be frozen.

Guacamole Cheddar Bacon Sandwiches

I started off planning to make avocado BLTs and then got side-tracked when I spotted the colby jack cheese in the fridge. The acid and flavors of the guacamole provide a lovely counterpoint to the richness of the avocado and cheese. I like to saute my sandwiches in mayonnaise (yup, you read that right). Mayo gives sandwiches a beautiful golden crust.

I order avocados from "Avocado Box" so I routinely have a beautiful selection of delicious avocados that need to be eaten. It's a pleasure finding recipes for them. I find a plain avocado makes a great substitute for mayonnaise in a lot of sandwiches (like that BLT I had been planning to make!).







Ingredients - Serves 2

• 4 pieces of thick bread
• 2 ounces of thinly sliced colby jack (or any cheddar) cheese
• 3-4 pieces of thick cut bacon
• 1 tbl of mayonnaise

Guacamole

• 1 avocado
• 2 tsp of sea salt
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 2 tbl of lime juice
• A small bunch of cilantro, leaves chopped (optional)
• 1/2 serrano pepper, minced (optional)

Start cooking your bacon. Place bacon in a cold skillet, heat on medium, and flip routinely to cook evenly. Or cook however you prefer (I love baking bacon but microwaving works well, too). When finished, place on a paper towel to cool and then cut in half.

While the bacon sizzles, make your guacamole. Cube the avocado and place into a small bowl. Add salt, garlic, lime juice, and cilantro. Use a fork to mash the ingredients together.

Add a skim of mayonnaise to two slices of bread, flip over (you can place it on top of the other piece of bread so that the mayo doesn't get all over the counter), spread half of the guacamole on each slice, top each with 1 1/2 or 2 half-slices of bacon, and then add the cheese slices. Add mayo to the remaining two slices of bread and top the sandwich with them, mayo facing up.

Heat a skillet on medium and cook the sandwiches, flipping after about three minutes, when the bread is golden brown and crispy. Cut the sandwich in half and serve!

The cheese should be melty but if it isn't, a quick trick is to put the sandwich in the microwave for 15 seconds. Just enough to melt the cheese but not long enough to heat the rest of the ingredients or make the bread tough.

Ham and Endive Gratin

Ham and Endive Gratin was a common and very popular dish in our household during the winter months. Endives are plentiful in France and much easier to find than in the US so it was a warm and inexpensive mouth-pleaser! The challenges you will have making this dish in the US are finding endives of a decent size and good cooked ham. The ham used in France is called "jambon torchon"  - literally "dishtowel ham" because it's boiled while wrapped in a dish towel. In the US, this is usually called "boiled ham" and comes in, to be honest, rather unappetizing packages. Applegate Farms makes a pretty good uncured boiled ham although the slices are thin so you'll need to double them up. Your local deli might have a better selection. Our family served this without a sauce but I've seen it described frequently with a bechemel so I'm including that option here!




Ingredients - Serves 4

• 8 large endives (you can put two small ones together if necessary), cored
• 8 slices of boiled ham
• 8 oz of shredded swiss cheese

Optional Bechemel (white sauce)

• 2 tbl of unsalted butter
• 2 tbl of flour
• 1 cup of milk
• 1 cup of reserved endive cooking liquid.

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Heat a large pot of salted water to boiling. Add the endives and cook for 15 minutes. Lay the sliced ham out on a board. Drain the endives (reserving a cup of the cooking liquid if making a bechemel).

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Once the butter stops foaming, add the flour and whisk to combine. Let the flour cook until it's a dark golden color. Add the milk and endive cooking liquid in small batches and whisk between each addition to keep lumps from forming. The mixture will be fairly loose. Continue simmering and whisking occasionally for about 8-10 minutes until the sauce thickens. Season with salt and pepper.

Lay an endive in the middle of each slice of ham and roll it up, placing it in a casserole dish. If using a bechemel, pour over the 8 rolls. Cover the ham/endive rolls with the shredded swiss cheese and place in the oven for 30 minutes. Turn the oven to broil for an additional 4 minutes to brown the cheese.

Serve with crusty bread. The ham/endive rolls are hot and the middle retains the heat for some time! Take small bites to avoid burns!

DIY: "Hello" sign

I recently removed some house numbers from my vinyl siding and it left behind a bit of a sticky mess. I had to cover it up with something and was inspired by several "hello" signs I saw on Etsy. "Welcome" is a bit forward - not everyone who comes to my front door is necessarily welcome (take heed, solicitors) but "hello" seemed friendly and neutral enough.

I had planned on making my own rustic backboard but came across a pre-made one that was just the right size while browsing at Michaels. I found the "hello" at Hobby Lobby - it was already "finished" when I would have just preferred a plywood one but it was also the perfect size so... here they are.




I did a quick sand of the backing and then stained it two coats of Special Walnut followed by two coats of poly.

I debated on what color to paint the "hello" - bright yellow, white, or green. I decided on the same green that I had painted our front door - "Mountain Forest" by Behr.  I was concerned that the darker green might not stand out against the walnut stain so I painted two coats of white on first so that I could distress the letters afterward to help define the edges.  Three coats of green later and I started sanding down the edges. It turned out pretty well.

I attached the letters to the boards with liquid nails.

Now to attach the board to the house. I didn't want to permanently glue them to the vinyl in case the sign didn't weather well. I ended up using 3M Command Velcro Small Picture Hanging Strips. The wood letters were quite heavy so I over-compensated and used six. I attached them to the back of the board and pressed it against the house with maximum pressure for a minute. Then I closed my eyes and slowly let go... they held!!!

