Girl's Night In

Who is hiding behind that Japanese Maple tree?

Future Farmer Anni on her garden swing.

The weather turned back to liquid Seattle sunshine (aka rain!) today, but we got in lots of planting over the past few days. Here's one of our coplanted beds; potatoes, onions, radishes, marigolds, and broccoli rabe.

Pots full of radishes and heirloom lettuce mixes.

Future Brussel sprouts.

Future blueberries.

Anni and I built a blackberry trellis yesterday. She liked crawling underneath with Barkley.

The dogwood tree is finally flowering.

Ari harvested Rhubarb yesterday morning. We made an apple rhubarb crumble for dessert. Yum! Today was farmer's market day. The finds of the week were lovely French radishes, fresh crab bisque soup, locally caught tuna, fresh pepper cheese, and blackberry honey. Hmm!

Tonight we decided to have a girl's night in. We cooked a roast leg of lamb served with mint jelly and spicy mustard, fresh peas in minted butter, and roasted potatoes with pearl onions. The presence of lamb meant the boys quickly exited. They hate lamb! (more for us!)

The girls eagerly awaiting dinner.

Dinner arrives. Delish!

Salad days!

The sun has managed to shine for two consecutive days. It will be a spring record if it makes it to three tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed.

Today was definitely a garden day! The new spinach seedlings are cozying up to the strawberry plants. The potato bed also hosts onions, greens, broccoli rabe, rainbow chard, and marigolds. The cilantro and chives are hanging out. In the center of the garden, two beds are growing combos of corn, squash, cukes, radishes, marigolds, and ground cherries. The tomatoes are coplanted with carrots, marigolds, collard greens, squash, and onions. The herbs are sharing space with cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, and Brussel sprouts. Peas are end bedded by herbs and marigolds. Tucked between the beds are big pots of radishes, lettuce, and seedlings, and tucked around these are pots of flowers and in ground berry bushes. Today, we did lots of transplanting to the garden (finally!) and we started some new seeds; bush beans, asparagus beans, lettuce, radish, nasturtium flowers. We also potted up tomato, eggplant, and basil plants. Tomorrow, it's time to weed again (groan).

Today's lunch was from the garden, the twenty foot diet; fresh spinach and multi lettuce leaves with tender young radishes and chives. Here's a recipe for my favorite, extremely versatile salad dressing:

EXTREMELY VERSATILE SALAD DRESSING:
Makes enough for 2 small salads or 1 large one.

1/2 teaspoon favorite mustard (I like Dijon, but spicy brown, herbal, Chinese, and English also work depending on the salad)
1 Tablespoon favorite vinegar (I usually use white wine or rice, but all types work as does any acidic fresh juice, like lemon or lime)
2 Tablespoon favorite light oil (I favor olive, but walnut, hazelnut, avocado, canola, and peanut also work depending on your dish)
Pepper and salt
Seasoning of your choice

How to:
1) Put mustard and vinegar in small deep bowl. Whisk together
2) Slowly add oil while whisking.
3) Add seasonings and pour over your salad

Need some combo ideas:
Red wine vinegar, English mustard, walnut oil, S+P, rosemary on a salad with leftover roast beef.
Seasoned rice vinegar, Chinese mustard, 1/2 tsp soy sauce, peanut oil on Asian salads.
White wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, olive oil, S+P on salad with tuna fish.
Lemon juice, Dijon mustard, olive oil, S+P on salad with asparagus
White wine vinegar, Spicy brown mustard, canola oil, S+P, sage on salad with chicken
And so on and so on....'

Enjoy!

Pasta and Hair:no, not together!

Anni and I got out the Pasta machine this week. She took it to her cooking group. The kids made three types of pasta noodles; whole wheat linguine, garlic spaghetti, and basil fettuccini. We also ran a batch of dough through the machine at home.

Here come the noodles. How do you make noodles? Flour, eggs, salt, olive oil, and water make the basic noodles. If you want to get fancy (and face it, who doesn't occasionally?) throw in some herbs and spices. Fresh noodles cook really quickly and are delish!

