Saturday, April 18, 2009

Veggie tales














Living in the city is great although you are limited when it comes to land and gardening. We are very grateful for the huge park outside our front door since we have absolutely no grass surrounding our house. I wanted to test out my thumb (not sure if it’s green) and plant some vegetables. With our limited space a container garden works best. We planted some “trial” vegetables this year, two types of lettuce and radishes. I have read that these are some of the easier to grow and we eat them the most so it sounds like a win-win.

It has been 3 weeks since we planted the seeds and so far they are looking good. The radishes are growing like crazy although the lettuce is slow coming. We are not sure how fast lettuce is supposed to grow and are wondering if the seeds were duds.

We can’t wait to try these beautiful vegetables, if they make it to our plates. Elli may get to enjoy them before we do since she has been eyeing up the radishes an awful lot lately.

Pictures above: Our container garden, Elli relaxing on the deck below our newly installed retractable close line, Elli guarding her veggies

Friday, April 10, 2009

Apple Goodness


The weather tonight is amazing- I'm sitting on our deck watching Elli (our black lab) play. She loves her rope toy but seems to prefer the radishes we're trying to grow. I keep reminding her that the veggies are for us but the girl will eat just about anything.


Since Jeff is out of town playing basketball I decided to bake some goodies tonight. Here is my dish...



I found this cooking website that is great for healthy family meals. Most of the food seems geared towards kids but since we don't need to worry about that quite yet I decided to try this apple cake (good for all ages).


Tamra Davis' Apple Cake


1 cup sugar

1/2 stick or 2 oz. butter, melted

1/2 cup applesauce

1 egg

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/2 cups chopped apples

3/4 to 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease your baking dish. Mix the sugar, butter, applesauce, and egg together with hand mixer. Whisk the dry ingredients together. Blend the wet and dry ingredients and then add apples and walnuts. Pour into baking dish and bake for 30 to 50 minutes (depending on your pan and oven temp) or until knife or toothpick comes out clean when inserted.


Note: batter will be thick


Enjoy!