Black Cat Pasta

Fall is here.  October.  A nifty month, full of rain and falling leaves and fog.  Towards the end there will be costumes and pumpkins.

I found this pasta on the weekend.  Black Cat pasta.  Little kitty faces and kitty paws, coloured with spinach.  I thought it would be fantastic for a Halloween themed lunch, especially since I had a few cute Halloween picks.  I suspected the vibrant colour would not hold through the cooking process.  I was right.  They are still pretty cute though, aren't they?

The pasta is not black.  It's a pale green.  Le sigh.  I've been spoiled by squid ink pasta.  And by other spinach pastas.  They've usually held their colour quite nicely.

The garlic and parmigiano-reggiano kitty pasta is sitting in a purple cabbage leaf and decorated with a little tomato.  (Both from our garden!  Yes, even still! ) 
Steamed carrots sit in a silicone cup.  The cucumber was unfortunately peeled before I could stop my kitchen helper, but  keeps the pasta separate from the grapes just the same.

Garden - Week 20 - Frost Warnings

It's that time again.  Time for frost and frost warnings.  There was even (allegedly) had a dusting of snow over the weekend, just south of here.  I didn't see it myself, but the weather guys claim it happened.

Was my garden prepared?  Nope.

So, this week/weekend will see me apologizing to the bedraggled looking plants as I tidy them up.  Hopefully I will be able to plant some bulbs and top-dress some beds before we get truly bad weather. 

Garden Week Something

It's well past Week 15, that's for sure.

The planter on the deck is well and truly finished now.  No more lettuce, no more peas.  One scraggly looking bean plant is holding out, but not for much longer.

Meanwhile, the raised bed is still producing cherry tomatoes.  And purple carrots.  I've even harvested some peppers in the last few days.  The cabbages have set their heads, and will be harvested and enjoyed.

Do you remember me telling you that the broccoli did nothing?
Look at this:

It's not a beautiful head, and it seems to have, erm, gotten old-ish while I wasn't paying attention.  But!  The broccoli did grow!

The cabbages look lovely:

It seems the cauliflower is not the variety we thought it was:

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Ahoy mateys!

D'ye know what day this be?  

Why, 'tis September the 19th!  If ye be wishin' to grow yer knowledge a bit, ye best click on this.

To celebrate the day, the girls took something with a bit o'flair:

Ham and lettuce in tortillas, sliced into rounds, and decked out with a pirate flag.  Some yellow pepper slices are contained in a silicone cup to prevent sogginess and to suggest a treasure chest.  Green seedless grapes and orange cherry tomatoes (from the garden!) are separated from the sandwich by pirate themed cupcake liners, folded to show the map and treasure.

 And what better to accompany than a pirate hat napkin!

(photographed on the table for better contrast)

School's Back!

It is the second week, in fact.  Yay!  So, why no posts last week?  Because it was the first week of school. Yes, the children took lunches. I just didn't post any pictures.  Until now....

This was Friday's lunch. Some lovely green seedless grapes and red pepper slices, and curried chicken (left over from supper) decorated with thin red pepper slices approximating birds.  The brown rice (also from supper) is separated from the chicken by romaine lettuce, and decorated with a fresh-from-the-garden purple carrot.  

Delicious Dumplings

One week left!  School resumes next week!  Where did the time go?

The weather was lovely today, so we intended to have an outdoor lunch.  Then the bees showed up.  Wasps, mostly.  We do not like them.  We ate inside.

It was delicious.  All three lunches were identical; only one is shown.

Today we had seafood dumplings (kinda steamed, kinda pan fried) in our favourite, romaine lettuce.  The cherry tomatoes and purple carrots are fresh from the garden.  I steamed the broccoli today.  It seems to have made the colour more vibrant.  The orange bell pepper is not from the garden, but is local, and so are the free-stone peach slices.

Purple Carrots!

The days are getting cooler, the golden rod is getting more yellow.  This means school is approaching.

We still have about two weeks of summer vacation, though!
The girls are in a science and engineering camp this week.  They are learning new things, building and making stuff, and having a great time so far.

The girls' lunches today are meatballs in a lettuce nest with mini pitas, cucumber slices and green seedless grapes.  The grape tomatoes from Stella, and purple carrots from the raised bed were harvested by the girls this morning.

Here the purple carrots are sliced, showing their orange cores.

Pumpkin preferred her carrot whole:

She also requested fewer tomatoes, and more grapes.

Garden Week 14

We are nearing the end of August.  The window box planter is pretty much done, now.
The last of the lettuces have gone to seed.  The beans in the box didn't produce very much of anything, I'm afraid.

The raised bed is a different story.  The beans continue to bear, as do the tomatoes.  We have pulled a few purple carrots, and even harvested peppers.  Of course the oregano is thriving.  It is trying to escape the bed now. 