Drying the pasta on the noodle tree.

In other news, our local farmer's market opened up for the season. We found lovely rhubarb, broccoli rabe, potatoes, cucumbers, and radishes. Congrats to our favorite sauce maker who just won a gold medal at the world mustard championships. (who knew there were world mustard championships!) Our market also has very talent local artist who sell everything from hand thrown pottery to jewelry to wooden inlay pens and so much more. Our current fav is a sweet gal who makes pendents from scrabble tiles.

After a week of cough, sniff, and achoo, I decided it was time for a new -do.

This one is a reverse bob, longer in the front than back with bangs.

I like this cut. It works with my natural state of curliness,

and that makes me happy. Less time with the hair drier!

Now, what to do with all that extra time. I know, I'll write another story! Hmm...

Pineapple Street

Today's dinner is brought to you by the letter P for Pineapple fruit. Why the pineapple? Because they're in season (from Hawaii), and we had a very ripe one sitting on the kitchen counter, just begging to be used.

So, every dish we had for dinner used, you guessed it, fresh pineapple. Hmm, how to plan the menu. I know Hawaiian sliders (mini burgers) with fresh green pepper, onion, and pineapple worked into the patty, served up with tropical breeze rice (rice with coconut and pineapple), and veggie kabobs (featuring fresh peppers, onion, zucchini, and pineapple). Now what did we have for dessert? You guessed it! A truly decadent pineapple upside-down cake. Absolutely delish! And we used the whole pineapple!

We said a sad goodbye to Waltzing Maltilda this weekend. She danced her last dance on Saturday after a brief illness. She is buried under the pine tree next to Dusty Cat. Speaking of germy things, Anni and I have both been battling wicked lack-of-spring colds. Pass the kleenex. And a heaping dose of sunny!

The rainy season is just refusing to let up here in the Seattle area. My warm weather plants (tomatoes, cukes, squashes, pumpkins, peppers, eggplants) are growing like crazy in the greenhouse, but it's too cold and wet to set them out in the garden. Meanwhile down in the garden, the rhubarb, peas, spinach, and strawberries are loving life.

Yesterday was Mother's Day. Ari had a work training which I needed to take her to; so I caught a movie and had sushi with my friend Lisa. The future farmers came through with flowers (my whole house smells like roses and lilies), chocolates, and a venti coffee as soon as my eyes pried themselves opened in the morning.

Gardenalicious

Last Thursday, I took a trip to Seattle to take care of some business, and on the way back I made a pilgrimage through Pioneer Square to Pike Place Market. I found some nifty new reading glasses at the square and these wonderful fresh clams at the market. They became dinner. Yum!

Saturday, we woke to sunshine - Yea! and it stuck around for Sunday too! This meant it was garden time! We drove out to one of our favorite nurseries for an eggplant starter, 2 more tomatoes, some some squash, and some very special berry bushes. I found a black current bush and a jostaberry bush! "What's a jostaberry?" you ask. It's a cross between a black current and a gooseberry. I can hardly wait for it to grow! Next, we headed to the dirt section for more organic garden soil, organic soil amenders, and organic potting soil. Then we headed home to plant, transplant, seed, and generally have lost of fun in the dirt. The carrots we direct sowed to the garden beds are beginning to peek through.

Today, I transplanted the three blueberry bushes to the front of the greenhouse. They weren't too happy hanging out behind it. Next, it was time to weed around the raspberry and loganberry bushes. Then, since I was already into weeding, I went for it in all the planting beds, separating out the dandelions for the chickens. They love those things. I transplanted the broccoli rabe seedlings to a window box in the garden and some lettuce seedlings to a big pot in the garden. We want to attract bees to the garden for pollination, so we seeded sunflowers, marigolds, pansies, nasturtium, big pots of wild flowers, and several flowering vines. We had a bumper return of lupine from last year which is great as the buzzies love them. My final garden task for the day was to round up the chickens and harvest chives. Then I had to go inside. Boo.