Vegetable Garden 2010 Update

We planted yellow squash with low expectations.  I had no idea I would fall in love with it.  Tender, sweet and versatile.  I stir fry it and put it in a tortilla with cheese for fajitas.  I mix it with eggs for a frittata.  I put it in tomato sauce with pasta.  I put fresh pesto on it. 

This watermelon is now the size of a soft ball.  We have about four of them.

I admit.  I did not know cukes were spiky until I was 32.

From left to right: tomatoes, peas, yellow squash, broccoli, cauliflower, bibb lettuce, carrots, onions, spinach, mesclun, strawberries, eggplant.

We get a lot of cukes but you can’t cook them.  We eat lots raw like an apple.  I also put several into a blueberry cuke shake this morning.

Roma tomatoes

Broccoli was fun but it rots quickly, has HUGE leaves and only grows the one head.  Same with cauliflower.  The broc is supposed to have shoots come out but we haven’t gotten much.

The kids just pick the peas right off and eat them like that.  You would have to plant A LOT of peas to get enough to do something with them.My Boys eating raw cukes.

Gordito swinging in front of the garden.

It’s funny ‘cause it’s racist

We recently spent a fun-filled weekend with my parents when they took the 11.5 hour car ride down to visit us here in the boonies.  I could have stood there for hours.

  Here is a better look…

I mean… I LIVE here.

I would say that I was impressed with Freddy’s photography skills (which I am) but it really was breathtaking.

Enzo had made a complete mess of himself as usual.  My adorable mother was wiping his face as she said, “Let’s clean you up.  When I’m done, you’ll be spic ‘n spanish!” 

Now… you must know ahead of time that she did not intentionally make this hysterically racist comment; it was a Freudian slip.  But the longer I pondered her words the funnier it became because it was wrong on so many levels.  Let’s break it down…

The word ‘spic’, as we all know, is a derogatory word for Latinos, one of whom was sitting in the car with us (my husband).  My son is half Chilean and is bilingual.  So when she said Spic and Spanish it almost sounded like “speakin’ Spanish, which he does.  All of this coming from a woman who entered a black family’s home and complimented an impressionist painting of Obama by saying to the lady of the house, “What a great portrait of you!”  Not to mention my father who grew up referring to Chinese food as “Chinks”! 

Yes.  We like to think we love all people and I really hope that we do.  But that does not mean that the above story is not funny.  It’s funny… ‘cause it’s racist.  (Words of Daniel Tosh.  I know know.  Naughty)

A picture says a thousand words

Memorial Day Weekend 2010, VA

Hemmerts and Uribes

Food #1: I mean who doesn’t want to see food, right?

All homemade….

Mesclun, spinach and bibb lettuce (all from my garden).  Apples, almonds, carrots with lemon vinaigrette.

Grilled eggplant and roasted red pepper pannini with fresh mesclun, mozzarella, and lemon herb butter. 

Baked Ziti with fresh basil from the garden.

Chocolate ganache chocolate cake.  Divine.

Vegetable Garden 2010: Update #2

This is a dream I had.  Me, my kids and my husband all working together on the garden.  Above, Max is planting an onion.

Those larger plants were how the broccoli and cauliflower looked when we first planted them. Here is the progression.

  Above:  April 10, 2010.  All the empty looking  rows have seeds in them.

Above:  May 16, 2010

Above: May 22, 2010

Just a few weeks later!  Look at the broccoli! 

The peas are grasping onto the poles. 

I eat a fresh salad from these greens everyday.  The birds kept eating all of my strawberries before they even fully ripened.  So we bought that netting you can see… 

…And we finally got our first strawberry!

Baby Robin

This robin family built a nest in the covered area of the slide/swings.  Right where the kids play all the time.  We watch the mother roosting and bringing food back to the baby.  We think there are two other eggs in there.  Freddy took these pictures.

New Suits

Are those MY handsome devils?  The answer would be a big fat YES!  Thanks to Tia Layla, Max and Enzo were gifted brand new suits.  They liked them as much as we did. 

Not to distract from my precious ninos, but we have those beautiful flowers just growing in the front yard and we want to know what they are called.  They grow back every year.  Anyone?

A brick background always makes you look more distinguished.  That, and some gray hair.

El Terremoto.  (The earthquake).  That’s what they call the crazy kids down south.  South America, that is.

The tan pin stripes melt my heart.

My boys!

