I'm still alive!

It has been awhile since I got on here and posted anything.  Sorry.  But it hasn't been out of laziness.  Here are a few things that have happened in the past couple weeks:

1. BlendTec! - Several months ago my daughter climbed up on the counter and knocked down a blender full of smoothie.  Sadly, our blender did not survive the incident.  So my husband and I set our sights on getting a super nice blender because smoothies are a (nearly) every day meal for us.  We received a Costco rebate check and held on to it until they were having a BlendTec roadshow and picked it up. We LOVE it!

2. Granola! - One of my favorite snacks is the Chunky Strawberry Topper from Jamba Juice.  This is an amazing concoction of strawberries, banana, peanut butter, yogurt, soy milk, and granola whipped up in a blender.  (Blender?  Did you say blender??  We HAVE one of those now!)  I also had all those ingredients except for soy milk and granola.  I was fine without soy milk, but I had to have the granola.  So I tried making some...

I modified it a bit by adding peanut butter to the mixture.  It must have been magic granola because it disappeared so fast.  <---Oh, sheesh, I'm so funny.  I ended up making more the next day and bagging it as thank you's for the kids' class day teachers.  (The bags were made by sewing wax paper inside brown butcher paper and sealing with hot glue and a button).

3. Visitors! - We've also had fun spending time with my Aunt and cousin (visiting from Oklahoma), my twin sister and her family (visiting from the Bay Area), and my sister-in-law and her husband (visiting from Virginia) all within a two week period!  It was crazy hectic but so much fun.  When my sister visits with her two girls, our house is filled with children ages 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.  I'll let you imagine the chaos.  But chaos is fertile ground for memory-making and we had fun!

4. Garlic Knots! - I also had the chance to try out a few new recipes this past week.  One of my favorites were garlic knots...

They're essentially pizza dough, tied into knots (yes, literally), and coated with garlic, o.o., parmesan cheese, and parsley.  Mmmm-mmm.

So there you have it:  a summary of my most recent past.  =)    Now, what have YOU been up to?

Gardening 101: Planting time!

I'm not a great gardener.  Here are some snapshots of last summers plants.

Pepper plant #1:

Pepper plant #2:

But that doesn't mean I don't love the process.  Here are some flowers I planted when we first moved in.  They just started blooming the other day:

 Last week  I pulled together all my seeds, and the kids and I started seedlings for our summer garden.

 Egg cartons work great because they decompose, so you can plant them directly into the soil.  Here are some of our plants playing peek-a-boo!

Carrots:

  Beans:

Oh, and a few weeks ago a friend of mine gave me a bunch of onion bulbs.  I planted them in my onion box and tah-dah!  Looks like I'll have useable scallions soon, and onions no long after that.  I'm excited!

Food 101: Italian Bread

Italian bread vs French bread?  Yeah, I had to look up the difference, too.

Well, with the number of times I have baked French bread, I already knew the characteristics of a good loaf:  crusty outside, fluffy inside.

But I wanted to make some rustic bread for homemade subs, and I knew French wasn't going to accomplish that purpose.  So I began googling and ran across a recipe for simple Italian bread - soft outside, and airy on the inside, perfect for sandwiches!  (I guess the technical term nowadays is "sammies" or "sammiches," but call me old fashioned, I'm sticking with the vintage expression 'sandwich'.)  Here is my first batch of Italian bread (made smaller for sandwich-making):

Here is the recipe I pulled from:  http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/mama-ds-italian-bread/Detail.aspx  It's so very basic, but a great starting point if you're new to bread baking.  Because these were for sandwiches and I wanted to go one step further than plain bread, I glazed the top with honey then sprinkled on some crushed oats.  Talk about delicious!

Dinner is served!