Front Yard: The Disaster State

From this angle, maybe the yard doesn't look so bad. The photos above and below were taken in April 2019.

But if you look closely, perhaps you'll see that the grass itself is sort of patchy and there's actually a good bit of clover taking over:

Last May and June, I thought I'd just tackle it and set it all straight. As a result, the front yard has been a disaster for a year now.

It began early last spring, after I had aerated and fertilized and realized that it was simply a clover-and-wiregrass monstrosity that would not and could not be healed. Extreme measures were called for, and I decided I would rip out all of the topsoil layers that were infested with those deeply buried nasty invaders' roots and replace it with brand new soil layers.

The first step was to kill everything with Roundup, with a minimum of three spaced applications.

That ended up including a portion of the back yard near the kitchen door as well (shown above).

On the north end of the front yard, I tilled it all...

...and then removed the broken up/loosened soil a wheelbarrow at the time.

But it turns out that way too much wiregrass survived because it needs so little for its root nodules to spawn new growth. That put me back to waiting and killing with Roundup.

As for the south end of the front yard, instead of tilling, I took the flatblade shovel and excavated one scoop at the time. I wanted to go as deep as any of the wiregrass roots seemed to have infiltrated and make sure I got it all out.

I also knew an ongoing barrier to a lush green lawn was going to be the lingering after-effects of the two large trees that had long ago been removed. (I previously blogged about the stump and roots I excavated last summer.)

For the leftside tree that had been removed, even though I had the stump ground up, there was still plenty of rotting base and roots to dig out, and I found that some of that gosh darned wiregrass was living quite extensively and thick, as deep as 12 inches down.

As is so often the case, even with the size and scale of this as a stand-alone project, it becomes an inevitable can-of-worms, and you might say that one of the holes I uncovered was actually a many-passaged rabbit warren. Not literally, mind you, but one thing led to another until I ran out of steam and ran into the blistering heat of July 2019, and all progress stopped for the rest of the year.

So digging up stumps and roots: mostly yes (or so I thought) on the north lawn, and halfway on the south lawn. But then I got into the dilemma of the granite wallcaps on the north end, and that consumed a lot of time (see this blog post).

Remediating that led me into alleviating water and drainage pressures on the wall, so I also dug out a pretty deep trench behind the wall.

And then I discovered a vertical drainline hidden in the northeast corner of the yard.

And that led me down to the busted clay drainpipe at the bottom interior of the retaining wall so I went on a fruitless search for a connector so it could be fixed.

And came up empty so I decided to just build a brick catch basin to connect that northside drainline (from the backyard - see this blog post):

I even pre-cast a top for that drainbox so that I could restore a vertical drain connection as well:

I am even more inexpert at this than you might've guessed but so far it seems to be reasonably functional.

It also seemed like a chance to add in a drain for front yard run-off, but the effectiveness of this will have to wait until I finish rehabbing the lawn...for now, it's constantly getting covered over with eroding ungrassed soil.

I backfilled with gravel all of that area behind the north end of the front retaining wall and then got it covered back over.

Remember how this began as a lawn rehabilitation project? By this time, I'd completely removed shovels-depth layers of soil and I was also thinking about laying sod instead of seeding the lawn. And as long as I'm living in this do-it-yourself fantasy world, and with the yard already dug up, I mean, shouldn't I install an irrigation system? I'd never be as faithful a lawn-waterer as a sodded lawn would require and how awesome would it be to upgrade to an automatic system to preserve, protect, and defend my various landscaping endeavors?

Rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole...

So after stripping down all of the north side of the front yard, and just over half of the south side, and repairing the north retaining wall when I damaged it while resetting the granite wallcaps, and excavating behind the wall and reworking the drainlines there and refilling with gravel, and unearthing and digging out the mass of old roots and stumps, and receiving a huge load of topsoil, and starting to plan an irrigation system, and then thinking: Hey, I should get a second water meter dedicated just to landscaping...then the heat and wet and misery of July hit and I was worn out. The disaster state of the front lawn continued unabated all through the fall and winter.

