It hasn't been all quilting around here...

We have a new bookshelf, made to my exact specifications deep, tall shelves by our very talented neighbor Jeff. It is solely for photo albums - right now each is labeled with a sticky note but that will change. I still have a few years of photos to get into albums. Hopefully this project will be caught up before the end of this year. 

=====

I am still dehydrating food. One of my latest ventures is powders. 

Tomato powder can be used for tomato paste, tomato sauce, tomato soup, pizza sauce, and just about anything using cooked tomatoes. 

We use zucchini powder, spinach powder, and cabbage powder which is all gone right now in smoothies. Did you know about the magic 5 vegetables that, when used in reasonable amounts, you can't taste when added to fruit and other things? They are spinach, cabbage, zucchini, yellow squash, and carrots. I often throw fresh carrots or spinach into smoothies if I have some. Now I always have veggies for smoothies. The spinach powder turns smoothies green, sometimes an unpleasant shade. The zucchini powder has no trace of taste or color. This morning we had a 'side of zucchini' with (in) our breakfast smoothie.

I didn't like the texture of the mushrooms I dried when they were rehydrated so I powdered them. The powder worked great in some BBQ I made the other night.

I thought the orange powder would be great to have when I don't have fresh oranges or frozen mangos for smoothies. It works great but this powder, at least mine, has a tendency to cake. I tried dehydrating it longer but it still cakes. I'll dig the rest out of the jar as I need it and then reassess whether or not to make more. 

Another dehydrating adventure is making yogurt. I've never tried yogurt before and it is so easy! When the yogurt comes out of the dehydrator, I strain it for about 45 - 60 minutes so it becomes Greek yogurt. I've used whole milk, skim milk and 1% milk. I think anything works! The yogurt stays good for about 3 weeks.

=====

We are planning another long trip. Ray has his yearly cancer checkup in May. We plan to leave the following day on another bucket-list adventure. This time we are headed to the northeastern USA, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. We are both excited and happy that a lot of the planning is done. As much as we'd love to see this area in the fall, neither of us enjoys crowds so we try to do our traveling in the off season.

=====

And I am diligently exercising again. I've let that slide and I really do feel better when I pursue my program. Here's my mat, my exercise ball, and my weights and band are on the chair in the background.

=====

Of course, I knit a little every so often. Here is the back of Ray's next sweater. I have the front and back finished and have started the first sleeve.

=====

There is SOME quilting going on! Most days don't pass without some time upstairs to quilt. Here is a table runner that I recently finished. It is some improve piecing. I didn't have many red batiks and I wanted it to match (in color) the other runners in the room. The improve gave me the freedom to just use what I had.

This runner will be on the bottom of the behind-the-couch table. Before this area was filled with photo albums.

=====

This afternoon, I think I'll spend some time sandwiching and pinning the next quilt to be quilted. I'm not sure there's been enough quilting going on around here lately!