Gardening, cooking and movies

Its been busy since I got back from Germany.  Our garden is coming along nicely and since my travel has returned to normal levels I have been spending a lot more time in the kitchen trying out new things.

I started with just some herbs wanting fresh parsley, dill, chives, marjoram, basil and fennel for cooking. Hubby got me these cute baskets and they grew great in our enclosed porch.

 
While at a hotel on the road I saw on one of the morning shows how to use cinder blocks for thinks like an herb garden.  I thought that would be an awesome idea and hubby and I set out to figure out how to best put them outside.

We figured left and right from the stairs would be great. We have great sun exposure there.

 After some consideration hubby moved 2 of our bushes to each side and sprayed the stones green and placed them outside as borders.

The plants did really well with the move and are growing stronger. I love that all I had to do for some basil for Monday's pizza was to step outside and pick it.










Once I saw how well the herbs were coming in the porch I decided I wanted some Cherry tomatoes as well. I used some plastic cups we had for the seeds.

Once they were strong enough we moved them outside. A few went into the the topsy turvey grower and the rest we planted in buckets.

Wonder why we use buckets? For one our soil is very sandy plus we have lots of cute wild bunnies in the front yard. This way everything is up higher and out of their reach. We also decided to grow some beans they are in the white buckets.



While we were at Lowes i saw this cute little put with 2 watermelon plants. I just had to have it. Its has grown so much. I wish I had a picture from when it was little and cute - when i put it in the bucket below it was dwarfed by it. Now its spreading out and I hope to get some Melons out of it.

 So with all this potential success, I decided we should try a few more things - so we got seeds for cucumbers and sugar peas. The Cucumbers came up really fast but the sugar saps are catching up


 The other fun time for me is cooking I love making things from scratch. Last weekend I went up to Zina's Produce to get some more eggs (we have a beef and egg CSA with her) and when I saw the yummy veggies and strawberries I could not help myself. I had gotten asparagus, potatoes, zucchini and squash as well as some strawberries and peaches.

 Hubby's dinner was steak (grass fed from our CSA) new potatoes and asparagus. He loved it almost as much as his dessert.

Fresh Strawberries on a tortlette with sweetened cream cheese.

I made a version of stuffed squash/zucchini casserole for Sundays dinner. I had left over mushroom risotto and I mixed it with some sausage (so hubby can have his protein) and topped with cheese.

I can't wait for our summer produce share to start. 2 more weeks. Getting lots of yummy produce and fruit from local farmers will be awesome. Plus we'll get recipes too so we can try new things. 

Speaking of new things, whenever we have bananas that are about to go bad I usually throw them in the freezer to use them later for baking or smoothies ... . Well I hadn't done either in a while and hubby was asking me the other day when I was planning to use these. I didn't want to run out for ingredients so I looked online to see what I could make where I had all ingredients. I was losing hope when I came across this website that talked about 1 ingredient ice cream. The one ingredient being banana.

Hubby loves ice cream but I usually do not buy it. So with him having been super busy in the yard I figured that would be a great treat. I made a few bananas and added a peach and put it in the food processor until smooth.

Since I still had some bananas in the freezer and an open bag of wild berries I thought that mixture would be awesome too. See below for yourself.

I guess we'll be having more Ice cream in my house - but this kind which is only made out of fruit no sugar or dairy added. Delicious and healthy and so easy to make. So next time you have some fruits you can't eat in time - freeze them and you can make them into ice cream.

Last but not least. If you like horror movies or just want to support one? How about checking out Mr. Quiet. 

I have known JDC for a few years now and am so excited for this project. I hope it comes together fast and the way he wants it. Fun fact - due to my donation I get to be part of the victim pool. How cool right. 

So go pledge a $1 or $2 and promote (there is a chance of the sweetbox of Ms Jin)

Keep your fingers crossed

I have a little but very important request - please keep your fingers crossed for tomorrow (Dec11) - someone very dear to me is having brain surgery which will determine if she can have the surgery that would "cure" her epilepsy and allow her to live a normal life. Erin was the youngest of the kids whose Au pair I used to be many years ago.If you want to read her story got to http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/eringard you will have to register but its free. Erin does read the messages in the guestbook too.

December 1st

Well its that time of the year again - when you hear about HIV/AIDS again. To bad this does not happen throughout the year. There are still people being infected every year in a disease that we know how to prevent infection. That is very disturbing to me. I have lost a lot of people to this disease in the early years. These days with the medication out people can live long lives - if they can afford the meds and tolerate the side effects. I find it sad that these days people accuate HIV with having diabetes and so do not take the precautions they should as they dont see at as an automatic death sentence anymore. While I think its great we can treat the infection I still think preventing it in the first place is more important. So lets remember those that died and are still dying all over the world.