Friday, May 7, 2010

Pies and Drama

Ok, I have a confession to make.  I'm afraid of pie crusts.  Not eating them (for the most part, but man, I've had some BAD ones!), but making them.  This weekend for Mother's Day, I threw out the idea that I make some sort of baked good and buy a plant for Jeff's mom.  He agreed, but suggested a pie of some sort.  "But I've never made a pie crust!" I told him.
"So, just make one, it's easy," he tells me.
"No it's not! Have you ever made one?"
"Yeah, it wasn't that hard."
"When did you make a pie crust?"
"I don't know, I was still living at home and we didn't have any pie crusts, so I called my mom, and she said, 'Just make one', so I did."
"..." (this is my reaction of shock and disbelief)
"What?"
"Um, nothing, I'm just surprised is all," I said.

So, I'm still not convince that pie is a good idea.  I'm not sure I like the idea of my first pie crust being for a person who makes excellent pie crusts.  Oh, I didn't mention that?  Yeah, my MIL makes probably the best homemade pie crusts that I've ever eaten.
Now, I know I'm a good cook, and my baking skills are improving, but I'm not sure I'm ready for a pie crust.  Maybe I can convince Jeff to do the crust, then if it goes wrong, I can blame him!  Is that wrong?

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The Fruits our Our Labor

I love having a garden.  This is our second year and we decided to double the size because we enjoyed it so much last year.  About a month ago I put in lettuce and spinach, and a whole bunch of onions.  There was also an "incident" involving 3 broccoli plants and a small rodent.  One plant disappeared, one was eaten all the way to the ground, and one was completely stripped of all of its leaves.  Thankfully, the one that got stripped, actually survived, so we're going to get a little broccoli this year.  Then this past weekend, we got 2 tomato plants, 1 bell pepper, 1 jalepeno, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans and sugar snap peas.  We also put some parsley, basil and "lime" thyme in a container.  The lime thyme smells fantastic, I can't wait to use it!  I've also thrown some fancy mint in one of my flower beds, since they're perennials, candy mint and chocolate mint, these will be great for teas!  We're also trying out a watermelon plant and some strawberries.  My husband picked out the watermelon, we'll see how that goes, it's supposed to grow 20 pound melons!  Knowing our luck, which, usually tends to be good when it comes to the garden, we'll have a dozen watermelons and not know what to do with them!!

We're already starting to get lettuce and spinach for salads.  There is just nothing better in a salad than fresh baby lettuces and spinach.  Look how pretty that is!
Just a simple salad with grape tomatoes and blue cheese, I could eat this every day!
I'm also about a week into trying to be more active and eating less.  I'm doing pretty well.  I've walked 3 times and we went diving this weekend, which counts for swimming.  I'm also trying to eat smaller portions.  I've tried eating better and eating less, but I don't have the willpower to do both, apparently.  I just don't do well with being hungry!