What a weekend!

My friend Erin just shared the above photo with me and it definitely made my day! She captured the picture at Ranch 99 and for some reason it reminded her of me. :) I can't believe there is a house wife soy sauce! I wonder if it tastes different from normal soy sauce? I suppose it must be the brand most trusted by housewives. 

This weekend was quite exciting. I spent Saturday afternoon in the kitchen getting ready for a dinner party we were having with our friends Allen and Beth. I had planned to start dinner around 3pm but at 2:30 I was inspired to mop the hardwood floors, which I have been putting off for weeks. I figured as long as I was feeling up to it I had better do it right then before the inspiration wore off. :) 

The mopping caused me to start dinner a little late and that, combined with the fact that I decided to bake a 3 layer cake at the last minute (with 2 different types of frosting), meant that dinner was a bit late. Allen and Beth didn't seem to mind too much though and the meal turned out very well (although the kitchen was a complete disaster!). 

For dinner I made Cod with Coconut, Lime, and Lemongrass Curry Sauce, with bok choy, rice, and a salad on the side. For dessert we had the 3 layer white cake (sadly I didn't capture a photo) with chocolate and cream cheese frosting along with ice cream and strawberries. We also fit in 3 games of spades after dinner which was fabulous! We haven't played in quite awhile and it was so fun! 

Sunday morning we were still groggy but we got up early in order to make it over to Santa Cruz to meet up with my good friend Nicola and her parents who were visiting from Washington. We went to church with them and then we all headed down to Big Sur for the afternoon. 

It was so fun to see them and it is always such a treat to visit the coast. We even managed to hike down to the beach where we saw 2 condors feeding on a dead seal or sea otter (we didn't get close enough to find out for sure) and 2 (live) sea otters swimming, playing, and eating very close to shore. It was amazing to see so much wild life so close by. I just wish I had had my camera with me! 

After a few hours on the shore, we bid goodbye to Nicola and her family and headed back up to San Jose where we met up with Woodley's parents and his cousin who was visiting from Montreal. It was so nice to get to spend some time with her! After a quick dinner we hopped in the car once more and headed up to Palo Alto to the Stanford Theater where we watched, "The Quiet Man," starring John Wayne. See the original trailer below:

That was the third time I had seen "The Quiet Man" and I think I like it more each time. I'm not 100% sure though. It was produced in 1952, won 2 Oscars and features John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. Since it is set in Ireland, there is lots of lovely scenery including many stone walls and some cute flocks of sheep. 

Overall, it is a touching love story about an American who returns to Ireland and falls in love with a local girl. It is very interesting to see the dynamics between the couple which are sometimes quite rough - she has an intense temper and he isn't afraid of using his physical strength to show her he means business. There's one famous scene where John Wayne practically drags Maureen O'Harra across a field (you see a bit of it in the preview above). Although it seems quite brutal at times, the rough love actually seems to bring the main characters together and they end up very happy together. I suppose it was a different time and a different place but after watching it I can't help feeling glad that things are a bit different now. I don't think I would like being dragged across a field like that one bit and I'm sure Woodley wouldn't like it if I had a temper like that of Mary Kate Danaher (the character O'Harra plays). 

On a different note, last Thursday I finished transplanting the seedlings I started in the peat containers a couple of months ago. 

They had gotten quite big and the roots were starting to grow out of the peat bundles. 

I decided to plant the 3 cherry tomato plants in their own big pots with 3 basil surrounding each tomato plant. The herbs and cosmos that were left, I planted in 4 smaller pots. 

When I was finished they looked quite nice lined up along the driveway. So far they seem to be doing well and I really think they enjoy being out in the sunshine and rain now. I'm looking forward to using them in the kitchen once they have grown up a bit more. :)

~ElizabethRose

Seedlings!

It has now been 6 days since I planted the seedlings and they are starting to pop up! So far I can see little bits of green in 9 of the 36 bundles. It is very exciting! 