 Obligatory Setter photo.

DIY: Dog Feeder

In order to corral multiple dog dishes and keep them from moving around while the dogs ate, we've always put them in some sort of raised container, such as plant stands. Although effective, it didn't make for a very pretty solution. I sketched out this idea and then attempted to bring it to life. It's pretty much a long box with drawers and mid-century style legs.

To get the shape I used an IKEA Lack shelf that we had lying around and "skinned" it with plywood. Then I cut out four holes that would fit our existing dog bowls (and bought a few extra).

 
Then I gave everything a couple coats of Americana Decor's chalk paint. I made two custom mixtures, one green, one blue. I started with two layers of green, then added a layer of blue and distressed it so the green would show through. Then I finished it with two layers of tung oil.  The six legs I purchased from Home Depot and stained a light maple. They also were finished with tung oil.

I used pieces of trim pine from Michaels for the faux drawer fronts, stained them to match the legs and added library label holders as well as little brass knobs. I used wood glue to glue them to the front of the box and then attached all the legs.

And DONE!

Collections: Iris

Irises from my garden.

Mud Room and Laundry Room Remodel

Mudroom update. We started thinking about this remodel almost as soon as we moved in but it's taken over ten years to get it done. 

This the before and after of our mudroom, which is really just a long hallway out to the backyard. There were some unattractive home-built cabinets on the right wall before we ripped them out.

We took out the dim fluorescent ceiling light and replaced it with a standard CFL "nipple" light. We put in an IKEA pantry and base and wall cabinets with a new counter-top as well as putting in a small chest freezer. We put in a vinyl tile flooring. Everything was repainted and we recently added baseboards and board and batten on the left wall. The bottom of the door literally rotted out and collapsed from water collecting inside by the dog door. So we installed a top of the line vinyl door to let in more light, provide better insulation, and allow for the addition of a much larger, better sealed, pet door.

All the cabinets are from IKEA, top and bottom. The hardware is from Lowes. The cut-out in the lower cabinet is to store a litter box. The vinyl coating on the IKEA cabinets has made clean-up a breeze. Once we no longer need the litter box, we have a spare door to replace this one and we will install a bar sink. The wall was previously plumbed with a utility sink (with no shut-off valves - we installed shark-bites). 

The counter-top is a pre-cut length of Wilsonart laminate from Home Depot in "Typhoon Ice". It's gorgeous in person as well as in the photo.

The flooring is vinyl plank tile from Home Depot - Trafficmaster Ceramica in "Concrete". The larger rectangles had to be special ordered. The color is concrete and they are grouted in dark grey.

The backsplash is painted. I really wanted to install this beautiful 1" white marble tile that I'd fallen in love with at Home Depot but since we will be pulling off the counter-top to install a sink in the next few years, I decided to put in a temporary solution. I found a stencil about the same size as the tile and used it to paint a metallic backsplash on sheets of plywood. The sheets are pressure mounted between the top and bottom cabinets and will pop out easily when the time comes.

The area rug is a 12' runner from Rug Studio. A Safavieh Monaco. I decided on a polypropylene rug that could stand up to the mud and traffic from the dogs as they used the pet door.

I installed board and batten, using cheap pine trim and trellis and attached it to the wall with paneling nails. There's a small ledge with cove molding underneath. I wanted something fun and colorful for above the rail so I decided on wall paper. I found this quirky self-adhesive, removable wallpaper online. Not the easiest to install but I love it. The pattern is called "Forest Picnic" and is based off a design by Jim Flora.


























We have a substantial collar collection, custom-made by Lucky Fiona, and finding a way to store and display them has always been a challenge. Up until now, they were hanging from two 10' drapery rods. To try to keep them a little tidier, I devised these little collar storage boxes.  They are 14"x 14" boxes with glass doors from IKEA and the collars are held in place by hex-shaped plastic underwear drawer dividers!  Each box holds about 20 1 1/2" collars.

We're very pleased with how it all turned out.  We have a lot more storage and the new door and lighting really brighten everything up.  The door was installed by Improve-It Home Remodeling. The pet door is an extra-large Plexidor.

Here's a close-up of the painting on the wall called "Carter's Repose".

The laundry "room" was a faster and more straight-forward transformation. We ripped out the planked home-made cabinets above the existing washer and dryer, replaced them with IKEA cabinets, and installed a new light. Everything was painted a gorgeous dark teal (Behr's "Rainstorm").

Bay Scallop Gratin - Review

I'm doing that desperate sad stare into the depths of the fridge. Then the freezer.  Then the pantry. Back to the fridge. What am I going to make for dinner?

I find a small bag of bay scallops hiding underneath the zesty fries in the freezer and do a quick search on Pinterest for a recipe. The first one that comes up is The Barefoot Contessa's Bay Scallop Gratin.  Wonder of wonders, I have all the ingredients (yeah, I've got prosciutto sitting in my meat drawer - I'd have used bacon if I didn't) so I give it a whirl. 45 minutes later I am eating one fine dinner.  This one is a winner. The gratin is a little fiddly but totally worth it.

I served it, as recommended, with a salad and some crusty bread. I'm lucky to have some of dad's home-made bread on hand; it's perfect for sopping up the leftover sauce in the gratin dish.  No hints on how to change it- it's great as is.