But I have begun my labors on it again, so stay tuned...

Meal No. 2587: Sous Vide Pork Tenderloin

Hello again, Joule sous vide immersion circulator! This time I broke it out along with my large plastic storage container in order to cook pork tenderloin with herbs from the kitchen garden. Oh, it came out so perfectly at temperature, with tender chew and full flavor, given how little I did to enhance it. I reheated the red-skinned mashed potatoes from the other night and also had a pot of seasoned green beans.

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"Sous Vide Pork Tenderloin," from J. Kenji López-Alt, Chief Culinary Consultant of SeriousEats.com. [Published 11 July 2016 / Updated 13 April 2020]

Meal No. 2586: Breakfast for Dinner

The back-breaking yard labors continue out front, to be described in tedious detail in an upcoming blog post. Suffice it to say: it took two days early this week (taking advantage of cool but sunny weather!) to excavate more dead tree roots and dig some pretty deep trenches...so Tuesday night I was happy to take the easy way out with dinner. Breakfast! Always a treat in the evening supper slot. I made the always-terrific creamy grits and busted out the cast iron skillet for sausage patties and fried eggs to finish out the platter. I couldn't get quite enough grits but I figured I'd earned some extra spoonsful because of the dedication to my shovels over the previous couple of days.

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Guidance for making the creamy grits: Luquire Family Stone Ground Grits, milled in Greenwood, SC.

Building Up the Back Yard

When one of my early slips drawn from the quarantine task jar compelled me to take on the drainage project along the rear north property line, along the HVAC units, I knew it was an unfinished challenge. I wrapped up the first efforts on that project with the drain line sitting a bit higher than the drainfield for the bulk of the back yard. The picture above tells the truth of it far better than my unending verbosity could.

We had a pretty good overnight rain system move through at the end of April, and it looked like I'd installed a koi pond back there. I mean: we were holding on to a lot of water!

The quick fix was to remove the endcap of the upper drain tray and make a small trench to release a good bit of it.

I was glad to get convincing evidence about the outlet for this drainage and confirmation of the reasonable effectiveness of my repairs last summer to that front wall drain on the north end (to be blogged about soon).

But that wasn't a solution, because over the last 10 or 11 years, the yard has washed and settled and that's why I've had intermittent issues with standing water back there with each good rain storm. It really needed to be built up.

Even though it wasn't a task drawn from the slip jar, the "koi pond" experience told me I'd better get busy on it.

But is it ever as easy as hauling a few wheelbarrow loads of soil from my reserves? Of course not. When I ran out of steam last summer, it was with a mostly-untouched truckload of topsoil sitting at the back of the lot. Around here, it takes very little time for roots to invade and infiltrate that fertile mass, so every wheelbarrow load had to be be screened by hand (which I've had to do many times now over the years).

There was load after load of roots and rock and mortar and sticks to discard, like that pictured above. In addition, I wanted to harvest some of the clay-and-rock discard in the southwest corner of the property, which was even more tedious and back-breaking. I didn't think about pictures from that part of this project, but I'll tell you that clay/rock/root/brick/mortar pile created from all the bad yard areas I've excavated is now up to about 8 feet high.

I took measurements and placed stakes in order to try to get a downward slope of about an inch roughly every seven feet. This was a multi-day project in early May and it kept me pretty busy...and wore me down! But I feel like it's a pretty good base layer, although I'll be anxious to get some good rainfalls to help settle it down more, knowing I'll be going back over it with more topsoil to even it out. Then I can think about seeding and such for fresh grass. This last photo below is from after 8 pm a few nights ago after I'd finished up, so it's sort of dark and less impressive than my sore back would like you to see.

