1. I still had two rooms of linoleum that I never ripped out from last summer.

2. If we wanted to eat, we would have to grill.

So, I hauled the grill out of the barn and got a wonderful shot of some beautiful wildflowers that have suddenly sprung up all over the property.  While others might consider them to be a tad weed-like, I’m keeping them.

Beautiful Blue Wildflowers

The first morning sans stove I was pretty ambitious, I put some applewood smoked bacon on the grill which cooked up quicker than I thought but then suddenly it started to rain and even though I tried to cover the bacon as I was carrying it from outside to inside, it was cold and wet.  Yummy!

Grilling Bacon!

Luckily, the pancakes faired a tad better.  Since I never like to do anything really simple, I threw together a quick pancake batter but threw some fresh blueberries in to just kick it up a notch.  Oh, yeah, I also had real maple syrup that was tapped by a local guy down the road and which the local supermarket even sells.  How about that for a real-time CSA?

I Love Blueberry Pancakes

After my breakfast, I decided to tackle the really ugly linoleum in one of the bedrooms.  I mean really, who would even contemplate putting something this awful down on their bedroom floor?

Who Would Put This On Their Floor?

By the time I managed to rip it out, including lots of stubborn nails that were stuck in the floorboards, I thought about lunch.  It was still overcast and raining on and off, windy and a tad chilly.  I had purposely brought up some brat wurst, sauerkraut and even a package of pierogis for lunch or dinner but I decided I wanted them for lunch.  Yes, I know pierogis are Polish but they are heavy enough for me to be kind of an ersatz German food.

Brat Wurst and Pierogis

I like to boil my pierogis so I put on a pot of water on the side burner of the grill and waited and waited for the water to reach a slow boil.  Wow, this took a really long time! In the meantime, I threw the sausages on the grill and finally when the water began to bubble, I threw the pierogis in.

And yes, they were pretty darn good and filling and heavy but after all I felt I needed a bit of a reward for all that ugly linoleum ripping I had to contend with.