Monthly Archives: April 2011

Garden Inspiration

While home visiting my parents for Easter, I took pictures of my dad’s amazing gardens. Maybe someday mine will be this successful!

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A Weekend of Food in Pictures

Jake and I visited my parents in the New Orleans area for Easter. This is the best time of year to visit, because it’s usually peak crawfish season! We hit up our usual favorites, plus a new stop!

First we had a muffaletta pizza from The Italian Pie. It was getting late on Friday after our drive from Houston, and we were hungry, so I missed the picture of this one. It was delicious as always though.

On Saturday morning, we went to brunch at Louie and the Red Head Lady. We had never been here, but after seeing it on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, we had to try it. My parents had already been there twice and loved it. My mom and I got the Eggs New Orleans and Eggs Nouvelle Orleans to share, and they were both excellent. Jake got the Grits and Grillades. The biscuits and gravy were also delicious, and the creamed spinach that comes with all the meals was so good that Jake had seconds!

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For lunch, we got boiled crawfish, shrimp, mushrooms, and potatoes from The French Market. We also picked up some Covington Beer. I only snapped a quick picture of a handful of the goods before I dug in.

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Our final stop for must-have food was Drago’s. Nobody makes charbroiled oysters like they do.

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Baffled Squirrels and Pretty Birds

We’ve had a couple of cardinals and a blue jay visiting our feeder lately, but the food always seems to be gone when they show up. The squirrels were getting to the feeder and knocking a lot of it onto the ground, so we finally gave in and got a squirrel baffle. So far it seems to be working!

Here are some pictures of the cardinals and the blue jay – please excuse the dirty windows!

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Waiting to Harvest

Everything in the garden is growing really well – especially the tomatoes! I feel like, at this point, I’m just waiting until the tomatoes ripen so we can start eating them. The jalapenos are SO close, and the bell peppers are even starting to look like real peppers. The cucumbers are flowering, which hopefully means I can see some baby cucumbers pretty soon. The squirrels took out some zucchini and green sprouts, but I don’t think that will keep me from having at least marginal success with those vegetables. Here are some of the most recent pictures, and remember that you can see ALL of my pictures on flickr:

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35 tomatoes

As of this afternoon, the tomato count is up to 35: 18 roma, 8 cherry, and 9 better boy! I also have 2 jalapenos! The bell peppers are really close to producing some baby pepper buds, and the cucumbers are getting bigger each day. I planted zucchini and green beans this afternoon, since the broccoli and lettuce has been harvested, so all I have to do now is keep watering, hope the heat and squirrels don’t kill anything, and wait for some edible produce! Oh, and survive the mosquito bites, because they’re killer already!

I’ve already tried out the Pioneer Woman’s Pico de Gallo recipe, but I’m going to be looking for more recipes to use up these tomatoes once they all start ripening. I’m also going to learn how to can some of them, hopefully. What I can’t use will go to neighbors and friends, so put in your requests now! 🙂

So much growth:
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Cucumbers:
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Jalapeno:
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My biggest tomato (roma):
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A crazy-looking better boy tomato!
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Homemade Chipotle Burritos

Based on a mutual obsession for Chipotle burritos, my friend Jennifer and I decided to try making it all at home. We based most of the food off of the recipes from this site: chipotlefan.com. Because they didn’t have a good beans recipe, we searched around and found these as a good substitute. Finally, I also made some pico de gallo using the Pioneer Woman’s recipe.

Overall, this was a major success. There are a few things we might do differently next time (like scale down the salsa recipes and make the hot salsa a little bit less hot), but it’s safe to say that we had a really good time making and eating all the food, and it might happen again someday. If you’re just feeding a few people, you’ll save a lot of money by just driving over to Chipotle and getting a couple of burritos. But, if you want to have some fun and feed at least 12 people (or fewer with plenty of leftovers), I highly recommend trying out these recipes!

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Houston, we have tomatoes!

While watering the garden today, I discovered that I have real live tomatoes growing! Roma, six of them, to be specific. I’m so excited!!

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Everything else is still growing well too (except the broccoli), and I’m planning to eat some of the romaine this weekend! I’ve also decided to plant zucchini and green beans once I harvest the broccoli and romaine, so hopefully I’ll continue my garden success so far with those.

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