The broccoli has produced nothing but leaves so far.  They look a little sad.  Tall, thin, leafy, with no indication of any intention of developing a head.  I don't know what their problem is.  The cabbage and cauliflower are quite happy.  My friend's broccoli has also done pretty much nothing.  Maybe it's the area?  The weather?

Garden Week 13

I found the sunflowers!

Way back at the beginning of the summer, I planted sunflowers in the window box.  One of them even came up, a little.  Remember?  Since there was no sign of the others, I assumed the seeds were duds.

I was wrong.

My garden has been altered.  By (I think) a chipmunk.  Or possibly a squirrel.  We've seen several chipmunks eating the cherry tomatoes in the garden, and I've had some plants spring up where I didn't plant them before.  This time, the sunflowers are beside the driveway.  They look rather nice there.  Perhaps the mystery garden re-arranger had a good idea.

In other garden news, the peas are done, beans nearly finished, lettuces all gone to seed, basil flowering, mint trying to escape.  The cabbages are starting to form, the cauliflower is forming a teeny-tiny head, and the broccoli shows no sign of anything other than leaves.

The oregano continues to thrive.

Garden Week 12

"....and it exploded!"
(One of my favourite lines from the movie Galaxy Quest, spoken by the character Teb.)

Well, Stella kinda has.  She has also produced an abundance of cherry tomatoes.  I think the oregano had something to do with it.

Yes, the oregano I've been whining about all this time.

I know.  Don't look at me like that.
 
The oregano has produced lots of flowers.  These have drawn all kinds of bees.  The bees are doing lots of pollination.  So, we have lots of tomatoes, and lots of beans.

Garden Week 10 &11

Hi there!  Did you miss the garden posts?

We were travelling last week, and part of this week.  Many thanks to EveningGoose and Sneopack for watering our plants while we were away! The planters lived! Yay!
I guess this region got not a lot of rain while we were camping.  We were in a tent, so of course it rained quite a bit where we were.  Peanut was delighted.  She got to show off the skills she'd acquired at camp.   She built a shelter with a tarp, and got to build and start the campfire.

The beans in the window box have even produced some slender green beans.  The buttercrunch lettuce is doing well.  The basils are doing well.  The romaine seems to have exploded over the past few days, and is now going to seed.
The pea plants in the windowbox have just about reached the end of their lives, I think.  Yesterday I scared a chipmunk who was trying to remove a peapod.  He managed to rip a section of vine off, and left it on the deck when he ran away.

Summer Camp Lunch

It's still summer camp season!

Today's lunch has cold BBQ Chicken Thighs (boneless, left over from last night), green and yellow beans (fresh from the garden bed), local cherries, pita and grapes.
The pita was toasted, cooled and torn to bits.  Peanut reported that it did stay not soggy the last time we did this, so here's hoping it works again.  You can see the condensation that started forming on the grapes in the brief time they were out of the fridge.  Frozen juice boxes will hopefully help keep the lunch nice and cool.

Garden - Week 9

It's been hot here.  Hot, hot, hot.  How hot? Gabriel sums it up here:

The lettuces are still being harvested, and the beans in the raised bed have provided fresh veggies at three meals now.  The beans in the box on the deck are stunted.  They've been watered (with a watering can) in the morning every day, and I've tried to shade them from the sun at least a little to slow the waterloss a bit, but there just isn't any getting around it; that planter dries out fast. 

Stella the tomato plant and her friend are doing very well, and have provided tomatoes daily.   The oregano has begun flowering and is drawing lots and lots of big, fluffy, yellow bumble bees.  I'd go out there and try to take a picture, but it's too hot. 

Whew, it's hot out there!

By the looks of the weather map, it's hot pretty much everywhere.  The news last night described a heat dome, and listed the cities under a heat advisory.

This week, Peanut is at a camp where there is forrest, and creeks, and swamp.  In fact, it's the one from last year, the one that started the whole litterless lunch quest!  Since it's (on average) 3 degrees cooler out there, plus there's water activities and lots more shade, I think this was a good week for her to go.  It can be hard to guess when you book these things in March.

Here is today's lunch:

Peanut has a mini yellow bell-pepper, stuffed with hummus.  I saved the 'lid', but things are packed so tightly there is very little chance of tipping or spilling anyway.  The pita was toasted and ripped into smallish pieces after it cooled.  Hopefully this will help prevent sogginess as the day goes on.  Lettuce (from the garden!) acts as a barrier between the pita and the veggies.  Green snap peas, some lovely grapes and local cherries round out today's lunch.

Day Camp Lunch

Today's lunch was packed by Peanut and Pumpkin!

They wanted a lunch that would be easy to eat while at their day camp.  The girls like to eat part of their lunch at the designated lunch period, and save some for after swimming, when they are absolutely starving.

