Green Beans Galore

THIS WAS A POST I WROTE SEVERAL DAYS AGO AND FOR SOME REASON IT DIDNT POST: So HERE WE GO AGAIN.


This morning I went out to check on my garden. It had been a few days since I last checked the grrn beans. As of Wednesday they were smaller, not nearly sweet enough, not ready.
Well when I went out this morning to weed and water etc, I was STUNNED at the progress.

I actually had to harvest over a pound of Kentucky Wonder green beans! They are long, fat, tender and sweet, just the perfect green bean. I still have HUNDREDS of beans on the vines, which will be ready in a week or so. I am just shocked at how quickly they grew.
It was as if I were Jack and they were the magic beanstalk. Too bad there isnt a golden goose to go with it.

On a COMPLETELY UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: I have a ghost in my house.

Peter has a transformer toy that makes the tsch tech tsch transforming sound. But the switch is in an off position. This toy started going off by itself. I went to check it and it stopped. Then I come to sit back down and it started back up again. So I yelled out to my ghost" Please stop playing with it, that noise is irritating me"...and it stopped. Goosebumps yet?


My kids arent even home. Ironically, they are at the movies seeing Transformers 2. Apparently our ghost is irritated he wasnt invited to come along.


SPOOOOOOKKKKYYYYY!!!

What should I do with this red leather jacket and silver glove??

RIP Michael Jackson.

He was 50 years old.

I remember back in 1982 when Thriller was released. I WORE OUT the tape I listened to it so many times.

My neighbor Jerron had a grandmother who was a whiz with a needle and thread. She made him a red leather jacket and a glittery glove, just like Michael. We used to pop the tape into a boom box and he would practice his MJ moves on the front porch. he got pretty good. My moonwalk, however, looked as though I were wiping my feet on a doormat.

granted over the years he has gotten strange, wierd, eccentric...whatever you want to call it, however he was still amazing. He still had loyal fans. His music was still being played all over the world. He was and will always be a legend.

I am really kind of shocked and saddened.

My Favorite MJ Song: Man in the Mirror

My Favorite MJ video: Thriller

Jackson Memory: We did a Jr Jazzercise routine to Bad.

So the above album is how I will always choose to remember the great King of Pop.

RIP Michael, you will be missed.

Day at Monkey Joes

Here are the boys at Monkey Joes.

They had such a great time and it really wore them out. Peter and Finn just love to bounce and play and slide and act crazy. It is fun to just let them go nuts, and go sit in the parents station and play on the computer, or watch TV etc.

and here are some videos I took of them on the slides etc.

all in all a fun day at monkey joes.

gardening monday 6/22

Gardening Monday again. We have had lots of rain, lots of sun, great compost. So we have a pretty lush and thriving garden. However, I feel like I am watching a watched pot boil sometimes.

I have a ton of tomatoes on the vine...DOING NOTHING. I am just itching to make salsa and bruschetta, if these darn things would GET MOVING!!!

But I do have a few glimmers of hope on my cherry tomatoes and on my yellow cherry tomatoes. However I would need a heck of a lot of these to get my salsa on!

In a week or so I will have a nice crop of green beans to eat. They are getting longer, but still kind of skinny. My mom made some homemade green beans last night. She blanched them for a few minutes in boiling water, then sauteed them in a pan with olive oil, butter, salt and pepper. They were DELICIOUS! Everyone was trying to get the last helping, fighting over them in fact.My father in law said he would be happy for me to make those every night.

Of course the invasion has begun. I need to go to Home depot and get the Japanese Beetle traps/bags and get these nasties out of here.

lots of work to do still, but all in all I am feeling that this season will be quite fruitful...if i could just figure out a way to ripen those tomatoes!

what happened??

Last year when I discovered blogging, I felt as though I had found a great passion. I blogged every morning. I couldnt wait to get out of bed, turn on my computer and listen to the soft hummmmmm of the whirring internet. I posted. I uploaded. I scoured for funny things. I made lists ahead of time what I would blog about. I specialty photoshopped pictures into collages. I took detailed pictures and accounts of recipes and cooking and gardening.
I ENJOYED it. I looked forward to my inbox filling with nice comments from people i had never met. People as though I felt I KNEW, because I read their blogs too.
It really is amazing how alike we all really are. I blogged because it was a great stress relief, and it gave me satisfaction , knowing I was not alone and many people were going through the same thing. I had a peak of about 200 readers per day.

