More of these!

My father always had a garden growing - and in Florida, there were about three full seasons for planting - and I love love LOVE fresh fruits and vegetables!!! I'd choose to munch cut-up raw veggies over candy or chips any time! But, who has the time? Ok, I know that you can buy buckets of tasty, ready-to-eat fruits in veggies in US supermarkets - in the produce section or take-away salad bars - more expensive, but very handy... but I don't have that here. Before I quit to stay home, we had time to throw a quick dinner together after work (20 minutes or less please), get the kids homeworked, bathed, etc. then to bed - and then collapse until our bedtime so we could get up and do it all again the next day.

Now, instead of a once weekly shopping trip to the commissary, I can hike over to the local street market and browse the greengrocers, bakers, etc. I hope to find a good butcher too. I also have the time to scrub/soak the veggies, and do all the prep work needed to have dinner ingredients and veggie snacks in the fridge - ready and waiting to be grabbed in an instant.

I am sure I will still need some cooked or canned goods, but the fresh stuff is such a luxury! Honor was able to take carrot sticks as a snack to school today... I never really had time to put such good stuff in the kids' lunches before! (they pack snacks actually, they buy hot lunches). Even Brian, who is meat-and-potatoes like his Dad, had to admit that the fresh stuff tasted and even smelled better than the frozen or canned - and much better than the 'fresh' produce the commissary brings in from overseas - he did add that even though it seemed very nice, I didn't need to serve it all in one meal!

I brought the batch above in yesterday (all for about $10 - no doubt 'foreigner pricing, but cheaper and better than the commissary!) and cooked up a Humble Pie with some of the ingredients. (I substituted croissants for the bisquits; seasoned the beef with salt, pepper, garlic, rosemary, oregano, and red wine; used mexican cheese blend; and Chicken Corn Chowder) The artichokes went well with that dish.

The beans may be doomed...

Our bean planting experiment had moved outside because the plants were growing tall and stretching out to the sun. They've been happy out on the balcony for the last few days, but today, winter has arrived. The wind is gusting hard, the temp is currently 48F (which is darn cold for this time of night - 10PM - it will only get colder before the dawn), and it is supposed to continue with the wind, rain and cold all night. Tomorrow the wind gusts are forecast up around 50mph! I can't really move the pot back inside either - I'd worry about the pot leaking on the wood floors, or there being some critters in the pot now that it has been outside for a bit. I did set them, and the other taller plants, off the edge of the wall so they do not get blown down. We'll see how it does come morning!

Looks like we're heading into the coldest night we've has this winter... I bet even the Sphinx is wishing he had a scarf ;-) ! What's with this weather? Did someone lose a bit of their winter?? This doesn't belong here! We've had tons of rain this year. Today had rain and wind. At one point, my two internet weather news sources were both saying 'wind' but one insisted it was raining, the other said 'sand' - it was, what? Mudding?

Science Project

Brian has his first science project due this Thursday and we have managed to get it done in plenty of time. It was actually a rather difficult assignment - not that it was too complex for him, or too difficult for a 2nd grader, rather, there was very little to work with. His assignment was 'Sailboat' ... ok ... sailboat ... well.... what about sailboats?? The papers he had showed some examples of how to make little sailboats, and how to set up a poster board, but that seemed more like arts and crafts than science! The hard part then, was how to turn 'Sailboat' into a 2nd-grade science experiment. BTW, we have learned that most science projects out on the web are for 4th grade on up... we found very little for younger elementary kids. Anyway.... we decided to test the effectiveness of different shapes of sails, and Brian and I had a lot of fun figuring this out together and making up his project:





Proud - and hard-working - scientist!