Garden Update.

So I here is the long awaited (at least by me) garden update.Above you can see from left to right. Lettuce that has gone to seed, see you next year, tomatoes that didn't find a spot on the drip line and on the right, foreground banana pepper and eggplant in the back.
This is the daughters sole surviving sunflower. Doing pretty well eh?

In the front are the recently planted carrots. I am hoping that they have a little size by september. I rolled back the weed matting and then replaced the poorly producing hot peppers with these guys. Further down the line you can see the tomatoes starting to really climb the twine. Everything in that grassy area in the middle is weeds weeds weeds. Oh bother.

For dinner this evening the wife decided to make her japanese potato croquettes or Korokke. Fabulous. She didn't deep fry them this evening she just pan fried them. I don't think she even used oil. So fabulous and not horrible for you. Double happiness.

The rest of dinner consisted of guacamole with tomato chunks and rice wrapped in nori. They were not photographed as I was busy consuming.

For lunch we had a nice vegetable soup and broth. Ask my daughter about it. She made it. I'm impressed.

The best laid plans

My sister and brother in law had made plans to stop here for the night on their way to a holiday in the Okanogan. My wife and I had made plans to fete them with a feast. We made home made fresh salsa. The wife whipped up her famous korokke and I brought out the pizza oven. The salsa was grand with some pureed apple and some mashed up avocado. My friends mini purple hot hot peppers added just the right amount of picante. The korokke were baked this evening rather than deep friend and were just as delicious and much healthier. For the pizza I tried the technique my wife brought home from her day job. Instead of making a pizza sauce I just pureed some of our tomatoes, strained off the juice and put them right on the dough. This was followed by cheese and then toppings or toppings and then cheese depending on how I felt. The toppings included bbq chicken, onion, mushroom, hot peppers, feta cheese, arugula and pineapple. There was no all in pizza. The kids ate pineapple and chicken and the adults had various combinations of the aforementioned ingredients. Of course the guests were already quite full when they got here as they had had a long day and had to eat something before they rolled in. That is quite all right and I hold no grudge. They did try some of everything and gave it all a thumbs up which felt pretty nice. We didn't even crack a bottle of wine which for those of you in the know shows just how tired and full they must have been when they got here. After a nice evening talking music, poker, schooling, our bun in the oven and various other topics everyone has now hit the hay. To which I will add myself directly. Hopefully we get some pics of breakfast tomorrow. Later.

Mayonaise (said like "Newman")

Well that is the last time we buy fat-free mayo- nnaise. I mean it sounds like an oxymoron to begin with but I am sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. We have been trying to use it up in our normal salad dressings, dips, sandwiches and such but it just doesn't cut it. We keep wondering why we are mildly dissatisfied with some of the dishes we make and there it is sitting on the top left door shelf staring us in the face. PC fat-free mayonnaise. In the light blue jar. Fortunately, it did not ruin this evenings entire meal. Te-maki (hand roll) sushi is a cornucopia of toppings set out on the table and then you, the eater, get to choose the different roll combinations you like. I like the working mans sandwich, cheese, ham, cucumber and carrot. I usually put a little mayonnaise on this but not tonight! In Japan I would use the cupid mayonnaise that comes in the squeeze bottle. So very handy, and cute. Ah the Japanese. Getting back to the rolls, the mayonnaise was mixed with canned tuna and onion for a tuna salad roll, nice with a few shreds of lettuce (noticeably but forgivably absent this evening). However, this evenings version was just a little off. The shrimp rolls were lovely and the umeboshi (salted sour plums) were spot on. We also had some garlic fried bok-choy which was nice but just didn't compare to the rolls. I was forced into taking a second helping when my wife gave me that hurt, you don't like this face and then said "don't you like this?" It was nice but it brings me to the problem with Te-maki. They are so small that one tends to not realize how much they have eaten until they are well overfed. Fearing this I didn't want to fill up on bok-choy but in the end marital bliss (okay harmony, well at least it isn't war) won out over an extra roll. By the way we got a shot of the last surviving koroke. Sure must be lonely sitting on the plate all alone, waiting for one of us to swoop down and devour it. Who will it be... who will it be....

Planning is progressing on next weeks menu and shopping list. We are going to try for a fourth week of no repeats. It may be tough. Stay tuned.