It isn’t often that many of the things in which I’m interested, collide in such a way that easily wraps up into one tidy and squeaky clean post (local food, sustainable farming, garden updates, etc). In our house, the advent of each major familial holiday is spent pouring over cookbooks and old archived blog posts in an effort to come up with plans for the next big meal. Of course, the variables aren’t always that expansive—Thanksgiving is obviously turkey, and Christmas is usually a ham of sorts, but lately Easter has become the experimental holiday. Last year, after reading through a post by Anita at Married…with Dinner, we tried Judy Rodger’s (Zuni Café) Mock Porchetta. This year, again, I decided to go in a different direction.

The River Cottage Meat Book

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Elaine had her Big Salad.  I have my pink salad.  This will serve as my unintentional breast cancer awareness post.

Salad for the Cure

In Houston it seems like the fruit trees, azaeleas, and vegetables have been blooming their hearts out for weeks now.  Our peaches and apples set fruit in the latter part of February, after putting on quite the floral show.  We had almost 100% of our seeds germinate and our tomatoes already have blooms popping out.  So what the heck is wrong with the Black Mission Fig and especially, the Santa Rosa Plum?  If there was one tree in all of our garden that we were looking forward to, it was the Santa Rosa Plum.  After this and this appeared, I felt like we had no choice but to buy one.  Here we are now in the advent of Spring and it seems like nothing can coax this guy out of hibernation—at least not any blossoms.  Yesterday though, I did notice a tiny hint of green.

Signs of Life-Santa Rosa Plum

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I just thought I would throw a quick link up about a short piece that appeared on the Bitten Blog in the Times today—rings a little too close to home, I’d say [uncomfortable laugh]. “What to do with all of the leftovers?”

*Slenderette Bush Beans

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Being incredibly busy over the last week, I have not found a whole lot of time to do any serious writing. I did however, find a couple of minutes early in the morning before work, to snap a few pictures of the goings on in the garden. As soon as things slow down a bit, I’ll get into more detail about what we planted, what we planted in, and how we planted everything.

Heirloom Tomatillo Seedlings

The unseasonably warm weather has been very good to the fruit trees around Houston. Last weekend, ours were just putting on a few green leaves and now they are just this side of being in full bloom. Here’s to hoping that we’re done with frosts and freezes. “Come on in Spring—sit a spell.”

Anna Apple Blossoms

For the inaugural post, I figured it was most appropriate to begin with our garden and this year’s plans for it. Although the blog will cover much more than gardening, it felt like a good place to start.

We were fortunate to purchase a house that was a blank slate when it came to the landscaping. Once the boxes were unpacked, we were able to shift our focus to what we were going to do with our extremely long and narrow lot. At first glance, it seemed as though we would be infinitely limited in what could be cultivated in such small spaces.

Caney Creek Citrus-Courtesy of John Panzarella