Meal No. 2585: Slow-Cooker Texas Pulled Pork

Last Saturday night I put a huge Boston Butt pork shoulder into the slow cooker, added the necessary various ingredients, gave it a good spice rub, and dumped barbecue sauce on it. By morning it smelled so very good that I could've eaten it like cereal...but I didn't. I let it slowly cook and season and tenderize until early afternoon, then I shredded it and added some homemade barbecue sauce, and let it cook a while longer. Just before serving it up, I made a fresh batch of sweet and tangy barbecue sauce, pulled out my container of Mother's slaw that I'd already prepped, and it was a lovely Sunday dinner feast at the Roediger House.

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Pulled Pork based primarily on "Slow Cooker Texas Pulled Pork," from cmccreight on AllRecipes.com. Some modifications were drawn from a Review with Modifications by jenleighd, except for cinnamon. I did not add cinnamon. Cinnamon does not belong in barbecue.

Barbecue Sauce added after shredding and for final hours of slow-cook: "Homemade BBQ Sauce," from Alison Ebright "Ali" Martin of GimmeSomeOven.com. [Published 03 July 2014 / Updated 17 April 2020]

Barbecue Sauce for serving was adapted from "Sweet and Tangy Barbecue Sauce" from recipe for "Indoor Pulled Pork," by Bryan Roof. In Cook's Illustrated, January & February 2010 (No. 102), p. 6-7.

Sweet Southern Coleslaw based on recipe from Allison M. Jones.

Meal No. 2584: Spaghetti with Homemade Meat Sauce

The Saturday night meal at the Roediger House was warm and comforting, even as the daytime outside was negatively impacted by our weird polar vortex phenomenon that weekend: sunny and bright but low 50s and constantly breezy, a wind that cuts right through you and that kept me from trying to do any outside work. So what was that meal? The easy-peasy and hardly-ever-make-it spaghetti with meat sauce. I figured I'd do the sauce from scratch but used Adam and Joanne Gallagher's recipe site to guide me. For a dish as simple as spaghetti, it was all pretty darned good.

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"Our Favorite Homemade Spaghetti Meat Sauce," from Joanne Gallagher of InspiredTaste.net. [Published 16 January 2020]

Meal No. 2583: Deviled Chicken Thighs

Apparently we haven't had enough weirdness, so an odd spring polar vortex event occurred this past Friday, bringing a blitz of bluster and a chilling change to the temps. It was gray and drizzly as the afternoon proceeded towards evening and the mid-afternoon sprinkles finally chased me inside from my yard projects. I was ready for a meat and two sides kind of dinner, so the plates had deviled chicken thighs, wilted spinach with garlic, and homemade red-skin mashed potatoes. I probably didn't burn enough calories with yardwork to justify the greedy gobbling I engaged in.

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"Deviled Chicken Drumsticks," by Ian Knauer. In Gourmet, August 2008.

Cap'n Crunch Cookies

After making Cinnamon Toast Crunch cookies several days before and finding them so awful, I needed a cookie palate cleanser. So last Wednesday night after working on a wide variety of tasks much of the day, I carved out some of the evening to make a batch of the uniquely wonderful, always delicious Cap'n Crunch cookies. They were particularly good this time, and I think it's because I added just a hint of interesting flavorings to the dough, that I'd just recently received: buttered popcorn flavoring and butterscotch flavoring. I wanted to try to evoke the special taste I could get from using the limited edition Caramel Popcorn Crunch edition of that tasty sugary cereal, which is no longer available. It might not have been a perfect match but these cookies were delightfully enhanced!

They were quite the treat, they were spot on, and they were easy to over-consume. Sue me.

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"Cap'n Crunch Cookies," found online at The Capitol Baker, with credit going to The Sugar Plum Blog for inspiration and the source of the adapted recipe.

Meal No. 2582: Sheet Pan Beef Nachos

Last Tuesday I found myself deeply troubled by the temporary turn of the weather: it was another oddly cold day, too breezy, spotty showers, gray and overcast...miserable, really, when thus far this spring there have been so many lovely days! I snuck in a small preparatory project to get me ready for a larger chore in the backyard but was sent scurrying back inside when the rain started up again. When dinnertime rolled around, I liked the sound and thought of sheet pan beef nachos with their zing and their cheese and the satisfying crunch of toasted tortilla chips. It's a breeze to put together, and a pleaser to put to my mouth.

