June 19th, 2011 (Part 2)

We were hosting a father’s day barbecue at the house.  I pushed the envelope after brunch and took the kids to the pool.  I was worried about time and getting everything ready, but it all worked out fine. 

I decided to make a pasta salad and incorporate asparagus and goat cheese in some way.  I then saw a half of a jar of sundried tomatoes in the frig.  I decided to do a hodge podge sundried tomato pesto with herbs, garlic, and walnuts.  I was worried I mixed too many random flavors together, but it turned out pretty tasty.

 

Aunt Cathy brought cheese plate, bean salad, and caprese salad.  All delicious!  I love when guests bring dishes because whenever we entertain I’m already pretty tired of looking at what I made, so when guests bring food, I’m excited to eat something unexpected.  That and Cathy is a darn good cook.

I’m grilling fish, bread, and veggies.  And on my little board is a Trent made skinny girl margarita, which is the Cambrook Sunday drink of the house. 

Tilapia I marinated with tons of herbs, lemon, and garlic.

A “salsa” I made for the top of the fish or bread.  Tomatoes, chives, parsley, and kalamata olives.

Veggies marinated with balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper.

Grilled Garlic Parmesan Bread.

Love this picture!  Grandpa Coco!  I outsourced dessert to Krispy Kremes.  There were 12 donuts and 9 people.  Nothing leftover.

See the bag on the handle of the door.  That’s where mom puts her bag of leftovers so she won’t forget it on the way out of the house.  Grandpa Coco’s doggie bag is normally right underneath it.  It’s a good system.  The other system is whenever I pick up Grandpa Coco he has a bag by his door of empty cleaned “tupperware” containers.  It’s a little family ecosystem. 

This is my new favorite picture of my dad.  And you can see from Lauren’s teeth she enjoyed her Krispy Kreme as well.  Happy Father’s Day to my Dad, Grandpa, and husband!  It was a fun celebration.

June 19th, 2011 (Part 1)

Father’s Day!  We took the girls to church and then had plans to go to brunch.  I told Trent I’d take care of venue and reservations.

I decided on Herbie's in the Central West End.  The weather was fantastic and they had all their windows opened in their sunroom.  Perfect brunch atmosphere.  Check out the little face of cuteness in the reflection. 

Lauren loved looking out the window at the pedestrians and bikers go by.

Trent’s drink flight.  The bloody mary was delicious.  I always take a sip of Trent’s bloody marys despite the fact I don’t like them.  I like the idea of them, but the taste, not so much.  This one was one of the better ones I’ve tried and even went in for a second sip.  Things are getting crazy up in here.

After we ordered, Trent opened his gifts and cards.

Then the food came with a lot of ohh’s and ahh’s by us.

The girls both wanted the french toast.  It came with a praline caramel sauce.  This was pre-sauce state. 

Trent ordered the egg, bacon, and spinach flatbread pizza (sans the tomatoes).  Sydney ended up having a couple pieces of it too.  She was a big fan. 

This is me.  The goat cheese and bacon Herbie burger with fries.  It was absolutely delicious.  I was nice and gave Trent some and shared my fries with the table.  It being Father’s day and all.

I took Sydney outside while Trent and Lauren waited to get the bill and pay.  She loved she could look in the window to watch them at the table.

 

Right after this picture was taken (thanks nice random Central West End window shopper for taking this picture) I got an unknown call on my cell.  It was Herbie’s and Trent we left all of Trent’s gifts Trent was in charge of grabbing on the way out in the restaurant.  Good thing we were just across the street when they discovered this.  Teeny Tiny disaster avoided.

It was a great Father’s Day morning.

June 18th, 2011

During the summer I’m not as motivated to cook.  I don’t mind assembling meals, but I try to limit using the oven.  I also have the tendency to do meals with less ingredients, I’m not in the mood to spend hours in the kitchen when the pool is open. Once the summer vegetables start showing up in the garden this gets easier and easier.  But until then I do have a ton of sage.

One of my easiest pasta meals is butter sage gnocchi.  It’s even easier than pesto because you don’t need to use a food processor. 

It’s about as simple as you can get.  Add salt and pepper to the skillet to taste.  Simply delicious!

The trickiest part is really the burner temperature.  You need to keep it at a medium low.  Enough to melt the butter and sauté the garlic thoroughly, but not burn either.  

Boil gnocchi.  When they rise to the top they are done.  Put a fork in it done.

