Images From This Weekend

This weekend we hosted a small gathering for a group of friends that hadn't gathered for too long. Our plan was to assemble some very simple pizzas and since we haven't used the pizza oven all year we thought it would be good to pre-heat it on Saturday so that the pizza oven floor wouldn't take too long to absorb and retain all the heat that's necessary for nice, crispy pizza crusts. As it turns out, I also harvested a lot of tomatoes the day before and had planned to roast them in the regular oven and then to freeze them for future uses. I decided that since the pizza oven was fired up, it made sense to roast them in there. Instead of roasting for 45 minutes, they were finished in 10 minutes. Here are the images of the tomatoes roasting:

The tomatoes are halved, seeded (seeds strained through a colander to retain the juices), drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with oregano, kosher salt, and freshly ground black pepper. Then they were slid into the oven.



Right away they started to sizzle on the bottom of the pan.



Soon after the tops also started to roast due to the extreme heat coming from the flames above.



I did stir them a few times throughout this process.

When they were completely softened, I gave them a big stir, mushing them up a bit, and added back the stained tomato juice which I had boiled and simmered.

When that was finished, I took a taste and we decided that it looked like tomato soup... so I put a few spoonfuls into a cup, added a touch more salt and some milk and had a yummy snack.

Then I cooled them off in an ice bath and when I was prepared to ladle them into quart-size freezer bags it dawned on me that I could puree this into a sauce to use on the pizzas the next day. So, I got out my Kitchen Aid mixer and attached the fruit/vegetable strainer and ran the chunky sauce through. It removed all of the skins and other solids, leaving me with a silky puree. Sorry, when that was happening we were rushing to wrap things up and I didn't take any photos of the finished product. But it was very tasty on the pizzas.


This is Cassie, being very cute. Dave sneaked up on her to take a few photos.



Oops, she sensed an approaching step.



Then she relaxed onto a contented grin.

Doggie Bath Day

Today was bath day for the two furry kids. We last bathed them just over a month ago. And they were starting to smell like it.

We have a pretty good system down. After we get a dog on the table (using a ramp) I start in on the toenails, getting them as short as I can with the Dremmel. While I'm doing that, Dave brushes out his or her coat... removing as much loose undercoat as he can. When the nails are trimmed then we wash them using warm water. Recently we finally piped warm water to the back yard so that the dogs and we would be comfortable during bath time.

After two shampoos, we do a conditioning.

Then a final rinse and the dry with a doggie dryer.

Last: A thorough brushing. And they look fabulous!!

Here are a few photos:


This photo of Dave washing Theo is here just for effect. It's from his bath last time. I didn't take a picture of his bath this time, but it looked just like that.



This is where I just had to run inside to grab the camera. We were finished washing Theo and had him almost dry. Cassie came and tried to climb up on the table too. She really wanted a bath.



Here's the baby girl getting all clean.



She does look sad here but you saw it: She tried to climb up on the table to get her bath!



And here she is, all beautiful, clean, and fluffy!!

That lasted about 60 seconds. As soon as she got off the table, she and Theo started running and chasing each other around the yard, kicking up dust. Oh, well, we tried!