I have a very good excuse for being MIA

My garden has suffered, my blogging has stopped entirely; however, I have been doing a little baking:

 

I'm going to do my best to get back to blogging, but this little bun in my oven has proven to be a mighty tough distraction!

Sumptuous Summertime Suppers

It’s that time of year again –the weather is warming up, the garden is showing signs of life and two season’s worth of holidays and tummy warming comfort noms have more than taken their toll. Of course that means I must make my annual “cooking and eating healthier” vow. Oh so optimistic at this time of year; so filled with determination. Sadly, this determined optimism usually ends in utter failure. Darn my foodiness and genetic predisposition to gain weight. It’s a cruel joke really.

But this year I’m going to do it (Ok I’ve said this before, but this time I mean it…this time, not like the other dozen times when I’ve meant it. No really.)

See the problem for me isn’t junk food. It isn’t burgers or chips or Venti mocha double cream caramel fudge lattes. In fact it’s not even that I fill my pantry with prepackaged meals or other junk. The problem (aside from the fact that my job requires me to sit on my butt all day, paired with the fact that dinner generally doesn’t get served till about 7:30pm) is that I love to cook and bake, and that the recipes I tend to favor are more about taste and less about health (darn you condensed soups and your dinnertime versatility. 

So I’m going to make a real change this year. I’m going to source and develop some tasty yet healthy alternatives to my favorite dishes and desserts –not just to get healthier, but to add some new flavors and textures to my family’s dinnertime fare. Here’s hoping I can actually get it done this time.

Quick and Easy Meals: Bacon and Mushroom Mashed Potato Soup

Just the other day I had a huge bowl of leftover mashed potatoes in the fridge and no desire to make the usual grilled [insert meat here] with mashed potatoes and veg. So I scoured the web for left over mashed potato recipes. Of course, the majority of the recipes I came across involved ground meat in one way or another, which isn't a bad thing; it's just that I have a tendency to rely far too heavily on ground meat dishes. What can I say, it's cheap, easy and generally makes a nice meal, but one can feed their family only so many tacos, burgers, meat loaves, lasagnas, plates of spaghetti, bowls of chili, etc. Am I right?

Milkglass was made for Easter!

Far more show than tell, I simply had to offer a peek at the pretty that's been hatching throughout my house this Easter. Simply put, milkglass was absolutely made for Easter time. The texture and the milky white looks so fresh and inviting next to the pastel colors of the season. So here are a few pics:

Beautiful On the Breakfast Table

 

This Fenton pedestal bowl is by far my absolute favorite piece in my collection. I can't think of a nicer nest for this charming swirl of moss and pastel colored Easter eggs.

Vegetable Garden Planner review

The unseasonably warm weather here in the GTA has really kicked my thoughts of  vegetable gardening into overdrive. Definitely a good sign, because it means that last year's first steps into veggie gardening weren't a phase. As I'd mentioned in my last post, we'll be creating two square foot gardens this year, rather than one, with the new vegetable garden dedicated to salad ingredients. I'm still unsure about everything that's going into this salad garden, aside from some leaf lettuce, spinach and now cilantro (thanks to BD for the suggestion!); however, one thing I am sure about is that I need to start planning.  

This year veggie garden planning means finding a good online vegetable garden planner.  While there are lots of printable grids and vegetable garden planning Excel templates, there aren't many options when it comes to finding an online vegetable garden planner. My first search mission has lead me to three possible options.  Overall, all of the vegetable garden planners are very easy to use. They're completely online, there's nothing to download and all are fairly printer friendly, should you wish to have a hard copy of your vegetable garden planner. Each of the three displays plants in the square foot garden format. Meaning, four heads of leafs lettuce per square, 1 tomato plant, 9 spinach plants, and so on. I am a square foot gardener, so this is exactly the type of vegetable garden planner I was looking for. Now, on to my discoveries: 

Eat Close to Home  

I dream of salad garden

While the weather outside is truly frightful, what with the extreme cold alert going on in the city and mile high snow banks on every corner, I can't help but turn my thoughts to just a few months in the future when I'll be putting in this year's square foot gardens ...that's right, gardens, this year there will be two veggie gardens and one triangle shaped raised garden in the corner for flowers.

With the second square foot garden going in this year, we've decided to make it a dedicated salad garden. So everything that goes into our salads (with the exception of cherry tomatoes ...more about last year's tomato-zilla at another time) will be coming out of this garden. Now it's just a matter of figuring out exactly what will be going in.

I suppose the most obvious choice is romaine.

In my opinion, every good salad needs the crisp sweetness of romaine as a base.In fact, we'll probably stagger plant two to three squares of romaine, using Mel Bartholomew's 4 heads per square foot recommendation.We'll probably also plant some spinach and possibly a box of green onions. That however leaves several boxes empty in my salad-specific square foot garden. Admittedly, I'm a plain salad kind of girl, but as I discovered with my first square foot garden last year, if I grow it I'll eat it. So I'd like to experiment with some additions to my salad bowl this year. It's just a matter of what.


If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it. So what else should go into my square foot salad garden?