The lunches have mini pitas, ham, and red pepper from the grocery store.  They also have cherry tomatoes, peas and lettuce from our garden.  All picked this morning, by the girls.  OK, Mommy helped. ;-)

Peanut decided to make a sandwich with two red pepper slices, ham and lettuce.  She decorated her lunch with a message written in snap peas.  Pumpkin arranged her lunch components in a manner she found pleasing.

Added to What's For Lunch Wednesday

Bunwich

No, it's not made with bunnies!  George is fine, thank you.  See?  Here he is with a friend the girls have named Dandelion:

The bunwich was the girls' lunch on Friday.  I was feeling very, very guilty last week.  The girls are at a day camp, also attended by friend-of-the-blog Evening Goose's son, Name-to-follow.  He's chosen a cool alias, but alas I can't remember it right now.

Anyway, Darling Husband had been preparing the lunches last week.  Friday came and we realized he'd done all of them!  This was not fair!  Plus, I had no new food content for the blog...

It's a sandwich.  Yes, for the girls who don't like sandwiches.  But it's on a bun!  Yes, a sesame seed topped bun.  It may even have come out of a bag with the word "Hamburger" on it. 

The bunwich is made with ham and garden fresh lettuce, and accompanied by a garden-fresh tomato. (From Stella! Yay!)  The girls also have green seedless grapes and slices of yellow bell pepper.  While we do have wild grape vines in the yard, we won't be getting grapes from them ever.  I may be able to harvest some leaves from them next year, when the vines are a little larger.

Update - July 13, 2011
Evening Goose's son goes by Sneopack.

Cute Culprit

Look at this guy:

Sweet, innocent little bunny-wunny, right?  A fluffy little bundle of Awwwwww?

Ha!  That's just what he wants you to think!

I was chopping some peppers for dinner the other night, and out of the corner of my eye, saw something brownish moving on the deck.  I startled it when I moved toward the door.  The soft brown thing bounded down the stairs and ducked around the yew tree.  I grabbed my camera, totally expecting to get absolutely nothing. 

Instead I found Mr. BigEyes here, pretending to be a bunny shaped statue near some clover.  Acting all innocent.  Like he knew nothing about the two (2!) Pea Knight plants that were now totally missing from the flower box on the deck.  Eaten all the way down!  GAH!

On the bright side, he doesn't like basil.  Or oregano.

(No, I don't know for sure if it's a boy bunny or a  girl bunny.)

Garden - Week 8

The lettuce are doing remarkably well.  We are still (!) able to harvest daily.  The second wave lettuce seeds are trying to sprout.  They grew 1 cm leaves, and stopped.

The Pea Knights have set their pods.  It looks like each vine will produce about two pods.  This is not a spectacular yield.  Then again, they are trying to grow in a window box.  The larger peas are also blossoming and setting pods.  Their average (so far) is three blossoms per vine, with hopefully all being pollinated and developing.  These vines are not quite to the three foot high mark,  so it's just as well we didn't staple the trellis all the way up.  I'm sure we would have infuriated more than one bird with it.

In other window box news, some of the bean plants are not doing well at all.  They've gone from green, to yellow-green, to pale yellow.  Definitely not happy.  Perhaps their roots are too hot?  Too dry? The other beans right beside them are happy, though.  I am perplexed. 

See what I mean?  This leaf is not the best example of pale yellow, but it is conveniently next to a healthier looking specimen.

The raised bed is performing quite well.  The tomato plants have lots of blossoms and a few green tomatoes.  The cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower are growing well, and the beans are recovering from what ever was eating the leaves. 

The oregano is continuing its path of garden domination.

Last Lunch of the School Year

[imaginary trumpet fanfare]

It's the last day of school!  Yippee!  The girls were up, dressed and ready to leave by 7:05 am.  This is astonishing.  They were ready a whole hour early!

Today's lunch is "Rollie Bread Sandwiches", otherwise known as ham and lettuce (from the garden) in a tortilla.  This time sliced and placed on end, separated from the fruit and veg by some parchment paper.  The cucumbers, peppers, grapes and blueberries developed a little condensation when they were taken from the fridge, so hopefully the parchment will prevent tortilla sogginess.

Edit July 6 - Added to What's For Lunch Wednesday.  The thumbnail title should read School's Out, but I didn't put quotes around the ' (like " ' ", or the whole phrase, for that matter), so it's truncated.  Sorry about that. 

Lunch - Packed by Peanut

School is almost over.  Just a two more days!  Then a long weekend!

Today's lunches were packed by.....Peanut!

Both girls have ham, rolled up deli-plate style, and held with grapes and blueberries on skewers, played here by toothpicks.  The mix of grapes and blueberries are kept away from the ham and from the pita wedges by lettuce, picked fresh from the containers moments before packing!