But then slowly, little by little, piece by piece, my hard work started to fall off. I would skip a day and think to myself "ohhh, I need to blog about (Insert subject here)" and then never get around to it. I found myself getting lazy with taking and uploading pictures. I would have 200 pictures on a camera card and not want to upload them and photoshop with them, therefore not uploading them to blogger. I found myself jealous of fellow bloggers and the numbers of readers they had, and the number of comments they garnered over certain subjects. I found my readership dwindling. I had no motivation to blog anymore.

I started school, which left me a full time cosmetology student AND a full time wife and mom. I found myself increasingly tired and grouchy. I found excuses for less and less time to devote to my blogging. I also crossed the line in my blogging that I swore I would never cross...politics and religion. I said things that I felt needed to be said, so people knew where I stood. I lost readers.
Some people didnt like the fact that I am not Obamas biggest fan. They didnt like the fact that I said Sean Penn was a self righteous douche for proclaiming that all those who didnt support Gay marriage would make their children ashamed of them. Again, I lost more readers. But I plodded on, half heartedly blogging, not really "feeling it". You know?


THEN the unthinkable happened. My computer CRASHED. Completely died. with EVERYTHING ON IT!! All my business cards, labels, pictures, scans, photoshop and illustrator programs. EVERYTHING. I lost about 3 years worth of pictures. I lost all my music(all 20 gb of songs, soundtracks etc). I lost all my labels for balmshoppe. Lip balms, scrubs, soaps etc.

I was memory lane destitute.

The only things I have is what I uploaded to blogger and what we had saved over to disks when we got a new computer 3 years ago.



So I have decided to come back my friends. Back with a vengeance. No more laziness. No more religion and politics. Just good old blogging the way it used to be. Sometimes funny stories. Sometimes pictures of vacations or gardens or recipes. I want to ENJOY it again. I want to look forward to it. I want to post pictures so the next time I have a crash I will have a digital copy SOMEWHERE. I want my readers back, clicking on my ads and making lots of comments.

LOTS OF COMMENTS.(It is kind of a sickness. I feel as if my self worth depends on the number of comments i get on each posting)

I am going to get into give aways and contests. I want to make blogging as much fun for me as it is for you, dear reader.



So thank you to all my loyal readers, please know I appreciate every one of you.

AHHHHH My ROMAS!!!!!

Last night we had some bad storms blow through here.
Tornadoes to the south and west and lots of heavy rain and wind.

This morning I woke up and peeked out my kitchen window to the garden.
I notice sometihng between the two back plots. I call charles over to investigate.

ME: Charles, what is that? Is that a tomato bush on the ground or is that a branch from a tree?
CHK: Where?
ME: Out there in the garden
CHK: Where?
ME: OUT THERE!! IN THE GARDEN.
CHK: well I cant see anything i am sorry. I dont know how you expect me to see anything around your big head.
ME: Back there, between the long tomato plot and the plot closest to the house/
CHK: Oh, I dont know. i THINK I see what you are talking about.

He then plops on the couch to watch the series finale of Pushing Daisies that was on DVR(Curse you ABC for cancelling the show and trying to wrap things up with a final episode. Ridiculous.)

So I head out to the garden to find one of my roma plants playing on the ground. The cage had fallen over and our plants could not support themselves.
So I had to pick it up and realized why it had fallen. My tomato plants are KILLING it this year. I have more tomatoes than I will know what to do with! The romas were so heavy and abundant, no wonder it fell over.

so i am off to Lowes to get some tall bamboo stakes to make sure our plants have plenty of room to grow and have some support so we dont have another mishap.
I need to do it this morning because we are expecting heavy storms and rain again today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER

Saturday was Peters birthday.

#9.

where has the time gone?

Peter did really well this year.

We are 6 months between biopsies. He did well in school. He worked extra hard with his PE teacher (Thanks Coach C!!) to increase his stamina, endurance and athletic prowess. He really improved!! He was a terriffic kid in school for the month of march, and had a great make a wish trip back in October. What a great year he had.

so Happy Birthday King! I love you!!!

Will post pictures later.

criss angel trick

I am not a huge criss angel fan. In fact I think he is a bit of a tool.
However, I watched this and couldnt figure out how he did it. every now and then he comes up with stuff that makes me shake my head.

It's alright, 'cause I'm Saved By The Bell

Jimmy fallon is probably the un-funniest man in the late night talk show scene, let alone hollywood. Although every now and then he has a bit of genius. This is one of those moments. Mark Paul Gosselaar is a great sport and very funny.
I am not embarassed to admit that I have seen every single episode of Saved By The Bell, including college years.
My friend Anna Marie sent this to me.



please to enjoy Zack Morris.

goopy eye

How old am I??
for crying out loud, it drives me crazy.

