8:12 PM Pasta with Mushrooms and Lima Beans

Tonight was a new dish made of items I needed to use out of the fridge. My portions are for one and I didn't measure anything, so you'll need to adjust for how many you are feeding.

2 slices of red onion
2 mushrooms, sliced
handful of frozen Lima beans
one clove of garlic, chopped
tablespoon of pesto
1/2 teaspoon of tomato paste
olive oil
salt
pepper
Parmesan cheese
small handful of whole wheat spaghetti

Prepare spaghetti noodles as directed on the package. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in skillet. divide slices of onion into quarters and begin saute. Salt onions to sweat. Once onions are beginning to go clear, add sliced mushrooms. Stir and salt again to sweat. Add Lima beans and saute until mushrooms are carmelized and lima beans are cooked. Add garlic and stir. Cook for about 30 seconds and turn heat off of burner. Garlic will continue to cook, but won't burn.


Once pasta is cooked al dente, drain and place in skillet with saute. Stir until noodles are coated. If skillet has cooled down, bring back up to low until finished stirring noodles.

Transfer noodle and veggies to a plate and add pesto and tomato paste.

Stir until coated. Season with pepper and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.


This dish was extremely satisfying. It was a nice easy comfort meal. I accompanied the dish with Meridian Chardonnay and some green olives. The whole dish can be made Vegan with the omission of Parmesan and subbing a Vegan Pesto.

7:59 PM Pasta with sauteed zucchini and sundried tomatoes

Today was an especially lovely day for recipe blogging. I bookmarked A Lot! Tonight I decided to try out this Pasta with Zucchini and Chickpeas I saw on Cheap Healthy Good. The only problem was that I was missing a key ingredient-Chickpeas!

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I always have chickpeas on hand. It's just that the chickpeas I keep on hand are dried and I don't have the kind of time needed to soak, and cook those chickpeas. I do buy the canned version often, but I don't always keep cans on hand. I generally will purchase what I need plus one extra can so I can save precious space in my cabinets. Apparently, I used up the last can I bought.

So in the absence of one key ingredient for a pasta dish, I did what I normally do, I subbed sundried tomatoes! Otherwise, the dish was prepared exactly as instructed in the recipe. Plus a dash of lemon. And I forgot to put the crushed peppers in while sauteing so I just left them out altogether.

The result was pretty good! It would probably have been better with the chickpeas and with grated Parmesean instead of the powdery kind. The kind I have on hand is real parmesean, but there's just something different about that grated consistency that makes a difference.



Tonight I'm having Meridian Chardonnay with my meal. Newmarket has had it on sale lately and I've taken a liking to it over Barefood Chardonnay.

11:20 AM My poor legumes

I think my beans and peas are on their way to little legume heaven. The vines are turning sickly colors and not much is happening with their growth. Honestly, I think it's rot. They're container planted and they're in the only container with a tray to hold water in. Add in the weeks and weeks of pouring rain we've been getting and they've been well over watered. Not to mention that a couple of those hard storms broke many of the vines.

So I guess we'll try again next year or in the fall. I think I'm going to try the bush variety of many of those guys instead of the fragile vines. That or I'll try the vines in an upside down hanging container.

Unfortunately, my Sage is also not doing so hot. But my African Basil from last year has bounced back rather well. And so has my oregano. In fact, all of the plants I bought last year in seedling form are still doing well. The two trees I bought this year as well. I think this may be a lesson for me. I just may not be cut out to raise my own seeds.

8:12 PM Sweep the Fridge Experiments

Coming home to a house full of nothing cohesive always presents a problem. But at least I usually have a few tested staples on hand to fill in the blanks of a mystery meal. This time, it was pretty much all mystery. I was out of onions, the potatoes in the cupboard are for boiling, not sauteing, and all of the legumes on hand were dried and not previously soaked, so I couldn't even pull a quick and dirty bean soup out of the air.

But I did have Scallions. And I had those potatoes that Could work sauted. And I had cabbage. And, wait for it, I had...Bacon! One last strip was left. So of to work I went.

