The start of this year’s garden

ThisĀ  year I’m going to step up my little garden a bit. Last year I had yellow bell peppers, grape tomatoes, serrano chilies, and basil. I also have oregano, sorrel, thyme and sage that hang out year round. I tried to grow squash from seed, but all it would do was bloom, no squashes ever appeared.

This morning, I headed over to a local church’s plant sale. They have people with disabilities grow the plants. They have a greenhouse on the grounds of the church. Pretty cool I think. Ah, here’s the info…it’s the Seedtime & Harvest Greenhouse of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter, 737 Woodland Ave SE at Ormewood. It’ll go on until 2pm today. They’re also going to have another sale in 2 weeks. You can usually find the sale listed in the garden event calendar on walterreeves.com.

So here’s my haul for today: (start back left corner & go clockwise) sweet tangerine peppers, mini chocolate peppers, basil, thai basil (heh, I cut off it’s head in the pic), cilantro, purple tomatoes, roma tomatoes and yellow perfection tomatoes.

baby tomato herb and pepper plants

Vegan potlucks rock!

Today I hosted another awesome vegan potluck at my house. I’m so glad that a year and a half or two years ago I got over myself and finally showed up to one of the lunches. I think I’ve only missed one since. Can’t beat the people or the food.

I took pictures of my contributions and then promptly forgot to take any more pictures after people started arriving. Oh well. I made a gigantor pot of Turkish Mixed Legume and Bulgur Soup. The recipe was from Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World. Chickpeas, navy beans, red lentils and bulgur.

Turkish Mixed Legume and Bulgur Soup

And then, I made Bryanna’s Rose Scented Baklava. I’m always looking for an excuse to make anything with rose water. Filo dough is kind of a pain to work with. Mostly because I’m a freak about getting anything oily or greasy on my hands. It really bugs me. But it’s worth it every once in a while.

Bryanna's Rose Scented Baklava

The roof dog

As I was leaving the house to take Tak for a walk, something told me to grab my camera and put it in my pocket. And here’s why. The roof dog. He was running back and forth from one end of the roof to the other barking at us as we went by. Every once in a while he would peer over the edge and then think better of trying to make the jump. I’m sure there’s some kind of story behind this, but I don’t know what it is.

black dog on roof 1

black dog on roof 2

black dog on roof 3

a house full of vegans

Saturday instead of having our monthly vegan lunch at a restaurant, we had a potluck at my house. It was filled to the brim with vegans. And food! We had pumpkin waffles, banana oatmeal raisin waffles, tofu scramble, biscuits, greens, tira misu, soy yogurt, fruit and granola, ‘tatoes, and homemade beer. Of course I completely forgot to get my camera out. It was much nicer than being at a restaurant. Hopefully we’ll be doing that again. And I will have to say I’ve never had a party with such a quick and easy clean-up. Vegans rock!