A Memorable Meal

Moving for us this time meant gaining an amazing yard with a nice big garden plot and a small greenhouse attached to the house. While I was busy unpacking and cleaning in the spring John went straight to work planting. We (or I guess I should say John) had some pretty good success. He did plant a couple things that didn't make it and we discovered that everything has a pest but we've been enjoying what did succeed. This includes tomatoes, a few cucumbers, one squash, some jalapenos, basil, peas, beans, lettuce, broccoli, and carrots.

Now even though I love to cook, once in a while I have a day that I just don't feel like doing it. Often it's mostly because the thought of cleaning up afterwards makes me cringe. I am lucky enough to have a husband who will on occasion jump in and come up with something to make. This usually consists of some sort of pasta with cream sauce and he's good at it. About a week ago, I had one of these days. John went to work cooking up some pasta with a chicken cream sauce and headed down to the garden to grab some carrots and broccoli to add to it. As he was prepping I discovered a small caterpillar on the cutting board with the broccoli at which point I asked, "did you wash this broccoli?". He said he had but I wasn't completely convinced and pointed out the caterpillar and suggested he wash the broccoli again. We sat down to eat and it was really good, one of his best ever. I had only a few bites left when I saw it, a small caterpillar stuck to a piece of broccoli, GROSS! I just managed to get the last couple of bites down (none of which was broccoli). Shortly after that Aiden picked another one off a piece of broccoli on his plate. Looking quite distraught he placed it on his place mat (or replace mat as he calls it). Abby wide eyed exclaims, "it's getting away!" After assuring her it was dead Aiden announced, "I miss Mom's cooking." As disgusting as this all sounds we got a good laugh out of it and we still laugh every time we talk about it. A memorable meal in deed:) And now for a few pictures of our gardening successes.

A salad made completely of vegetables from our garden.

I put the loonie (for our American friends that is a Canadian dollar, slightly larger than a quarter) next to the tomatoes so you could get an idea of the size. Nothing better than fresh tomatoes.

Abby with a bunch of lettuce and Aiden with a bunch of carrots.

Abby on another day showing off a bunch of carrots.