 

 

DC Temple

Ever since we had Max over four years ago we haven’t been able to get to the temple that often.  We don’t live around family to take the kids and it is an all day event driving to the temple.  (Sometimes a two day event).  I never felt comfortable dumping my kids on someone for that long even if it was to go to the temple. 

One of my bishop’s wives made a comment once when a young mother was complaining about how hard it was to go to the temple.  She said, “There is a time and a season for everything.”  When we lived in Richmond, my parents would meet us in DC to take the kids while we went in.  We did it about once a year.  Sometimes we would manage a second trip but we felt pretty good about our yearly pilgrimage.

This picture just makes my heart smile.

A few months ago I was talking to a sister at church who has 6 children ages 9 to 0.  I mentioned my yearly trips to the temple and she said very non-judgmentally, “You only go to the temple once a year?”   I went through my list of excuses and rational reasons for not attending more.  She explained that she goes at least four times a year.  I responded with, “That’s great that you have your family close by to take the kids.”  She said, “They don’t take the kids, we bring them with us and take turns going in and watching the kids.”  In that instant I had a flashback of all of the temple trips with my parents.  Driving from Long Island down to DC so my parents could go to the temple.  Most trips they had to get a hotel.  They would take turns going in.  As a kid, I loved those trips.  Walking the temple grounds, touring DC, spending time with mom and dad. 

Suddenly my efforts seemed minimal.  Then a couple of weeks later I read an article in the Ensign (our church magazine) about a couple from Hawaii that lived very modestly but would make a trip to their temple every month spending $300 in travel expenses each time they went.  They emptied their savings account going to the temple.  When the money was gone, the husband got a second job earning an extra $700 per month.  Now they had more than enough to go to the temple every month AND bring other people!  

Enzo at the visitors’ center.

I want to be more like these faithful people.  As I walked through the temple during the short time I was there, I was sad that I couldn’t stay and do more.  Time to step it up. 

Our stake had planned an entire day for the primary children with movies, tours, lunch, walks, stories, etc.  Enzo is not in primary yet so we still had to take turns staying with him.  While I went inside Freddy took a ton of pictures of Enzo in various places around the temple grounds as you can see from the pictures above.  

Max was put into a group of 10 kids and two leaders.  There were over 200 kids involved which kind of freaked me out leaving him in a chaotic mess of people.  But I realized that they really WERE organized.  We spied on him for a few minutes before going in to the temple.  There he is, the smallest little guy with the red and gray striped sweater. 

They took a picture of each child touching the temple, printed them up and framed them for each kid to take home.  President Monson the prophet said, “If you touch the temple, the temple will touch you.” 

I want the temple to touch me.

Iron Chef in DC

On 04/09/10 we drove up to DC to visit with some friends and attend the stake temple trip.  On our way to Dave and Kerry’s house we missed an exit and were forced to go right through the heart of DC.  So we decided to take a tour and look around.  Here is me driving past the Washington Monument. 

Isn’t Freddy an awesome car photographer?

We had planned to stay the night with Dave and Kerry so we made a party out of it.  Mimi, Dave, Debbie and me all met our freshman year at BYU and have stayed friends ever since.  We have gotten together several times since we all have been living on the East Coast.  Freddy is taking the picture. 

Debbie had the great idea of doing Iron Chef with the group.  The secret ingredient was cheese.  I mean who could go wrong with that, really.  And there was no main course.  It was all tapas.  Then for dessert the secret ingredient was banana.  This is what we ate:

• artichoke dip
• caprese bruchetta
• sausage dip
• cheese ball
• spanikopita

I can’t remember if there were any other food?  I felt like there was so much but the list seems short.  What am I missing?

For dessert Dave made banana pudding which was out of this world and I have been dreaming about it ever since.  And then of course, as depicted above, the star of the show… drum roll please…fried bananas with ice cream, whipped cream and a cherry on top.  After a few derogatory comments we of course garvoned it all down like animals and then complained about how stuffed we were the rest of the night. 

We spent the rest of the evening discussing money, work, lack of work, health care, lack of health care, children, unemployment, family, living with family, not living with family, home ownership, Debbie’s cell phone, cell phone plans, moving, politics, church, relationships, gardens, food, friends, parents, and government, all the while Freddy and I tagged teamed each other re-putting the kids to bed.  Around 1:30am we couldn’t handle it anymore and waddle off to bed.  Why is it so refreshing to be with old friends?