Tuesday, June 17, 2008

I'm Growing Things We Can Actually Eat!


We finally have a garden this year which I am really excited about! I love the idea of buying seed packets for like $1 and saving probably hundreds of dollars by the time we finish out the summer with our own fruits, veggies and herbs. It's like "CVSing" only not really.

Tonight we had fresh romaine lettuce and some kind of odd hot pepper, both from the garden. I decided that store bought salad dressing was not worthy of my fresh lettuce, so in true "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" (insert Melissa for "Mouse" and "Home Grown Lettuce" for "Cookie") fashion I made some delicious balsamic vinaigrette with fresh basil and oregano from my herb garden. It led to a variety of other "special" things for dinner like bread on the grill with olive oil and spices and I found a bag of shrimp in the freezer for this worthy occasion. I even took a picture of the lettuce, but I'm not actually going to post it because it is just lettuce (although, it looks quite amazing in my Pampered Chef Salad Spinner). I was just a little caught up in it all.....

After The Husband commented my vinaigrette looked like diarrhea (I just LOVE him) we sat down to a feast worthy of Little House on the Prairie except that I didn't actually kill and de-feather the chicken we grilled, nor did I grow the Smiley Fries. But, it definitely made me proud to eat food I grew in my own backyard! The conversation was quite entertaining as well since somehow we began discussing shrimp organs to which #1 has decided to never eat another shrimp again. At the mention of shrimp testicles my grandmother burst out laughing. I'm fairly certain that is the only time she ever heard that particular body part mentioned at the dinner table. And, in case you were wondering......

.....the Diarrhea Vinaigrette was fabulous!!

Tomorrow....broccoli. Perhaps I will decide it is too worthy of being merely steamed in the microwave and I'll have to find some kind of special broccoli soufflé recipe for it. I'll try not to dedicate an entire post to it. You can thank me later.

4 comments:

Kelli said...

That is so cool! I would love to grow my own lettuce and broccoli. Maybe next year. :)

@pril G said...

Hey Girlfriend! I haven't read your incredible blog in a while, but I just got caught up. Your family is cool, your writing is great, your thoughts are inspiring... It's ALMOST as good as having a lunch date with you!
This weekend at church Pastor D is going to announce that my husband and I will be overseeing the Young Adult ministry. If he calls friends & family down to pray over us (and he'd better) I would be so honored to have you and Jay run down to the front & lay your mighty praying hands on us. Pretty please?

Beautiful Grace said...

OK, now I will have to call you Caroline Ingals, you pioneer!

We planted our garden last Saturday this year...way late, but at least we did it! :)

Promises said...

You are truly amazing - always busy and always a smile! :) That is so cool that you are growing your own garden - maybe even better than CVSing in some ways, b/c you are getting food for close to free! Go you! We have some tomato plants that people have given to us, but that is all this year. We do get organic veggies from an organic farm - yum!