I woke up on friday with a really watery itchy eye.
saturday it was goopy and itchy and kind of painful.
Sunday was worse. It was really itchy and painful and goopy.

I think I have pinkeye.

I still have drops from my last bout, so I started using those and they have actually helped immensely. I get these things and feel like a child all over again.

So I have my contacts out and have to wear my glasses, which give me a headache.
come on drops, work your magic.

Gardening Monday is Back

Technically this is sunday. But I wont have time to do this tomorrow, so although it is gardening monday, I am posting it a day early and calling it monday...

Yay. I love to garden and I have missed it this entire winter.


But it is back. A few weeks ago Charles and I planted everything and have been working hard.We tested our soil (average pH where it needs to be, but SORELY lacking in Nitrogen and a few other elements you test for. So we had to get some special compost and fertilizer to help the garden soil get back to normal.)

This year we cut out the squash. We have had nothing but trouble with them. We would get one or two and then the plant would die and we just couldnt figure it out. So although I love summer squash and zucchini, it just wasnt worth the heartache. I would see these plants grow all big and beautiful and be full of flowers and get a dinky fruit here and there. Or they would start to grow and then the fruit for some reason would just mush up and die and fall off.



We decided to only plant jalapenos this year. Last year we planted jalapenos, anaheims and poblanos and had so many peppers that many went to waste.
So this year our garden consists of the following:

• sweet 100 cherry tomatoes(really sweet round red cherry tomatoes)
• yellow cherry tomatoes(sweet yellow cherry tomatoes)
• roma tomatoes(perfect for bruschetta)
• Juliet grape tomatoes(perfect for salads and snacking. SUPER SWEET)
• celebrity tomatoes(larger red slicing tomato)
• Texas white Sweet onions
• Green Bell Peppers
• Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans
• Jalapenos
• Basil
• Blueberries(we bought two bushes, but wont see anything for at least 2 years)

I LOVE tomatoes.(can you tell, 1/3 of our garden is tomatoes.) I make salsa by the gallon practically. And believe it or not the sweet 100s and grape tomatoes grow like crazy and make a fantastic salsa. Just mix them in with the other tomatoes of your choosing.





But this morning I went out and took pictures of everything and made this little montage of the plants.

I also included a picture of the honeysuckle along the back fence, just because I like it(top center)

so yay to gardening, yay to perfect garden weather and the lots of rain we have gotten!

Cook It Blog it-another entry

Last monday, for memorial day, I braved the torrential downpours and grilled out.

I made Brushetta, with Basil from my garden, and grilled a really nice steak.

The bruschetta recipe :

3-4 roma or plum tomatoes

1 clove garlic, minced(about 1tsp from a jar)

1/2 TBSP extra Virgin Olive Oil

3-4 Basil leaves

1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

french baguette or italian loaf.(use whole wheat baguette for healthier alternative)

In a pot of boiling water let the tomatoes boil for 1 minute. Drain off water and rinse with cold water. Peel skins off of tomatoes.

Cut tomatoes in half and dig out the seeds and discard. Chop tomatoes fine.

Wash basil leaves, roll up and slice thin(chiffonade). Make sure basil is chopped fairly fine.

In bowl combine tomatoes, chopped garlic, basil, 1/2 TBSP Olive Oil, 1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.

Take bread and slice. Brush olive oil onto the tops of the bread. Place oil side down on a baking sheet. Bake at 450 until golden brown. Top with tomato mixture and eat! YUMMMMMM!!

STEAK:

Preheat your grill, you want about a medium-high flame. Bring your chosen steak up to room temperature. If you start with a cold steak it will be tough.

with a knife make slits in the surface of the steak, just a few per side. Brush on Extra Virgin Olive Oil and massage in gently. This will help tenderize the steak.

sprinkle with Lawrys Seasoned Salt mixed with equal portions of McCormick Montreal Steak seasoning.(I use about 1/2 TBSP per side, I like a little zing.)

Spray a little pam on your grill and place steak. SHUT THE LID AND DONT MOVE IT FOR AT LEAST 6 MINUTES!!! Turn and cook 6 minutes on other side.

Depending on how pink you like your meat you can either take it off, or cook it longer.(It also depends on how thick the steak is. The thinner the steak, the less amount of time you want to put it on. I like my steaks medium, still pink in the center)

Less pink, leave it 8 minutes per side. You dont want to be flipping it over and over, that will dry it out.

Put it on a plate and LEAVE IT ALONE!!!! Dont cut into it for at least 6-7 minutes. If you cut into it right away it will dry out. By letting it settle it will stay moist and juicy.

ENJOY!!!