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Seasoned Beef based on "Crispy Beef Tacos," by Hilah Johnson. From HilahCooking.com.

Drain Line in the Grove - 2020 Upgrade

The Grove, June 2018

When I bought the Roediger House in 2003, there was only bare landscaping in place and most of the open ground was grassy (but not lush!). That was true of the part of the yard we call The Grove, on the left of the house, a jut of rectangular land bounded on three sides by the retaining wall and hemmed in by the driveway and parking area. In the center is a massive Bradford pear tree, and two of the four cherry trees that had been planted to frame it still remain.

The Grove, April 2018

I talk about building it up and planting shrubs and such in this blog post, from 2018. The other project I'd tackled in that area was putting in a drain line to help remediate the water and run-off issues that the build-up resulted in. Turns out I was definitely an amateur because it did not prove durable enough over the long term.

Connection to Existing Gutter Drain

One of the major "green slip" yard projects in the quarantine task jar was to completely redo that drain line to achieve a more functional slope, and to connect it to the front wall drain instead of emptying into the monkey grass. As a bonus, I was determined once I got into this project to find a way to also tie in the landlocked gutter and drainspout in the small kitchen herb garden that sits between the two sidewalks from the parking lot.

That task was drawn from the quarantine task jar on the final Monday of April and, even though I had already gotten started (a bit of an overachiever, perhaps!) on it before the slip was drawn, I still spent three more full days on it, taking advantage of some perfect weather days. Even more time after that has been spent on refilling the trenches and finishing it all off.

The yard does gently slope from back to front, and of course at the front retaining wall there's a dramatic drop to street level. I knew I would have to go with a much deeper trench for the line, and that meant I could not be kind to the cherry tree it needed to skirt alongside. I cut away some major roots.

The original driveway was right beside the house on the south side. When the parking area was put in, necessitating a higher and more extensive retaining wall, they basically covered over the old driveway wall after removing the carved granite wall caps on top, and they dumped a lot of debris in as fill.

I had to take the pickax to a section of that buried driveway wall to bring the Grove drainline over to connect with the buried front-of-house gutter lines, to then connect to the front wall drain.

Understandably, the demolition of the original driveway offered up a couple of other challenges as I worked on this trenching project. One of those was all the buried bricks and mortar and chunks of concrete that I kept striking and having to dislodge and remove.

I also hit a section of solid concrete that I had to bust up and chip out. Glad I had already added a hefty sledgehammer to my tool collection last summer.

It looks like the paving of the large parking area was initially bounded by landscape timbers that have long ago rotted away. I unearthed the knotted rotted remnants of some of them while I've been at work on this. It helps explain the gap between the pavement and the bricks of the sidewalk going to the side of the front porch (see the above picture), where I was constantly pulling weeds.

When I ordered long drainage trays, like those shown in the recent HVAC-area drain line project from a few weeks ago, I had in mind that one of them might be perfect for that gap. (Sizewise, it was a made-in-heaven match.) The photo above bears that out, although I did have to grab chisel and hand-held sledge hammer in order to get rid of the thick bed of concrete that occupied part of that space:

I can tell with the finished product that it's not quite perfect for catching run-off from the driveway but, over time, I think it will help with it. But I had another idea for how that gap-filling drain tray might be useful, and it has to do with resolving the landlocked gutter and downspout issue just on the other side of it.

This blog post from 2013 shows the undeveloped side yard between the front porch and the back door, which is where I now have kitchen herbs, irises, and an unwieldy oak leaf hydrangea. That old corrugated black plastic pipe has still been there all these years but is partially buried and hidden by the dwarf crepe myrtles and sage and monkey grass. I mostly haven't thought about it, except in winter when its output onto the driveway makes for a slippery situation when the temperatures are below freezing. I have fantasized about ways to direct the discharge, and that drain tray and sidewalk gap allowed me to figure out what I wanted to do about it: I could lay new drain lines from the downspout there, give it a good 90-degree turn when it hits the parking lot, and connect it to that drain tray to get it past that sidewalk...and then bring that water down to connect to the Grove drain line I was installing.

