Tzaziki Sauce

We haven’t visited Greece yet, but it is on our travel wish list! We certainly adore Greek food. We had chicken pitas for dinner tonight, served up with homemade tzaziki. Using Greek yogurt, this recipe makes a great authentic sauce. You can substitute with regular yogurt, but you will have to drain it for several hours (using cheese cloth or coffee filters) to remove excess liquid.

Tzaziki Sauce

2 cups plain full-fat Greek yogurt
2 teaspoons fresh garlic, pureed
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 English cucumber, seeded and grated on large holes of grater
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

In a bowl, combine the yogurt, garlic, and ½ teaspoon salt. Sprinkle the remaining ½ teaspoon salt over the grated cucumber and drain, 10 to 15 minutes, to extract excess water. Add drained cucumber to yogurt, along with pepper, and mix well. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour. Yield: 2-½ cups.

Time for a Good Night's Sleep

Enough is enough! There are many things we have been postponing because we have been waiting until our homestead sold. Since the contingency contract expired a couple of months ago, we have lost our patience on maintaining the “someday” list. We need to get on with our lives and start crossing off items on the list.

Among the things we have postponed are a new mattress set and bed. Our current mattress set has been uncomfortable for several years now. We have used it long past its rated lifetime. Also, our bed is a lovely antique reproduction, acquired many years ago in Kentucky. But its height is too tall for me to easily get in and out of it, and I have to resort to using a footstool. After enduring my recent knee replacement surgery, I’ve had quite enough of that silliness.

It is time to get a good night’s sleep again.

So we went on a marathon shopping expedition today in a quest to improve a third of our 24-hour day. Success! We found what we wanted and orders have been placed. The mattress set will be delivered in a week and the bed will arrive in mid-September. Bring on the Zzzzz’s!

Walk in the Park

Instead of doing my usual at-home therapy exercises today, we took advantage of the nice weather and went for a short walk at a local park. It has a paved walking loop that is fairly level, so it was the destination of choice. In addition to lovely shade trees and benches, the park has a couple of delightful statues of children.

My stride is pretty hesitant and I have to actively think while I move, concentrating on walking steady and without a limp. The muscles supporting my new knee are still sore from all the abuse they have taken in the past two months. Maintaining my balance also remains a challenge. Progress is much too slow for my liking, of course! But I’m getting stronger, ever so slowly. Completing two loops (about a quarter of a mile) without a cane was a major accomplishment for me this afternoon!

Please celebrate if you have two steady legs that get you through the day. And don’t forget to stop and admire the beauty around you in your journeys!

Horsing Around with Photoshop Elements

Now that I have gotten well enough to sit a while at my desktop computer, I am teaching myself some more new tricks on Photoshop Elements. I am using multiple sources of information, including those that I discussed in a couple of June posts.
One web site that I recently discovered is Jessica Sprague, who specializes in digital scrapbooking. She offered a free online class for photo editing techniques for frame-ups and special effects, and I signed up to try it. I am more than halfway through the series of online videos for the class and have learned several new techniques. In addition to informative videos, her courses include some text instructions and digital support files for download. I believe that it would be best to have a little bit of Photoshop Elements experience before signing up for one of her online classes.
I have previously delved into creating altered photos by adding a textured layer. Some of you may remember the photos that I shared in my March 7, 2009, post for a photo challenge. Jessica Sprague’s class had me again venturing into this territory, this time using multiple texture layers on one image.
How cool is this? In my digital library, I had this image of one of my horse neighbors…

And I transformed it into this antiqued image within a few short minutes!

Another web source I have found very helpful is Rick Peterson’s Essential Photoshop Elements. I found this fellow’s site through Twitter. It includes useful handy tips, tutorials, and instructive videos. His information has aided me already. For example, I didn’t know about Element’s “magic extractor” tool. But I followed his video and was able to put the knowledge to use immediately. The web site is relatively new and Rick is adding more features to it on a regular basis. If you are new to using Photoshop Elements, make sure that you visit his web site!

Photo Challenge: A View from Above

Time for a new Brenda Photo Challenge! The theme is A View from Above. Our current challenge hostess, Charmine of Travel It's Fun, picked the theme. Thank you, Charmine! For this challenge, I am featuring some aerial pictures of the Lake Powell area, near Page, Arizona. In a couple of June 2008 posts, I shared other aerial photos of this landscape and also Monument Valley.

This shows the terrain to the south of Lake Powell, upon our return from Monument Valley. The photo was taken at f/7.1 and 1/200 second.

The escarpments around the Lake Powell coastline are quite dramatic. The camera settings were f/5 and 1/320 second.

In the foreground, an inlet snakes its way toward Powell Lake. The contrast in colors between the terra cotta topography and the deep blue water is quite spectacular from the air. The photo was taken at f/8 and 1/250 second.

Doing Fine!

I can’t go far in my photo jaunts right now, but I can at least take a close-up picture for you of a pretty geranium bloom next to the front porch!

I had the knee manipulation procedure at the hospital yesterday, along with a cortisone shot. I am happy to report that everything went well! I got out of the day surgery complex in record time and was able to relax the rest of the day with elevating and icing the knee joint. I went to physical therapy this morning, within 24 hours of the procedure. I did better on my knee flexing and with much less pain! It is plenty sore this evening from the workout, but it is a different kind of soreness than before. The joint is more swollen temporarily, and I am modifying my exercises for a few days to give it a partial rest. I can already tell that some scar tissue has broken up, and the kneecap area pulls less when I walk.

