Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Joining GBBD at May Dreams Gardens

 OWT

Remembering Dad on His Birthday

Today would have been my Dad's 94th birthday.

Here he is as a teenager (on the far right) some time in the early 1930s.  He was the sixth of nine children of Omar and Ada Buchwalter of Lancaster, PA. One daughter died in infancy and the other daughter, my Aunt Beulah is not pictured because she was serving as a missionary in Africa at the time of this photo.

I obtained this photo at the memorial service on Saturday of my Aunt Verna (far left) who was the last surviving sibling at her death in August.

 He lived to be 89 and died two days after my Mom's 89th birthday.   

On Friday they would have been married 72 years.

He is remembered with much love.

Addendum:  My sister Bonnie sent this photo of my parents taken three months before they were married.

Eggplant Bella

I made up a recipe last night for dinner and of course didn't think of taking any photos to share.  Despite that it turned out so delicious that I thought I'd share it anyway and let others who try it post the photos.

The inspiration for this was three Chinese eggplants from the Harbin farm stand, not in Harbin, China where Sarah once lived and worked, but a local market.  I'd purchased a package of small portabella mushrooms (Bella) at the grocery store that I wanted to use and  I knew I wanted a meatless meal.  I had my own tomatoes for sauce and some wonderful whole grain angel hair pasta.

I heated olive oil in my large skillet and then using the mandolin thinly sliced the three eggplants into the oil.  I added two large cloves of garlic, chopped and sautéed that to begin the eggplant cooking.  I then added half of a very large Vidalia onion and continued to saute.  I had to add more olive oil to keep that going.  Once it looked like the eggplants were fairly well cooked I added the box of mushrooms sliced up and sautéed more until the mushrooms softened.  I salt and peppered it all then tossed in some pitted Kalamata black olives that I halved.

The Eggplant Bella was ladled over the pasta and the sauce was added on top with a good grating of parmesan cheese.  Now I thought I had made lots and would have leftovers to freeze.  Well, Dan had three servings and Sarah took what was left and packaged it up for her lunch at work today.  Nothing was leftover!  It was that good.  Let me know if you try this and take some photos.

Joining Robin for Thursday Kitchen Cupboard.

Vacation Bird Sightings

I've always enjoyed seeing herons especially as they keep their silent sentinel along side a creek, river or pond.  This last vacation trip we saw lots of blue herons and for the first time heard their squawk as we ventured too close.  We were really startled one evening when we took an after dinner walk down to the marina which was part of the property where we stayed.  We could just make out the heron at the edge of the water in the gathering dusk but we spooked it and it let us know.

Heron along the shore of St. Lawrence River.  We took a river cruise from Clayton, NY to see the islands in the Thousand Islands.

An afternoon canoe trip on the pond at Fair Haven Beach State Park flushed a lot of herons.

These Canadian geese were pretending to be decoys.

A highlight of the Sterling Nature Center was this heron rookery.

Osprey nest on St. Lawrence.

Gannets on the St. Lawrence.  I stand corrected.  These are cormorants.  Thanks to the comment from Larry who led me to check my bird book.  We were misinformed by the tour guide on our boat trip on the St. Lawrence.

Heron food?

We saw this snake swim toward us in the marsh at the Sterling Nature Center.  Then it disappeared behind the log.  When it reappeared we couldn't figure out what we were seeing at first then realized it had a fish in its mouth (top of the photo).

Joining Wild Bird Wednesday