Ah, how far we’ve come… This is how our little garden began & this is how it looks today! We’ve really enjoyed growing our own herbs, fruits, & vegetables & Ryan has been great about keeping up the watering (which needs to be done almost daily to keep the tomatoes from getting blossom end rot or the other plants from wilting) & training the tomatoes & peppers with bamboo sticks & rubber-coated wire ties to help them support the vegetables that are growing from their vines. Our garden has, as I like to say, put on its “big girl pants” & is all grown up; we’re getting the beginning of tomatillos & baby eggplant, we just recently harvested some peppers & onion, & we’ve been enjoying our lettuce, basil & other herbs, & raspberries & strawberries (although our strawberry yield has been slim to none, the ones we’ve picked & eaten have been delicious!) for some time now.

Our lime tree, a.k.a. “Captain Sunshine”, has produced several limes & I have to say that when we picked & used a lime recently it was honestly the very best lime I’ve ever tasted; one might argue that it tasted so good because it was from our very own lime tree, but I think it was just that good!

We haven’t had any ripe tomatoes yet, but I’m crossing my fingers & hoping that some of the tomatoes will develop fully (milk, it does a tomato good – who knew?) & we’ll be able to enjoy them eventually.

We’ve enjoyed learning new things about growing as well as expanding/changing our garden each summer & hope that each year we plan & plant our garden it will be bigger & better than ever before. Luckily, we have friends that are excellent & experienced gardeners to guide us along the way; thanks Abigail & Steven & Mark & Amy!

I don’t know if I can listen to In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry & not smile. It seems like a fun, feel good, summer song to me & makes me think about how much I really do enjoy the summertime. For me, summer is about enjoying the long days, maybe finding yourself by the water or taking a walk along a beach, catching fireflies, having a picnic, relaxing, & just having as much fun as you possibly can…& I can definitely get on board with that!

Here are some photos we’ve taken this summer that, I think, give you a glimpse of just that…

It’s true, I think Talladega Nights is absolutely hilarious & I will laugh until I cry at many scenes from this movie. And the ridiculous commercials are one of the best parts too – I’m partial to the one about packs of stray, wild dogs roaming the cities myself.

I was reading the latest flickr blog post the other day about squared circles, or “squircles”, & thought it sounded like fun – so I decided to try it out for myself. I took all these photos with my iPhone, using the ShakeItPhoto app, on my walk to & during lunch today.

They even have a Flickr group dedicated to squircles & I found that it’s actually harder than you might think to capture a photograph (using only an iPhone & with no editing in my case) that is of equal height & width containing a circle & in which the circle fills as much of the frame as possible with its outside edge remaining visible, etc.; in fact, I don’t believe that my photos here would even qualify for this flickr group as they do have a border (because I used the ShakeItPhoto app). Oh well, it was fun anyhow!

I’m still loving our new, fancy pants camera; here’s a great shot I took of Ryan on the 4th of July. I’ve got one handsome fella!

We had a wonderful 4th of July with family & friends & had such a great time at the Brighton Recreation Riding Stable on a trail ride. While we were riding horses, Ryan went mountain bike riding at the Brighton Recreation Area with friends & then we all met up on the lake there for a picnic. I can’t wait to go riding again – they even have a night rides & winter rides…sign me up! And, not only do they have beautiful, gentle horses & a friendly staff, they have a petting farm with the cutest, baby goats, etc.

We discovered this recipe for tomato basil cream pasta from VeganYumYum & it was love at first taste for us; yes, this recipe is not our own, but we love it so very much that we had to share it with you – there really is something magical about putting fresh tomatoes & basil together! Note that we often modify it slightly when we cook it at home (i.e. add a little white wine to the sauce, grind the cashews up into a fine powder – we use a coffee grinder for this, etc.) & we whipped some of this up for ourselves, along with some fresh bruschetta on the side, for our dinner last night; we served this with spinach fusilli pasta & it was delicious…seriously, you won’t regret making this for yourself at home.

Happy 4th of July!!! Enjoy some family, friends, fun, fireworks, & good food today!

We had a lovely weekend & were super excited to use our brand new, fancy pants, Canon 5D MarkII camera! We enjoyed a lovely dinner out with friends on Friday at Melange (&, bonus, it was Restaurant Week in Ann Arbor), took a trip out to Eastern Market in Detroit on Saturday & then watched the World Cup U.S. vs. Ghana game & ended the day with a nice cookout with friends.

Here are several more photos we took over the weekend with our fancy new camera – it’s so awesome!

The basil in our garden was out of control so we decided to tame it a bit by using a good amount of fresh basil to make a tasty pesto; here is a quick summery dish to help you get rid of all of your overgrown basil that is waiting to fill your belly.

Pesto:
basil (about 2 handfuls of it)
1-2 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup pine nuts
1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
1-2 tablespoons of lemon juice (or about half a lemon)
parmesan reggiano (about 1 teaspoon or so)
salt and pepper to taste

Sautéed Asparagus:
about 1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 bunch of asparagus, cut into 1″ pieces
1 shallot
1-2 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper to taste

1 box of bow tie pasta

This recipe is pretty easy. For the pesto, start by putting the pine nuts, garlic, and basil in a food processor or blender, add some olive oil and lemon juice and blend. You don’t need to add all of the olive oil and lemon juice just enough to get things to form a nice paste, you can add the rest in as it blends to get it to the consistency of your liking. Add some salt and pepper for extra taste.

The asparagus is also easy, start by heating some olive oil up in a pan on medium heat. Sweat the shallots and the garlic for a few minutes then add the asparagus. If you have any lemon juice left toss it on there as the asparagus cooks. Once things are nice an caramelized and the asparagus is cooked to your liking (I like it to have a little crunch) sprinkle on some good sea salt (I used a blend that has flowers in it) and some course ground black pepper.

Toss the pesto with the pasta, serve it in a bowl, and top with the asparagus. For an added bonus sprinkle on some more parmesan and enjoy.