Monday, February 24, 2014

Book cleaning!, veg chili, garden in an unusual February

February 2014

I have joined Jolie Kerr in her Year of a Clean Person challenge and I just finished February which was clean your book shelves.  I love my books and have a hard time giving them up so I knew this would be a big job.  I had forgotten that lots of cruft collects around the books as well.






Those are the main book shelves...

But of course some of them end up in the bedroom
and the cookbooks get to be in the kitchen.

It was daunting but sooooo satisfying.  It took about 3 weeks and most of the time the living room looked like this.


In the process I donated 7 bags of books to the library, shredded a giant stack of old notes, got rid of a bag of knick-knacks 
got rid of the CD collection

and organized the LEGO and board game collection.

All clean and organized



Feels fantastic!

New soup is 3-bean and vegetable chili.  I'm not sure I would really call this chili, but okay.
The base is lots of beans, onions, garlic, carrots and tomatoes.  The chili in this case came from dried New Mexico chilies that I soaked, blended and strained (white bowl on the left).  Then near the end of cooking time, add in the green chard.

turned out pretty good and very nutritious.  Feeling like I am really branching out in my soups-thanks Little Friend T for the great soup book!

cheddar cauliflower from the garden-yum!

What else is happening in the garden here in February (in my Mediterranean climate)?
I raked the last of the fall leaves

the hydrangea is starting to bud 
so I cut off the dead flowers which doesn't usually happen until March or April.




 my wild lilac is in bloom

we continue to eat the winter peas and carrots

and the poppies are blooming again!


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