Basically, I heated up some olive oil in my skillet, carmelized the potatoes, and added the julienned scallions, chopped bacon, and shredded cabbage and stirred. I also salted and peppered and added some Tony Chacheries. After everything was good and cooked to my specifications, I added in some chopped garlic and a splash of red wine vinegar. The result looked something like this:



Unfortunately, the LCD screen on my camera has been shattered, so I'm sort of handicapped with my photography, but you can sort of see what I produced. I can't say it was a Fabulous meal. It was good, but being that it was thrown together quickly with little options, it definately can use some tweaking. I think it needs Rosemary and maybe white wine vinegar instead of red. And I should add more cabbage and put it in later. It would be better if it was not burned.

I also tried boiling some dried fava beans and lentils. It was Horrible! I added red wine vinegar to that one too and unfortunately, the vinegar killed the whole thing. So I tossed it and settled for chips and salsa as a side.

10:03 AM Here's how we grow

This is how I've rearranged things. I've strung some wire between the planter stands on either side of the box with the beans/peas so there's a guidance to grow up. Unfortunately, my little pomegranate tree isn't thriving as well as I had hoped.
This is my parsley/cilantro planter. The formed leaves are So Tiny!
Oh I just adore my lavendar. I'm so happy it is blooming finally. Unfortunately the storm last night beat it down even more. I may have to put something around it to re-train it, if that's possible.
Here's my beans/peas. You can see how I've only got 2 of the 4 really doing well and the growth of one far exceeds the other. I still can't remember what is what, so when they finally produce, it'll be a lovely surprise!

8:23 PM Chickpea, Cannellini Bean, and Wheatberry Soup

This is one of my favorite recipes from the magazine La Cucina Italiana. It is Incredibly Cheap to make and also just as easy. It's one of those soups that you really don't need to use measurements for and while cooking can walk away from and return just to check on things. It also freezes well and since it has zero meat or fat product in it, it keeps safely as a leftover for quite a while. Thus it's my Favorite kind of soup!

Chickpea, Cannellini Bean, and Wheatberry Soup

Start out with dried chickpeas, wheatberries, and cannellini beans (navy or great norther are also good). Soak cannellini beans in water overnight or for 8 hours. Soak chickpeas and wheatberries together in water and 1/8 tsp baking powder for the same length of time.


After soaking, bring water to boil and cook each pot around 30 min. You want the beans starting to soften, but stop before they are al dente.

See the froth in this chickpea/wheatberry pot? You want to skim All of that off the top. That's the stuff that causes a good portion of the infamous Bean Gas. Get Rid of it! So keep checking both pots to skim. You can stir after you've skimmed, don't stir before you skim. That reincorporates the gasiness into the liquid.

Once the beans are starting to soften a little, remember don't cook to al dente yet, combine both contents in the larger pot and continue to allow to boil until beans are desired softness.

Serve in in a bowl piping hot and drizzled with Extra Virgin Olive Oil, pepper, and dried herbs (I like a good Italian mix).

10:15 AM Join the Urban Garden Project

Among many of the blogs I follow, I try to keep up with other folks who are gardening in the Urban Jungle. It makes me feel like I'm less of a crazy person to see others living in situations similar to mine refusing to adhere to the hard and fast apartment living rules.

Today Urban Garden Casual posted an article about joining the Urban Garden Project. I signed on as quickly as I could fire off the e-mail, haha! So maybe my little modest garden will garner new friends and we'll receive some good advice from this network of Urban Gardeners.

Speaking of my garden, I meant to take photos of my crazy plants today. I'm going to have to get that vertical climber set up soon as those little beans/peas are growing like Crazy!!! And it looks like my sage and basil are also starting to pop up as well.

12:18 PM Continuing with the Spring lovliness

After yesterday's wonderful First Day of Spring surprises, this weekend has continued on with establishing a lovely and fruitful season.