One hitch, though: that last effort at a Grove drain line had as its starting point the reclaimed brick pad I put in two summers ago, in front of the porch access door. That's lower ground there, given how I've built up the planting areas on either side of it, and I knew I would not be able to have a fully-buried continuous feed drain line...plus I needed to channel any water from that pad. So I decided for now I'll just let water run across it. It might be goofy, and it might lead to other problems, but for now it's how I'm going to go.

A last piece of this: the corner of the driveway closest to the front porch, just to the left of the outdoor movie screen frame, has been a trap for runoff and debris, since it slopes down slightly toward the monkey grass border I planted.

I took out some of that monkey grass, laid some brick and border, and put in a ground-level drain that ties into the drainage line. It is not all that elegant but I think it's going to be pretty functional. I'm still waiting for a good daytime downpour so I can get out and see what I have won and lost.

So: that's the quarantine task jar project that kept me busy for the final days of April.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cookies

In this household, Cap'n Crunch Cookies reign supreme. I mean, if you're gonna make a cookie with a sugary breakfast cereal, and even name it after such, I don't think there's a better choice than the Cap'n. Now, I don't know if the host and master of the CookiesandCups.com blog would disagree with us on that, but she did propose an alternative: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cookies. When the quarantine task jar slip last Sunday said "Make Cookies," I thought I'd give this one a go.

Now that we've tried them, I'm pretty sure the recipe will get the heave-ho! Yuck!!

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"Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cookies," by Shelly Jaronsky of CookiesandCups.com. [Published 21 November 2013]

Meal No. 2581: Creamy Cajun Chicken Pasta

I'm not an inventive cook and rarely do I tackle meals without recipes to guide me, except for the really simple things or the stuff I've been making forever. I invented last Sunday night's dinner pretty much from whole cloth, though, and it turned out pretty smashing. Of course, we all know that most pasta dishes can come together with all kinds of ingredients and spices and herbs and still be fantastic.

Who knows exactly how much of what went into it, but here's what I did: I sautéed mushrooms in butter and added in diced prosciutto and cooked it for about 8 minutes. I tossed in some minced garlic, stirred it around, added creole spice, stirred it around, added some flour, and stirred it around for another minute or so. Next into it went a can of Ro-Tel (drained), stirring and cooking off some of the residual liquid. Then I added cream and cooked it over medium heat until it thickened. Once the fettuccine was ready and I'd deboned and diced the chicken thighs that had been in the sous vide set-up, I added in about 4 ounces of shredded Monterey Jack cheese, about a cup of grated parmesan, and about a quarter cup of goat cheese. Somewhere along the way I seasoned it with salt and pepper and a bit more creole spice. After draining and cooling the noodles slightly, I added the chicken into the cheesy cream sauce and poured it all over the fettuccine. Then into my belly it went.

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I followed the cooking instructions for sous vide from "Crispy Sous-Vide Chicken Thighs with Mustard Wine Pan Sauce," from J. Kenji López-Alt, Chief Culinary Consultant of SeriousEats.com. [Published 27 July 2015 / Updated 29 August 2018]

Meal No. 2580: Chicken Salad Melts

It was a return to gorgeous weather this past Saturday, which allowed me some more good yard time as I worked on my "punch list" for recent projects. It also allowed me to finish planting and watering and mulching the mix of petunias I bought on Thursday. At dinnertime, I yet again took advantage of my Joule Sous Vide precision circulator, trying it for the first time on split chicken breasts to then develop into an herby well-seasoned chicken salad. That chicken came out so tender and juicy and flavorful! I scooped out portions of the chicken salad I made with it and mounded them on split English muffins, added cheese singles on top, and baked them long enough to toast the muffins and melt the cheese. It was a pretty scrumptious supper.

