Three Bean Soup

 I made this 3 Bean soup using this recipe as a guide.  I used kidney beans, pinto beans and chickpeas as that is what I had on hand.  I also added a large potato cut into chunks.  It was very good.

Sunday Smiles - London Trees

 Linking to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

Winter Solstice

 It is cheering to think the days are getting longer now until the summer solstice.

Friday Art - Serra da Leba Mountain Range

 Welcome to Friday Art.  This is the Serra da Leba mountain range in Angola.  It showed up on my laptop screensaver.  I added a sunrise face.  ACEO (2 1/2" x 3 1/2").

Linking to Nicole's Friday Face Off and to Gillena's Art For Fun Friday.

Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date Elves and Baked eggplant

Welcome to Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date! The theme is 'Elves'. Here is my ACEO (2 1/2" x 3 1/2").

 For the Dinner Date, I baked some eggplant with onions, peppers and tomatoes.  I started adding tomatoes to the mix, it adds a delicious sweetness.

400F

3 long eggplants cut up

1 onion chopped

2 cloves garlic minced

1 tomato chopped

1 sweet pepper chopped

3-4 tbs olive oil

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, mix all ingredients together and bake in a pre heated 400F oven for 20-25 mins until the eggplants are softened.

Wednesday Memes

 

The Squirrel Problem

Squirrel's nest

 We had a squirrel in our garage a few weeks ago.   It was very stressful.  Husband M spread garlic powder, we put a radio on in the garage, tried banging on a pot to make some noise.  We opened the garage door partially learning that they go toward fresh air.  We even set a trap but in hindsight it was on the ground, it would have been better to place it higher up off the ground.  

We decided to call a pest control guy.  He took a video all around the garage, combing the rafters and showed it to us.  The squirrel had left!  He smelled all the garlic powder and thinks that could have driven him off.  But he did advise us to shake down the squirrel's nest in a nearby tree in the spring.  Who knew that was a squirrel's nest!

Anyway now we have peace of mind and think we know what to do if it happens again.  It is also a good idea to keep your garage door closed as much as possible.   In hindsight, we should have waited a bit longer and ensured for ourselves that the squirrel had left before deciding to call the pest control guy as that was not a free service.