The Cooking Continues

Kiernan and I have been spending some quality time in the kitchen. Here he is mixing some serious sprinkles while I prepared an italian sausage cassoulet with lots of vegetables on Monday night. On Tuesday - while making sloppy joes from scratch (no Manwich - and I incorporated mushrooms, which Mike can barely notice), Kiernan used our salad spinner to mix up some sunflower seeds. I do not recommend this to anyone. You will be getting sunflower seeds out of your salad spinner for some time. This is less than ideal. However - it did occupy some time while I was waiting for some Guiness Bread with Molasses to finish baking so I could 'paint' it with butter. Mmmm.


As for gardening: We surveyed the backyard on Saturday morning and have come to some conclusions about planting. We are going to use several containers set up near our back patio. One will have carrots & beets. Another will have tomatoes, basil, and maybe cilantro (unless it is a bad idea to put basil and cilantro together -- trying to figure that one out). And finally, one will have lettuce, onions, and radishes (and possibly more tomatoes).

Hopefully it will not snow this weekend so we can spend the time we are not watching basketball outside!

This might also become a blog about food...

I've been inspired to cook (not just bake - which I have always enjoyed - but actually cook). Some of you (like my husband, mother, sister) might be a little skeptical about how long this cooking thing will last. As part encouragement/trick to keep myself honest - I'll try to post things I've recently cooked. And hopefully by the middle of summer, we will have our very own vegetables to add to the mix.

Yesterday - I made a spinach and sweet potato salad with warm bacon dressing and carrot soup for dinner followed by a lemon tart. All from scratch - I even made the vegetable broth for the soup.

Tonight - I made a spanish tortilla from an old Eating Well magazine. There was a small disaster when I attempted to flip the egg mixture, but it all worked out in the end and even looked a bit like the picture in the magazine (operative phrase = "a bit"). And Kiernan ate his piece like a pro. Kiernan also ate an after school snack and a bedtime snack. That might be a little more snacking than usual, but he cannot eat after midnight until post-ear tube procedure tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. We are wondering what is going to happen at 6 when he first asks for his "brefas."

Finally - nice weather!

What a beautiful weekend! On a little walk yesterday with Kiernan, I noticed that many people have already managed to mulch their flower beds even though we still had snow early last week. I am not that person...

However, Kiernan has been reading his gardening book from Grandpa Bob and Grandma Linda, and we purchased some seeds for planting. With the information from you all - we should have a plan in the next week or so and will get started! Thanks!

Perhaps Mar's small fencing idea will work to keep Woodrow out of the garden so we do not have to do container gardening especially as I keep thinking in larger and larger terms for this garden (I really need to reign myself in a bit). Our neighbor Jim is a seasoned gardener, so I will enlist his advice as well. Certainly Jim has saved our annuals from devastation on more than one occasion.

For this week: Mike is checking into a compost system for our household and I will make some final decisions on plotting and planting. And I will mulch the flower beds. I also happen to be listening to Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and he is currently talking about vegetable gardens (however, his modest garden is still 10' by 20'). Good timing, audio-book.