So many great looking meals! Ann_t, how on earth you can’t love your salads I don’t know! They always look delicious. How wonderful to have so many lovely tomatoes. I get you aren’t a salad eater, but… my goodness! Petalique, I was hoping someone would post a pizza – I’m so hungry for pizza. Your tomato and zucchini looks incredibly tasty – don’t you love how great those ‘whatever we’ve got’ pizzas always come out?! Always a pleasant surprise! Artemis_ma, you never fail to surprise me; I’d never have thought to stuff a pepper with potatoes, let alone Indian spices – sounds and looks so good. I need to be more adventurous : ) Jasdip, your pasta and tomato meal looks the best to me and has my mouth watering : ) Something about that combination just tastes so good. I’ve not made that this summer… yet! I like that you used asparagus. Your pot roast is making me pretty hungry too – we love a good well-done, melt in your mouth roast. Only thing I don’t like is how the onions always melt down to nothing and I find myself searching for more in the DO! Neely, I don’t even know where to start – that steak sandwich looks delish, your soup/stew is wonderful (you always have such nice chunky veg!). I know what you mean about sometimes just needing vegetables! But you do know what caught my attention! Your fromage frais with the poached egg on toast! Looks marvelous! Nancyofnc, I do that too! (put labels on food for parties). Your tea sandwiches turned out so pretty – and I can almost taste the marmalade/ricotta! Those tomato ‘bugs’ are adorable and I bet they were a hit too! ETA: Sleevendog, for some reason your posts never show up for a while for me! Wanted to say that tomato pic... oh my gosh. That's all I can say! Speechless! Also, thanks for the help with sous vide - that black and blue steak salad below took me zero time to put together because the steak was already done except for searing - following your example : ) Thursday I wanted to grill, so gorgonzola burgers 3-bean bake, and grilled corn. That’s not a lettuce tree growing out of the burger, just an odd camera angle! Friday was busy, so poofed ribs – Ann_T’s recipe – so good! Made more Tunnel Bar-b-que sauce but didn’t thin it as much with Stubb’s and found it was more to our liking with that kick. Made DH some country baby kale (you know, cooked to death with bacon, vinegar, chicken stock). Saturday I needed veg, so black and blue salad hit the spot for both of us. Yes, that’s my plate. Yes, I eat that much : ) Sunday we had Mesquite Salmon with herbed mayo/mustard seed sauce, roasted cherry tomatoes (from my neighbor’s garden) with shallots and basil, and rice.

Neely, I hope you are on the mend. My schedule has settled and I am back to cooking and tending the garden. I've been making jams, syrups and sauces. These are, from top, blackberries, boysenberries and ollalieberries. I make a triple berry jam from them. I also made a blueberry sauce and raspberry syrup. Yesterday, I canned eight large jars of nectarine jam and still have a tree full of fruit. Chicken with spicy nectarine sauce. My first attempt at a soft pretzel. This is the wine we made from last fall's harvest. From back, 1. Golden Muscat - juice only, 2. Golden Muscat - Juice and skins, 3. Golden Muscat - Skins only, and 4. California Chablis (Thompson's Seedless) - juice only. After tasting them all, we started blending. We decided to bottle a 50-50 blend of 1 & 4 and not blend 2 or 3. After bottling, I used the last partial bottle of the wine to make this lemon cream herb sauce, which we served over pan seared salmon. My second attempt at pretzels. I added an 'everything' flavor that was a hit with Garrett. I tried a new recipe - Poulet a la moutarde, which was tasty with brown rice and asparagus.

A nice day yesterday to get some gardening going without being too cold or too warm, perfect, no sweat. I prepped the rows for the cabbages, broccoli, carrots, beets, and lettuces. Will start on the pea plot today and begin planting all of these veggies (seeds & transplants) in about 2 weeks or so. Keeping an eye on the long range forecast for any cold snaps but so far any predicted nite temps below freezing are few. Soil moisture is excellent for a very good start and the earthworms were very abundant. Some daffodils are budding up now but thankfully the fruit trees are still dormant except for the early plums being near bud swell, I expect the other trees will wake up next when temps warm up to around 70F this week, but a cool snap after that down into the 30's is expected. I'll get going on prepping the summer crop plots sometime in April.

Dasha, 'Anouk' does well in its first year I find, but by the 3rd season I think it starts to deteriorate and in a pot can suffer winter wet. Here's mine just now, those lower shoots are developing flowering buds, but most is on top. This lavender is cheap to buy, so I don't mind if they don't last long.. I think this plant will look much better in another 3 weeks or so. I am now taken by this Lavender 'Victory', which has larger flowers and a more open habit. Remains to be seen how it survives winters.