Today I brought my little dormant dwarf fig tree out of the veggie crisper of the fridge and I gave her a home. I couldn't quite afford to give her a really pretty large home yet, but the helpful folks at Redenta's Garden advised me on a suitable temporary pot that can last her while she's growing. She'll get a prettier upgrade when she needs one.

So without further ado, here she is!

See how pretty her little buds are?

Yesterday I showed you pics of my first bean/pea sprouts. Here's an update on those. It just amazes me how Fast these things grow! Yesterday they were barely out of the soil and today, I can almost see leaves. Maybe tomorrow they'll unfold.

The section of the box that was just teasing me with the one teensy tinsy sprout has exploded like the original section. Those sprouts are about a day behind in development, so they look exactly like what I showed you yesterday.

Oh, remember my lavender that I planted last year that never bloomed?? This one:

Let's take another look at our little lavender.

Did you see it??? One more time.

It's a bloom!!!!! I'm shocked. Seriously, I'm shocked. The Only thing I did different is that I threw some of the dead branches of my basil plant in the pot hoping that the decomposition of those branches would help out a little. It seems I Could have been right about that. But now I also have some food/fertilizer for flowering plants and vegetables that I was told to get for the fig tree and I think I'm gonna put some of that in the pot tomorrow and see what happens.

Here's the whole garden collection all together.

I was planning on doing some square foot gardening this year, but now I'm thinking that I should stick with what I have now as I also still have my pomegranate tree coming. This is my first year to container garden any veggies, much less fruit trees and this many herbs, so I'm a little afraid that I will get overwhelmed and drop the ball. I'm thinking it may be a better idea to get this system established before I expand more.

Yesterday I also showed you a patch of crazy dandelions. Now here's the pretty pre-wish version. There are still a few of these left around the yard.

Miss Maizy Loo loves Spring too.

Nabisco wishes she could be outside gardening with Maizy and I.

But this is about as far as she's gonna get unless she can prove to me that she can behave outside, as in come back in when she's told to.

9:45 AM More than one sign of Spring

Today is the first day of Spring. Spring is a favorite season for many. For me it is because you can see so many wonderful miracles of Nature happening right before your eyes. Well, that and all the bright green colors everywhere. But mostly I am a huge fan of Nature's rebirth after the hibernation of Winter.

At my home today, I got to witness not one but Two signs of the beauty of Spring happening right outside my front door.

The first thing that I noticed was that the pair of birds who nest in my front Catalpa tree are back. And they're busy making their nest again in one of the holes in the trunk. I haven't identified the birds yet, but I want to try to figure out what kind they are. I'm pretty sure it is the same pair as last year.

This is the little male guarding the nest. Their nest hole is just to the right of the new leaf growth in the center there.

He's a bitty little guy. He's mostly black with a few brown flecks and his neck feathers can fluff out quite a bit. He's very talkative when I'm out there. Protecting his nest, I imagine.
And here he is with his mate. I had Just Missed them both waltzing down the sidewalk picking up paper for the nest. I wouldn't have noticed it if the piece of paper hadn't been so Big, haha! I need a zoom lens. You can sort of see that his mate on the left is brown.

The other sign of Spring that happened at my home this morning was that as I was goggling at the sheer numbers and height of the dandelions in the yard, I looked down and noticed that I have Sprouts!!! I can't remember which ones these are. I planted 4 different kinds of climbing beans/peas in this long planter. There's one other one which is starting to sprout as well, but it's so tiny, you can barely tell it from the soil, so I didn't include that picture. I'm so excited, aren't they beautiful! Dang, I need a macro lens too!

Here's the envelopes for what I planted in that long box. I still can't remember what order they're in, but I guess we'll find out when they all mature.

Here's that Dandelion patch I mentioned. Crazy huh? Yes, my apartment's management really needs to get back on the stick with the mowing. Eventhough it's really just the Dandelions which are growing like crazy.

Hey remember that Oregano I worried about killing???? Here it is today!

My neighbor finally came out to do something with it. He gave it a "haircut" as he calls it and it seems like that was exactly what it needed to start really filling out. I think I may give my oregano and my basil a haircut now and see what happens!