In addition to the painting yesterday we had a delivery of a bunch of new laminate flooring from Home Depot. We are replacing all the carpet upstairs (it’s fairly worn and both Daniel and I should have fewer allergy problems with it gone). Jason plans to go behind me and do the flooring in each room as I move on to painting in the next. I’ll finish up Daniel’s room today and it should be ready for flooring by the time the flooring has acclimated to the room. The fellows also came and tore down the deck yesterday and began to lay the stones for the steps. They poured concrete as well which worries me a little since it rained all night.

I have really high cholesterol so I often try to work in heart healthy foods when I cook. I’ve never liked oatmeal but I’ve finally found a palatable way to eat oats for breakfast.

Not Oatmeal

1 peach, peeled, pitted and sliced
1/2 cup fat free vanilla yogurt
2 tablespoons walnuts
1/4 cup oats

Combine yogurt and fruit in a bowl. Dry roast nuts and oats in a small fry pan until they begin to brown, remove from heat. Sprinkle nuts and oats over fruit and yogurt mixture.

In the midst of everything else going on yesterday, I also made some beef stock in preparation for tonight’s dinner.

Beef Stock

beef marrow bones
4 small onions
4 carrots
4 stalks celery
1 bunch thyme
1 bunch parsley
4 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon peppercorns
2 bay leaves
mushroom stems
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 450 F. Cut onions in half (leaving skins on) and place in pan with bones and carrots. Roast 45-60 minutes or until well browned. Transfer to stove top add remaining ingredients and fill pan with water. Bring to a simmer. Simmer several hours, strain and refrigerate overnight. Remove solidified fat with a spoon. Freeze in ice cube trays.

Emma’s sweater is still coming along although slower since most of the time I’m working on the painting. The first sleeve is complete and the second begun with only a few small seams remaining. We were expecting some nasty T-storms last night so rather than bring the sweater to knitting I cast on some socks for another birthday gift. These are the Go With the Flow socks from the summer Interweave ’05 on size 1 DPNs using Lana Grossa Fantasy.