Genesis, Chapter One, Verse Ten...and a Half

I found the following verse in my New Revised Non-Standard Bible. This is a verse of the Bible you may not know about yet:

'Then God said, "Let there be a conveyance to again separate the domestic waters from the municipal waters. So God made strong sluices and supple green channels. And it was so. God called the sluices Ball Valves, and the green channels Garden Hoses."'
Genesis 1:10.5

While I spent Sunday applying thick layers of mulch to the gardens, Dave and my dad worked on installing a water faucet in our "utility yard." This is one of our three, triangle-shaped back yards that has our garden shed, boat parking area, and clothesline. Until now it was a pain to water the honeysuckle vines and roses in this yard since there wasn't a hose on this side of the house. When it gets hot I'd end up with a long hose stretched across the driveway and under the fence to water my plants. It was so tacky and annoying. Especially since I often needed to water the front yard, so I'd have to drag it back across the driveway. (Not surprisingly, Dave didn't see a problem with this hose-dragging method; of course, he wasn't the one getting all muddy doing the dragging every morning before school.)

So Julie said "Dave, let there be water" and Dave made it so. And it was good. It was very good, in fact.

For some reason there was a hose bib on the inside of our garage, with a line running off to the side to an outdated water filter/softener tank. We decided to remove this unknown tank thing to make more room for all our cabinets of canned food and workshop tools. My dad figured out a way to run a new water line from here, up and over the garage door, and then down the other side of the garage wall where they drilled a hole in the stucco for my fancy new hose bib. All it took was some clever cutting/fitting/soldering of about 30 feet of copper tubing and assorted accessories. Too bad for the boys it was about 95 degrees in the garage and they couldn't open the garage door for some air because it would block where they were working.
Towards the end of the day I dusted the composted horse manure (yum, yum) off my clothes and headed inside to make a hearty, Southern meal for Father's Day. I baked two loaves of braided rye bread, collard greens with smoked ham, black eyed peas with more smoked ham, melon salad...and a hickory smoked honey ham. We would have had mashed sweet potatoes but I was too busy to ride my bike to the store to get some in time to bake/mash/mix/re-bake them for dinner. After all that plumbing and garden work in the hot sun, we were all ready to dig in. It was super delicious. For dessert I had made another upside down plum cake (well, pluot cake).
Once we'd digested and snuggled the dogs for a while, we decided to get busy enhancing Global Warming:
Yep, that's right. We busted out the tank of the much-feared global warming gas, carbon dioxide: we made two bottles of homemade soda. One was lemon and the other was raspberry-lemon. Both were refreshing and delicious.

I must have been in high school when my dad first introduced me to the wonders of making soda pop at home. He was able to buy all the supplies at a local brewery supply, including the rootbeer and raspberry flavorings. He even bought a bottle capper so we could seal glass bottles. We can use beer bottles and sparkling apple juice bottles for this. I love being a homemaker and making all sorts of things from scratch, so my dad brought all the soda supplies to our house so I can make soda for us and our friends.

When we first made soda we weren't sure how much sugar or juice to add to the 2 liter bottles of chilled water. (Like other gases, the solubility of carbon dioxide increases with decreasing temperature so you need to use cold water to carbonate it.) We looked at the ingredient list on standard 12 ounce coke can. I don't remember exactly what it contained, but it was on the order of 30 grams of sugar. That's like 1/4 cup of sugar in ONE single can of soda! Geez! We tried that amount in a two liter bottle along with 1/4 cup of lemon or lime juice. It was perfect. So our homemade soda is much healthier and is much more refreshing.

Adding the sugar, raspberry flavoring and a drop of red food coloring:
We've experimented a little in the past, carbonating various beverages to see what they'd taste like. Orange juice and iced tea are terrible (there is a reason you don't see those choices at the supermarket). Fizzy coffee wasn't too bad. From the pharmacy we bought a bottle of cola syrup (Coke--the beverage--was originally marketed as an upset tummy medicine) to make our own cola. It wasn't very good. A few weeks ago my dad made ginger ale by adding a few teaspoons of simple syrup simmered with some sliced ginger to a glass of soda water. It sounds yummy; I think I will make that next.

Back-tracking to Saturday, I made East Indian chicken curry from the Joy of Cooking with yellow jasmine rice and toasted almonds and a side a raita. Holy crap was it ever good. Since we were hungry before the curry was done, we ate dessert before dinner, which was an crisp made with home grown apples, raisins we made last summer, and walnuts I picked from campus. Along with vanilla ice cream it was yummy, but not crispy at all since I made it in the crock pot.
Earlier that day I finished sewing new curtains for the living room. Back in January Joann's Fabrics had a 40% off sale on all their custom orders of interior design fabrics. I wanted to add a bunch of color to the room (it has butter yellow walls) and I found this irresistible, bold floral print that has every color of the rainbow. Dave isn't so fond of it (neither is my dad) but I loooooooooooove it. The curtains coordinate well with the Craigslist area rug and redwood burl and will look really good once our door is finally painted dark red. I also bought some striped fabric to make new throw pillow covers but I didn't have time or patience to make those. I admit, the curtains look sorta "old lady" but I guess that's just my style. As long as they don't smell like old mothballs. (My smart-alec Daddy commented that all I needed in the living room now are some of those plastic slip covers for my couches...har, har, har.)