The last meal...

Onion soup ready to go in the oven for melting and browning

... on the old stove. It was onion soup. I had some beef broth that I made a couple of days ago when I was cooking meat to make a Mexican shredded beef dish with tomatoes and hot peppers. So to make soup I bought 1½ lbs. of onions, sliced them up, and cooked them in butter on low heat for about an hour. Then I poured on the broth and voilà, it was soupe à l'oignon.

Soupe à l'oignon gratinée

Gratinée. That is, with what we call "dead bread" and some grated Emmental cheese. We save stale bread to make crumbs, bread pudding, or, in this case, onion soup with bread and melted cheese on top.

Callie trying to figure out what is going on

It was a good meal to cook with the old stove, one last time. We had to eat, after all. We had spent the morning cutting back blackberry brambles that were threatening to pull down our light-weight fence in the far corner of the back yard. My arms are all scratched up.

Looking from the vineyard into our back yard
— now you can see in because the brambles are gone

Take my word for it, the blackberry brambles were up to the top, and growing over, this fence, which you can hardly see in the picture. I cut a lot of them with limb loppers and pruning shears. Then Walt got the big weed-eater working with the heavy-duty blade, not the string thing, attached, and he ran through a lot of blackberries and other weeds in short order.

Resting on the deck after a hard day
whacking blackberry brambles

Anyway, the stove is pulled out, a microwave meal is planned for lunchtime, and the new stove is supposed to be delivered this afternoon. We have bought bottles of butane, the flexible tubing to connect one bottle to the stove, and we are ready. Tomorrow I will cook something in a frying pan on a gas burner, just to try it out.

Eiffel Tower shadows on the living room wall

The weather was great yesterday. Today is supposed to be sunny and even hot, but rain is coming in tonight. Tomorrow, we will see. It will be showery, I expect. The garden can use the water. Walt has to cut the grass today, in advance of the rain. We love summer, but there's a lot of work that has to be done while the weather is good.