Though transforming the backyard has been a LOT of work, it's been totally worth it.  It's been a very tasty few months for sure.


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Kahlil Gibran once said, " We live only to discover beauty.  All else is waiting."  Well, last night, on my birthday and during the full moon, the waiting was over.  Our night blooming cereus cactus finally opened in all its fragrant glory.   What an incredible birthday gift!


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The days are longer and warmer.  The trees are beginning to blossom.  And the pollen is seriously kicking my ass.  But there is no surer sign that spring has sprung than this photo I captured in my garden.


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Just before the rains hit this past weekend, I harvested the remaining fruit off my San Marzano bushes.   Though some of them were not quite ripe, I figured the risk of damage from the cold rain wasn't worth the extra couple of days ripening time.

After giving them a good wash in the sink,  I peeled them by blanching them in boiling water.  After ( Read more... )

As much as Mike and I love meat (and we are pretty major carnivores), sometimes you want something fresh and bright that allows the flavors of produce fresh from the garden to shine through.  That's when we get the hankering for a homemade pizza Margherita.  I wanted to test drive a new batch of "tipo 00" flour I just bought from Amazon.  Paired ( Read more... )

Last night, Mike and I enjoyed a nice leisurely evening capped off by stoking up the grill in the old New Braunfels smoker out back.   I finally got to try a beautiful flank steak recipe that I've been saving for some time now. You can find it here.   Along with the steak, I made an iceberg wedge salad with blue cheese dressing, bacon and ( Read more... )

The garden out back is pumping out sweet, ripe tomatoes at an amazing pace.  Right now, there are chocolate cherry, mortgage lifter, green zebra, yellow pear, red Siberian and San Marzano varieties.  Yesterday, I harvested more than we could eat at one sitting.  Oh, I love problems like this.  :-)

One of the first things that came to mind was to ( Read more... )

Been quite a while since I've posted here.  It's been a very busy month.  Here's what's been happening in our little corner of the world.

First of all, Mike and I constructed a gravel walkway around the side of the house.  Originally, the pathway was very uneven, ugly and borderline dangerous.  So we needed to make it both safer and more attractive.


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