Thank you for all of your good wishes and prayers! For the first time since the replacement surgery, I see a ray of hope that I may get back closer to the life that I used to have. We’ll see what progress I can achieve in the next couple of weeks!

Special Announcement

I will be going into the hospital for an outpatient procedure on Thursday. I will have a knee manipulation to alleviate scar tissue and get increased range of motion of the joint (fingers crossed). I will also be getting a jolt of cortisone to reduce inflammation. No knives and bleeding will be involved, LOL, but I will need to be put to sleep and there are other risks. I would appreciate your prayers for a successful procedure and no complications. Thank you!

August - A Look Ahead

We have had strange summer weather this year with moderate temperatures and an abundance of rain. I dread typical August weather here in the south, so my fingers are crossed for mercy. The vegetable garden has not fared very well, but we are still picking and eating some fresh produce. A couple rows of sunflowers are blooming on one end of the garden, and sweet hubby drove me out there for a brief photo shoot earlier this week. Very few daylily blooms remain now, but the vincas along the front walk are providing vibrant color. The crepe myrtles are also showing their beautiful blooms right now. Thanks to the unusual summer rainfall, the grass is lush and full. It has never looked so good in August before! Unfortunately, the additional mowing has added to hubby’s outdoor chore list.

Of course, my entire life right now revolves around my healing and rehabilitation from total knee surgery six weeks ago. The joint remains painful and stiff, annoying me 24-7. Fatigue has been a problem also. I continue to do my physical therapy exercises at home, and I have just a few more sessions scheduled with a therapist. I will be seeing the doctor next week for a follow-up office visit. I walk around the house without a cane, but still use it when I venture out. I don’t have good enough range of motion and strength yet for stairways. I can now comfortably go out for short errands, and it is great to finally have a few diversions. I have learned how to use electric carts and terrorized a few people at the grocery store during my first lesson, LOL! Sweet hubby has been doing a wonderful job taking care of me, the cottage, and the acreage. Three cheers for him!

One day, I hope to get my old life back. In the meantime, I am frustrated. Plain and simple. Straight up. Unless someone has gone through this surgery, there is really no way for them to truly understand. Those who have endured it all agree that it is worse than any other previous surgical procedure. I was literally hit by a Mack truck in my 20s, and I sustained multiple fractures. Recovery from that was a piece of cake compared to this knee replacement.

There is no progress to report on selling our cottage. One couple was really interested in it last month, but they wanted to commit highway robbery on the price. We don’t expect or ever want to see them again. Except for the low end of the housing market where first-time buyers are taking advantage of the $8000 tax credit, buyers are still primarily sitting on the fence. So we continue with our marathon waiting game.

I have not felt good enough lately to do anything creative, but perhaps I will get out of my funk this month. I have a few stitching projects lined up, and I need to make some more handmade cards. Hopefully, a little creative inspiration and energy will come to me as I continue to heal and my spirit is lifted. I plan to teach myself some new Photoshop tricks this month, now that I can sit a little longer in my computer chair. I have been reading up on some Photoshop Element features that I have never used, and it will be fun to try them out. If I create something really cool, I’ll be sure to share it with all of you!

P.S. Thank you to all of my dear friends who have provided encouragement and support. God bless you.

Photo Challenge: Keeping Cool

Time for a new Brenda Photo Challenge! The theme is Keeping Cool. Our current challenge hostess, Judy of The Road to Here, picked the theme. Thank you, Judy! For this challenge, I am going to take you on a little virtual trip to a magical spot in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada! The destination is Mount Edith Cavell, located in the Athabasca and Astoria River valleys and a few miles south of the town of Jasper. The mountain was named in 1916 for Edith Cavell, an English nurse executed by the Germans during World War I for helping allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium to the Netherlands.

When we went on a Canadian Rockies and heli-hiking tour in 2005, we took advantage of a free afternoon and headed up with a local guide to see the grandeur of Mount Edith Cavell up-close. What better way to cool off in the summer than to head to the mountains for a little hike? As we wound around narrow gravel road leading up the base of the mountain, we were greeted with this spectacular view of the north face, reaching up 3363 meters to the sky. The photograph was taken at f/10 and 1/320 second.

Once we parked the vehicle and began our hike on the pebbled trail, we could see some of the valley below the mountain and also peek at the glacier tucked into the right-hand side of the mountain. The camera settings were f/9 and 1/320 second.

As we got closer, we were treated to a good view of Angel Glacier, which spills over 300 meters on the north face cliff. More than an angel, the glacier reminded me of a white dove, with its outstretched wings. The photograph was taken at f/10 and 1/320 second.

The Path of the Glacier Trail led us down to the Cavell Lake, sitting at the base of the mountain. The lake gets its turquoise color from the concentration of glacial silt. The air temperature was noticeably cooler as we descended into the valley. The camera settings were f/10 and 1/400 second.

When we reached the lake’s edge, we saw many “bergy bits” floating in the lake. We paused to enjoy this remote and treasured spot of natural beauty, and breathed in the cool mountain air. The photograph was taken at f/10 and 1/400 second.

After a brief rest, we strolled back down the trail and admired the green valley and mountain peaks in the distance. The camera settings were f/9 and 1/320 second.

I hope that this little photographic jaunt helped to cool you off!