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Adapted from "The Best Classic Chicken Salad Recipe," from J. Kenji López-Alt, Chief Culinary Consultant of SeriousEats.com. [Published 03 June 2015 / Updated 17 April 2020]

Meal No. 2579: Sous Vide Ribeye Steaks

Last Friday I suppose I was still in a sous vide mood and mode, and this time I had a couple of lovely (but a bit thin!) ribeye steaks to cook up for dinner. With garlic, shallots, and fresh thyme and rosemary from my kitchen herb garden, the steaks got to a perfect medium-rare temperature before I put a finishing sear on them in a hot iron skillet.

Crispy roasted broccoli and homemade red-skin mashed potatoes made it a terrific week-ending feast.

After some lingering showers that morning, the afternoon had been almost like a surprisingly sunny day in February: it was rather windy, almost blustery, with a distinct chill in the air. If I'd been looking for a merciful end to a brutal winter back in those late months of that most-hated season, I'd've relished the day, I'm sure. But it was a shock to the system after an early spring filled with lovely days. I took it as a mercy that my quarantine task jar produced some indoor kindness when a chore slip was drawn during morning coffee: "Roofing Estimates."

The roof is now around 11 years old and had been completely replaced as part of the 2008-2009 renovation and addition project. While the shingles might be rated for 30 years, my general contractor at that time did not paint or seal or protect the edges of the underdecking and they have absorbed a lot of moisture along the roof edge. So one problem is rotting.

Another issue has been leaking around the center front dormer, allowing water to drip down the inside front wall and emerge, sometimes almost in a stream, through seams in the ceiling drywall of the second floor main hallway. I've got a picture and brief word about that in this post-Hurricane Florence blog entry from 2018.

I'd say the most pressing matter requiring the attention of a roofer is the condition of the rubber roof that lies beneath the decking of the second story balcony porch. I have no doubt that we'll get into overlapping complications: the roof part needs to be replaced and possibly rebuilt to achieve a better slope; the guttering along the porch is definitely in need of correction and probable replacement; and we have to make sure we eliminate drips and run-off that are compromising the columns beneath them.

So it's going to be quite an undertaking and I've had a couple of false starts with unreliable roofers over the last year or so when I've been of a mind to get cracking on this. (For instance, the last guy showed up to check it out in order to work up an estimate, but he was sort of drunk, plus it was actually months after he'd missed our original appointment. And then I never heard from him again.)

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"Sous Vide Steaks," from J. Kenji López-Alt, Chief Culinary Consultant of SeriousEats.com. [Published 03 March 2010 / Updated 13 April 2020]

Meal No. 2578: Sous Vide Pork Chops

Last Monday, the quarantine task jar coughed up (!) a pretty involved task that really worked me over from Monday through Wednesday, and I'll blog about it separately. But because I was laboring until dusk each night, we turned to leftovers a couple of nights and then a big pot of oatmeal one evening. By Thursday, I was ready for a good home-cooked meal, and I thought I'd try out sous vide pork chops to try to hit the perfect temperature and simplify the end stages of dinner making. Some nice crisp garlic-parmesan asparagus tips were tasty and good.  I also tried out baked sweet potato fries for the first time. They didn't roast up very crispy but I still liked 'em.

Also last Monday: an unwelcome visitor to the attic entertainment area was finally set free. Sometime Sunday, it seems that a starling had infiltrated into the tiny compressed attic space in the very tiptop peak of the main roof and spent a little over 24 hours flopping around. I tried to cut out the foam insulation just a bit to make it easier for him to escape into the mechanical room and also left some bird suet pellets as an added draw. He finally emerged through the television mount outlet opening and flew around from light fixture to beer sign to recessed lighting corner to curtain rod.

Once I got a window open in the pool table area, he heard the siren calls of the great outdoors and made his escape...without pooping save for one small smear on the hardwood floors!

