Half-Baked!?

Here's my partially baked focaccia crust, ready to be smothered in saucy cheesy goodness. I keep trying to curb all my carb intake but can't you see? Everything wonderful starts with flour and yeast! (or goes well with it)

Ready to go in the oven

BBQ Chicken Pizza Black Olive, Mushroom, and Onion Pizza

Baked and Fabulous Pizza

Oh yeah, look at these babies...they are so lovely and tasted even better!

Will Sheila ever learn?

Here's Sheila eyeballing my freshly baked focaccia bread...

A muumuu no more

So, I found a gigantic muumuu at Goodwill for $5 and thought it would make a great summery skirt so here it is! It turned out great considering that I am an awful seamstress. I generally pull out the sewing machine every so often for about one miserable hour and then stop just short of smashing the machine onto the concrete outside. So, I'm super proud of myself right now. From far away you can't even see the completely uneven stitches! Yay! Maybe Janome and I can be friends one day after all!

Tortilla Press

I made this fancy shmancy torilla press this weekend with Del's help! I have made flour tortillas several times and rolled them out with a rolling pin, but I found this design in a book for making corn tortillas and thought it would be a fun project. I would like to paint it at some point. We also made the first of 3 trellises for the garden...pictures to come soon! My peas, lettuce, and spinach have all sprouted. I look forward to seeing if I can keep them alive long enough to eat them!

Cream of Broccoli Soup

Here it is: proof that I don't live on carbs alone! Mmmm cream of broccoli soup with garlicky whole grain croutons.

It looks like a different garden...

Don't our raised beds look great? We decided to wait on the wooden border until we can get the wood a bit cheaper (possibly for free). Del was smart enough to think to climb up on a rickety ladder and take a few photos from above the garden. Doesn't it look awesome? I'm so excited I can barely stand it. So, this evening I planted seeds for Dakota Peas, Bloomsdale Savoy Spinach, Organic Golden Swiss Chard (YUM!), Organic Victoria Butterhead Lettuce and a few seeds of a blend of lettuces. I bought all my seeds this year from Territorial Seed Company, which is a local Oregon seed company. Here's the website if anyone is interested: www.territorial-seed.com

Almost ready to plant...

Del came out to the garden with me yesterday and we really got a lot done. We are going to build a border around it tomorrow and I should be ready to plant peas, spinach, lettuce and possibly radishes after we finish building. We are also going to build a few trellises, which we calculated are VASTLY cheaper to build than to buy already made. So hopefully I'll have some more good pictures to post after tomorrow.

JennaSue is my favorite farmgirl

So, I got a lot done in the garden today in just over an hour with my friend Jenna. It was nice to have help and it was a gorgeous day to be working outside. Having someone to talk to makes the work easier. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures but I will definitly get some new ones up next week. Hopefully I will be able to put a border around the whole plot this weekend with Del's help (if the weather is agreeable).
While I'm out there working I can almost imagine that I'm on my own land miles from the city. One day I will be!

I'm noticing a trend...

I think I'm going overboard a bit with all the baking! It's so funny, I never really used to bake but for the last 2 months that's all I've done. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm just so excited to have all the bread turn out so good. I used to only be ok at baking but lately I've done really well. The only baked good I've bought in the last 2 months was one bag of bagels from TJ's. I've baked bread 5 or 6 times, made tortillas three times and baked lots of combinations of bran and berry muffins. They next two things I want to try are pita bread and bagels, both of which I've made before with so-so results.
I went over to the garden after struggling through the longest math test ever at school today! It wasn't that hard, just excruciatingly looonngg. This garden is kicking my ass! Its not that big but the weeds are never ending! I've got close to a third weeded now. When I went by today I ran into gardener who was already planting her peas! I should probably get started planting too. Apparently I have some rhubarb growing. That's what I was told it was. And nearly a dozen little weed choked strawberry plants.
And a blister and a backache and several slugs have been murdered. Ah, its a gardener's life for me.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Tonight I went over to my friend Millie's house and baked 3 loaves of cinnamon raisin bread. I can't wait to eat a pb&j made with it. Yum!