Sick of me cooking yet?

Me too!  I had intended to get some photos of the garden today, but Mother Nature isn't cooperating.  Speaking of, holy heck what is UP with those storms that ran through part of our country yesterday?  I hope you all fared well, and if you were in the path, chime in and say all is well, please.  I know I'm getting antsy waiting for Alabama blogger E.G. to pop up in my Reader and say everything is okay there.

The line of storms is just a couple of hours east of us now, so far nothing but massive winds here, if it was cold outside the whistling wind I can hear outside would remind me of Laura Ingalls!  No cold, though - it was 82º at 10 a.m., with winds in excess of 45-50 mph.  We are under a tornado "watch" right now, #271 according to the NWS LOL...nothing really expected to develop here though until after 3 pm.  

With a lack of garden progress photos today, looks like it's going to be food again...

Last night's harvest:  Olympia spinach, Tango and Bronze Mignonette lettuces, Mizuna, Mache, scallions and a few pansies to dress it all up.  Annie's Granny and her harvest post reminded me to start weighing my harvests for this year, so I'll have to update my sidebar today.

Dinner Salad

My 1st loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread!  My starter is now about 12 days old, it turned out really well, and I can't wait to get better at fine tuning the baking to my oven.

I made the kids eat some salad before they were allowed to have bread.  One thing I have found to work a bit:  the "Salad Spritzers"... Finn calls it his "salad shooting gun" and it works for him, but Loch remains unconvinced.  Once these are empty I plan to foil them even further by filling them with my homemade dill and herb vinegars :)

This morning at 6 a.m. hubby says "oh, the guys have a potluck today"... today?????  Luckily I already had lots of chickpeas soaking overnight, I have yet to get that amount thing down, but due to my poor estimation I figured out that I had enough for a huge batch of hummus and I would make pitas again and just drive it all over to him when it was done.

No kidding, it made about a quart LOL!  This time I used up some of the oven dried tomatoes, and roasted garlic with the tahini and lemon juice & salt.  It turned out really well, and I'm anxious to get some fresh peppers out of the garden to roast and put in there as well.

The smell of roasted garlic at 7 am is interesting...

On to the pitas...

- then the phone rings... it's hubby stating that for the 2nd week in a row, the guys at work forgot to bring their stuff in, so the potluck was put off until next week.  Really?  LOL I bet they all tried that 6 am "I forgot" excuse at home with their wives and they all got laughed at!  

So now we are set for the whole weekend... we have a massive amount of hummus to eat, looks like I'm not cooking!  I have no problem with hummus, pitas and salad every night this weekend, so I can get some outside work done instead of cooking!

Finally!

SALAD!

It's about d@mn time!  I've been picking a few spinach leaves here and there, just enough for a pizza occasionally, but feared taking too much too soon!  I have one bed with several varieties now and they are big enough for 3-4 of these salads a week now.  I just have to remember to get out there next week and plant more so we can continue to have enough.

I picked Mizuna, Olympia Spinach, Deer Tongue, Mache, and some random spring greens and lettuce mixes, as well as some leeks and scallions.

Of course now we are anxiously awaiting some real tomatoes, peppers, broccoli & peas to top the lettuce instead of relying on cheese and "fake" hothouse tomatoes (ever notice how those store bought "hothouse" heirlooms have lots of color and absolutely NO flavor?!)

Yesterday Finn surprised me by announcing that he wanted to have dirty hands that day.  I took him outside and he helped me plant all the peppers and eggplants.  Here he is putting a "dog catcher" around one of the eggplants.

I didn't get much of anything done outside today.  I admit I have been feeling a bit down lately, not sure why, maybe just overwhelmed.  I would feel bad if it didn't look like at least something happened while hubby was off working hard, so I decided to make my first loaf of bread the real way.  I'm ready to use the bread machine for bb gun practice in the backyard, I hate that thing!  It takes 3 hours to mix a dough and then it's only halfway mixed LOL.

I followed instructions from the book "BREAD" (go figure)

Here's me the first time mixing by hand... I don't even watch hubby when he makes pizza dough so it's all new to me at this point.

I won't show the kneading process since I got so messy and glue-y that I didn't dare start walking around looking for the camera at that point.  I think I added a couple of tbsp too much water since it didn't rise like I had hoped.  The good news is that although it was kind of flat, it tasted good and I finally got that chewy crust I like.  I used the spray bottle of water on the oven walls method.

Here's Finn smelling it... he must have sat there for an hour picking at the hot loaf burning his fingers, waiting impatiently for dinner :)

Below you can see what I mean about the loaf coming out "flat".  But it was much easier that I expected and I think I can fix it for next time and bonus:  no stupid bread machine or kitchen aid to clean up!

Off to go have 'Family Reading Time' and then lounge the rest of the night away, hoping my energy and attitude improves very soon.

Oh! - I also made my first sourdough starter today which promptly overflowed it's container all over a wood cabinet hubby built... ooops!