Forbidden Rice

The test quilt is coming along nicely. I have completed the front and the back, and now have to sandwich everything together with batting and then do the actual quilting. The piecing of the front was fun to do (and a little addictive). In the photo I have it spread out on my bed and I am putting in safety pins to pin all the layers together. The final step after the quilting is sewing on the binding strip to finish off the sides.

After work yesterday we decided to try canoeing. The water had come up a bit at our dock forming an S channel and we figured that Andrew could put on his hip waders and push me out a little ways, and then hop in himself. So that went as planned, but then when we got out to the beaver dam, we realized that the dam had in fact been holding in all this water, and behind the dam it was almost bone dry. We could see that a few of the docks in the distance were on dry land. So the dam is working for the beaver, and we have now have a marshy pond around our dock. There are little fish swimming and birds around too. We still haven't seen the beaver but the dam is in perfect shape, all patted down with lots of mud and sporting a grassy green top.

We have tried two new dishes lately, "Rasta Red Beans and Rice" and "Green Beans with Wild Rice". The red bean dish was a keeper, but for the green bean dish we used this Chinese Black Rice, also known as Forbidden Rice. It was a little weird in that it didn't cook up correctly (too wet) and turned everything black. You would not want a grain of this to fall on a white T-shirt. So I don't think we will be using that rice for awhile.

The weather has turned cooler, it should be around 80 degrees today rather than 90, and that makes all the difference. I think it will be a good gardening day and I can spread out mulch and do some weeding and watering. On Wednesday I started going to the gym in the mornings with Andrew since my membership is now active. I am doing 30 minutes on the treadmill (about 2 miles), 15 minutes of free weights for arms, chest and shoulders, and then 15 minutes of situps and stretching. So far so good, I am a little stiff today so working outside should help that. And I have lost 3 pounds but I think that is simply from all the sweating. We watched the movie "Syrianna" last night and it was good. Hard to follow though so you have to really pay attention. Andrew said "This style reminds me of that movie 'Traffic'", and then sure enough, it turns out that the writer/director of Syrianna is the same guy that wrote Traffic.