No recipe needed.  If you like it more garlicky, add more garlic.  If you want it extra saucy, add more butter.  You want a little kick, add crushed red pepper flakes.  You can also substitute any pasta, doesn’t have to be gnocchi. 

From garden to plate in under 15 minutes.  My kind of summer meal.

June 12th, 2011

I have no idea why, but as I get older I enjoy watching birds out of the window more and more.  Is bird watching enthusiasm directly linked with age?  Well anyway, we’ll sideline that topic for another day.  My favorite bird to watch is hummingbirds.  We get quite a few of them in our area and over the years I’ve dedicated an area of our flower garden to lure hummingbirds July-September. 

 

This is right outside our playroom window, so the girls and I can watch the hummingbirds easily.  In a couple weeks, there will be more red blooms, but it’s getting there.  I put down a hummingbird seed mix.  Mostly what grew from it were these.

I don’t know the name of these flowers, but there is a nice little patch of them ready!  They do look like something a hummingbird would be tempted to stick its little beak in.

I have always been intimidated by trellis flowers.  How does the flower know where the trellis is?  Then how does it know where to go on the trellis?  What if the trellis is knocked down in a storm and leaves the flowering vine homeless?  This year my mom and dad bought me 2 cute trellises at a going out of business sale.  I love them.  At our old house on the hill our neighbor had this vine going all around her fence.  It makes these beautiful purple flowers and pods.  My mom grabbed a couple of pods trying to grow her own, but it didn’t work.  I was at our local garden store and saw a picture on a seed packet that looked like that flowering vine and started the seeds indoors.  I cannot believe it worked. 

I was worried, they only give you 7 seeds.  I got five emerging plants, I kept 3 and gave my mom 2.

Hopefully it’ll look something like this.  I’m bummed it’s an annual.

But apparently you keep the pods and just plant them the next year.

Playing in the yard is a favorite pastime.  But this year my summer is served with a big heaping side of cicadas.  They. Are. Everywhere.  At least in our neck of the woods.  Softball practices, pool (one day I counted 16 that I had to peel off my body), grocery stores, bowling alley, you name it, they’re there with their ugly red eyes.  I am now taking pretty pictures of plants and listening to the cicadas make out quite noisily.

Stupid cicada in my hummingbird garden.  There were tons, but this guy gets the blog cameo.

Stupid cicadas.  The birds eat them like popcorn in our yard.  Thankfully the girls LOVE them.  Sydney will save them in the pool and put them on the side where they will fly and land in my ear screeching.  Then she’ll fill up a bucket with dead ones and carry it around.  Little weirdo.

Our local bakery is decorating our cookies with “cicadas.”

Mums in our front yard.  How many cicadas do you see?  I have counted 15.  Ew.

Thankfully they are gone now.  When we were in the thick of the cicadas I kept thinking, they will soon go away.  One day there were less, not more, and I knew we were on the downhill.  Wednesday I was walking Lauren and Sydney to Lauren’s softball practice, she looked around, and said “Mommy, the cicadas are gone!”  “Yes and they won’t be back for 13 years, you will be in college then.” “Oh, by then I’ll have a boyfriend.”  And there you have it.

June 7th, 2011

I absolutely love the growing season.  Going out to the garden to harvest vegetables and herbs makes me very happy.

Because of the cool and long spring, we have had a ton of broccoli.  And I planted it just to see what happens not expecting to yield much.  It’s still going and going and going.  Energizer Bunny Broccoli.

Another success was the peas this spring.  I planted peas last spring and fall and yielding NOTHING like this season.  We’ve had meals and meals involving the spring peas.  They were so good.  In fact, Tuesday night Trent had the last of the peas in his salad.  I pulled all peas up last week, had to make room for the summer star, tomatoes.

Your honor, I’d like to submit these 2 pictures as Exhibit A and B to further highlight there were many, many peas.

Something I’ve never tried before, brussel sprouts.  We’ll see how that goes!  Oh, and a random tomato plant amongst the brussel sprouts.  Classy!

The lettuce went so crazy I had to start planting tomato plants in the middle of the lettuce.  I’d harvest some lettuce and throw a tomato plant down in its place.  Not the organized garden look I wanted, but so far it’s working.

Basil, potato flower, and cabbage, oh my!

If you remember the cabbage debacle from last year, no worries. I only put in 2 plants this year.

I go through quite a few onions, so I’m hoping when I pull those plants up big onions appear.

Trent’s been working on the lawn this year.  He’s trying to whip it into shape, get rid of weeds, and seeding.  He put the sprinkler on to help along some grass seed.  Enter 2 little girls who love water.

And scene.