While my quarantine task jar is filled with an overwhelming quantity of purple drudgery chore slips, they have continued to be somewhat elusive. Thus with another morning drawing last Thursday after morning coffee time by the fireside, it was the second green (yard task) in a row, following the one that I spent Monday through Wednesday on. But at least it was a pleasant and relatively non-taxing obligation: "Petunias." I couldn't get down to Lowe's until late afternoon Thursday, and then the weather turned and we got some rain that evening. Friday was dreary and then a bit blustery and cold. I didn't get to plant them until this past Saturday, but they are going to be lovely this summer!

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"Sous Vide Pork Chops," from J. Kenji López-Alt, Chief Culinary Consultant of SeriousEats.com. [Published 08 April 2016 / Updated 13 April 2020]

"Baked Sweet Potato Fries," from Tasty.

Apple Hand Pies

Well, last Sunday marked four weeks of drawing tasks from the Quarantine Task Jar. I'm pretty psyched at the accumulating stack of items that I've now tackled, while I suppose I should acknowledge that several of them are extensive and still, well, in process. (That's why a careful review of blog posts won't necessarily reveal an orderly task-a-day report.) Out of curiosity and as a bit of a status check, I took a moment with my Sunday morning coffee to do a quick tally of the drawn task slips:

1. Chores/Onerous Tasks (purple slips) = 9
2. Yard Tasks (green slips) = 7
3. Recipes/Relaxing Tasks (blue slips) = 8

Given that the task jar is overwhelmingly filled with those purple slips, I'm definitely intrigued about the underrepresentation of the harder chores in this summary at the end of four weeks. I guess I might begin to dread even more the next month since I can harbor diminishing hopes for pleasant indulgences to be the "chore" for upcoming days during this pandemic shut-down...so many purple sit waiting to be drawn! Much as I may not be excited about some of the chores that lurk in the bottom of the jar, I will again acknowledge the good fortune of my reasonably happy shut-down life: none of those slips will be as bad as having coronavirus.

So what task was drawn on the final Sunday of April? "Apple Hand Pies." Yet another recipe that I'd wanted to try out sometime...but it concerns me that the last seven draws have included only one purple...and three each of the green and blue. Well, those green yard tasks are a great thing since there was a stretch of good weather days. But those blues are not good for my waistline!

I depended on two recipes to pull these off, and it took Sunday evening and also carried over to Monday to finish up. The pastry crust was based on Dorie Greenspan's recipe, tweaked a bit by Laura Bolton of ForkKnifeSwoon.com, but boy howdy! it did not turn out very well. Admittedly, with the exception of the much more forgiving crust one might put on a chicken pan pie, I don't remember messing with from-scratch pie crust before so I'm sure I don't know what I'm doing.  Laura's approach to the sweet apple filling was disappointing and problematic as well, and it didn't hold together the way I'd imagined. So I fixed it by turning to Diana Rattray's approach, which I found much more satisfactory. And also probably sweeter!

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"Homemade Apple Hand Pies," from Laura Bolton of ForkKnifeSwoon.com.[Published 23 October 2013]

"Hand-Held Apple Pies," by Diana Rattray of TheSpruceEats.com. [Updated 10 September 2019]

Meal No. 2577: Tahlequah Tacos and Navajo Frybread

It's been over two years since I brought out this pretty awesome recipe for open-faced tacos, with deliciously-seasoned beef sitting atop Navajo frybread and topped with fresh chopped onion and tomato and dressed with cheese and sour cream. One is aplenty, and once every two years is not nearly enough.

Later that night (this was last Sunday, by the way), after watching the 1965 scifi horror flick Planet of the Vampires, I was able to serve up a creamy and delicious bowl of Vietnamese coffee ice cream. Dessert wasn't needed. Dessert was still consumed.

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"Indian Frybread and Indian Tacos" and "Crispy Beef Tacos," by Hilah Johnson. From HilahCooking.com.

"Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream," by David Lebovitz. In The Perfect Scoop. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press (2007), p. 35.