a canoe morning

this morning, after several weather-cancelled attempts to go canoeing, we were finally able to get out on the water. i was rather late arriving to meet my canoeing friends because i couldn’t find my driver’s license and one of my credit cards (panic!), but i finally gave up and just drove to meet them and we set the boat out on a very swollen river (have you heard about the somewhat damp weather we’ve been having?)

there is something so calming about canoeing. even when the wheels inside my head are screeching, “where’s your driver’s license? did you accidentally drop it in the street?” the soft splish and pull of the oars is soothing, the views are beautiful,

and the active wildlife is a welcome distraction.

(if you look really closely in this one, you can even see a dragonfly flying just above the last duck. happy accident!)

standing on one foot is somehow more relaxing for ducks?

i don’t know how i did this exactly. the only thing in focus is the duck’s wing–which, in reality, is flapping madly.

but each time i go on a canoe ride with this friend, no matter the season, there’s something interesting in nature to see. whether that is lotus flowers in bloom, mating fish roiling the surface of the water, or sandpipers. today’s fascination for me was a whole bunch of swallows’ nests built on the underside of a bridge. some of the nests had little baby swallows and the adults were zipping around finding food for them. so cute! so graceful when they fly.

(sorry this one’s blurry, but can you see one bird perched on the edge of a nest and another bird (right side of the photo) in flight?)

on the not-so-natural side, i enjoyed this little piece of graffiti:

when i got home, i made myself some lunch, still fretting about the loss of my cards, and then decided that for dessert i wanted some grapes. i ate some fresh and decided to freeze the rest. i love frozen grapes in the summer! like mini, natural popsicles. without the stick. so not so much popsicles i gues but oh well, you get the idea. they’re delicious! then, that gave me the idea to make another childhood summer favorite comfort food–peanut butter balls! or at least, that’s what we always called them. the cookbook we got the recipe from calls them “honey milk balls” which never made any sense to me, and so i can never remember how to find the recipe (how do you find a recipe in the index when you don’t know the name? and it’s not with the “cookies” section, it’s under “snacks.”) so i called my mother to see if she knew. she thought they were called “honey peanut butter balls” so that at least got me close enough in the index to find them. so i was recounting my card-loss woes to her and while i was telling her my sad story, i thought of one last place to check. guess what? bingo! there they were. yay! but i still wanted to eat peanut butter balls (they’re even better frozen).

here are two of the p.b. balls i made today, sitting on top of a cute recipe card i made a few years back for a library program. the recipe i used called for p.b. (i used natural and it worked okay), honey, powdered milk and oatmeal. the recipe i made for the library program was a little less chunky, and i think i might like it better, so here’s that recipe (minus the instructions for how to make them look like honeybees–clue: use sliced almonds for wings):

pooh’s peanut buttery honeybees

1/2 c. peanut butter

1 tablespoon honey

1/3 c. powdered milk

3 tablespoons sesame seeds

2 tablespoons wheat germ

mix it all up, form it into balls and freeze if desired.

tonight i made this mexican rice recipe and homemade tortillas. the rice smelled heavenly, but i think next time i’ll use a little less tomato paste. other than that, it was much closer to “restaurant” mexican rice than other recipes i’ve tried. the tortillas turned out fantastic. i took the recipe’s author’s advice and substituted one cup of whole wheat flour for one cup of the white flour and they had so much more flavor! and they weren’t as “whole-wheaty” as the ones in the grocery store always end up being. i made a whole batch, so we had some leftovers. i’m trying an experiment and freezing some and leaving the rest in the fridge and we’ll see how these do the second day. beanz–you’d asked me how i get those yummy “brown spots” and tonight i figured it out. high heat and negligence. the first 2 or 3 didn’t get the spots because the pan still wasn’t hot enough yet (too impatient to wait) but finally, the pan was hot and i walked away and did something else for a few minutes and when i came back to flip it… ta-da! delicious tortilla freckles.

my other tortilla experiment this evening was honey on a tortilla for dessert. when i was a kid, similarly to the homesick texan, my family liked to eat at pancho’s. they had the best sopapillas. little puffy dough pillows, filled with air and not coated with that ridiculous powdered sugar that every other restaurant since them seems to feel obligated to use. you’d bite off a tiny corner and pour honey inside the pillow and then eat it, the soft dough soaking up the honey and dripping it out of the bottom corner, making your hands all sticky and sweet. (excuse me while i drool….) anyway, tonight’s honey-on-a-tortilla was very similar to the sopapillas from my childhood, only they weren’t puffy. but the taste was similar and i highly recommend it. yuuuuuuum.

we ended the day by going to see the newest pixar movie. what a great way to end a very nice day off.

p.s. i am soooooooo close to finishing the secret quilt. just the binding and then the mailing and then i can show it to you!