Here are some tiny thyme plants. It looks like there are way more than 3 plants here so I'll definitely need to thin them out before too long. I had tried to plant only 2 - 3 seeds per bundle, but the thyme seeds were so small that I think a few extras were added. 

Here are the cosmos. They came up the earliest and are by far the biggest. It's become a little bit of a problem because I can't put the lid properly on the container anymore because they are too tall. I'm thinking about taking these two bundles out and holding them somewhere else where they will get more light. That should also allow me to replace the lid on the container. 

It is so much fun to see them poke their little heads out of the soil!

~ElizabethRose

An Herb Garden In the Making

I love to cook with a variety of fresh herbs and I've been thinking for some time that I really ought to try to grow an herb garden since it is very expensive to continuously buy fresh herbs at the grocery store. However, I don't have much experience gardening and frankly, I find the idea a little scary. I suppose it is because I didn't spend too much time gardening as a child and I don't really feel as if I know the correct steps to go through to get the desired result. 

Since I couldn't quite motivate myself to go out and buy the things I ought to have to start my herb garden, I asked my mom for some supplies for my birthday last month. She came through beautifully and sent me a book about her gardening, a deck of little cards with tips about herb gardens, and some packets of seeds. That was definitely the motivation I needed to get started. 

About a week ago, Woodley and I dropped into our local Smith and Hawken to pick up some pots and soil. We probably should have gone to our local nursery, but we happened to be at the mall so S&H was the only gardening-type store around. They were very helpful though and I felt like we got a good supply of things to start with, even if it was a bit pricey. 

Here are some of my seed packets that I'm starting with. I decided to focus on the ones that could be started indoors before being transplanted to the garden. Especially since I haven't quite decided where I should try to transplant the seedlings to. We have several garden spaces around our house but they are a bit overgrown and we'll need to dig them out a bit before planting things in them. 

For my first potting experiment, I decided to start with some kitty grasses that we had bought for Leila. I decided we should put them in a big pot since I didn't want her to tip a little pot over while she was trying to eat the grass. 

Here are the grass seeds on top of the soil. I hope I put the right amount in. I guess I'll just have to wait and see! :) 

The final kitty grass container with soil covering the seeds. It has been 2 days so far and I haven't seen any little grass shoots poking up. They should start coming up sometime around the 3rd day though so I have high hopes for tomorrow! 

To help with our seedlings, the folks at S&H recommended this Jiffy-7 Greenhouse 36. It has 36 pellets of peat soil that you can use to start seedlings. Then, once the plants are big enough, they are easy to transplant to the garden. It seemed like an easy way to start and since it only cost $10 we were excited to try it. 

Here's how the peat pellets looked when I first opened them. They were very dry and small. Since it was an absolutely gorgeous day, I decided to take them outside to do the planting in the sunshine. 

Above is the Jiffy greenhouse before I added any water. 

And here it is after I added the 4.5 quarts of warm water. The peat pellets are just starting to fluff up. 

I waited for about 5 minutes and they continued to rise up. It was pretty fun to watch! 

Here they are, fully fluffed up with the water. Some rose a little higher than others and I decided to add a little extra water to a few of them that seemed extra dry. 

The next step was to loosen the netting around the top of the little piles and to dig up and fluff the soil a little bit. 

After fluffing the soil I planted about 3 seeds per peat bundle and gently covered them over with the peat soil. I did three for each type of herb and also included one type of tomato and three Cosmos. 

Above is the finished greenhouse. Now all there is to do is wait and gently water them! How exciting! 

So that I don't get confused about the different plant types, I made myself a little chart that shows me what is in each peat bundle. My collection includes: parsley, dill, 3 types of basil, sage, thyme, oregano, and marjoram in addition to the cherry tomatoes and the cosmos. I'm going to have to look for some tarragon seeds because I'd love to have some to cook with! 

Here is the finished greenhouse in our dining room window. It isn't supposed to get direct sun so I think this will be a good place for it because the window is in a little nook and is usually shady. When the seedlings start coming up I'll move it outside so they can get the right amount of sunlight. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it will work! 

~ElizabethRose