Greetings from the garden and Juniper with her sniff on! It’s quite green and lovely and lush, and we are ever so grateful for the work we put in, starting ten years ago, for a xeric landscape. Nearly all of this is possible without any supplemental water, every plant in tune with their surroundings. The water the evergreens and single backyard aspen (the front garden trees are fine without) receive comes from what we have collected on site, and it isn’t a ton. We go around, old-school, with watering cans and buckets, to deliver it exactly where needed.

It is pretty amazing and timely, as the West is starting the summer season with a bananas water deficit. Remember how I told you there wasn’t much of a winter? Turns out, it was not just our neighborhood, but vast swaths without it. This means some reservoirs are at startlingly low levels of water. Think good thoughts, say a prayer, dance a jiggety-jig for rain! We sure are.

Apple cider brined pork chop with sauteed apples. It looks much sadder than it was.

Hot drumsticks, black-eyed peas with olive oil and flake salt, citrus dressed salad.

Mahi-Mahi, made spicy, with a heavy on the cilantro salad.

Greek patty and salad to match

How have you been? Aside from enjoying our first coffee sips on the now warm enough patio (YAY!), we’ve been eating well, and enjoying some new cook books, trading out a few that no longer served. I also tried my hand at gluten-free bread, pictured above, and gotta say, it is HARD. You’re basically trying to make a dense pancake batter into an actual loaf of bread, at least with the recipes I tried. Not fun.

Greg was in Germany for work, so I need only worry about pleasing myself, which was a relief because the first loaf was just gross. It looked great on the outside, and despite following the recipe perfectly, it was really gooey in the middle. No amount of toasting could salvage that mess. Off to the compost heap!

The second, pictured above, was much, much better. It had a nice crumb, toasted well, and made for a really great shrimp sandwich (inspired by the La Copine cookbook). The bad bit? It only tasted good on the first day out of the oven. Afterwards, just very, very bad. So, experiment over. I thought it might be nice to eat more gluten-free, as neither of our aging bellies copes as well as before, but, oh well!

Back to the La Copine cookbook. This is a Parisian cafe steak, with compounded butter; the saddest looking roasted green beans, which were actually very tasty; and a salad with shaved fennel and a riff on their green peppercorn dressing (I generally refuse to make my own mayo-like products, these days), which was fantastic.

Gigante beans with homemade alfredo, which came together so very fast. Huzzah!

When I was little, this was one of my mom’s go to desserts, Devil’s Float. Today, it would be called a self saucing pudding, which doesn’t sound nearly as cool, but tastes awesome, regardless.

Do you have those restaurants where you only order one thing? When I was younger, I used to lament this in my older friends. Why not try something different, mix it up? Then, it became me. If you have a craving, honor it! This tostada honors my favorite at Que Pasa Cantina in Portland, a place we went for many years, and is still there. I have yet to achieve the perfect cheese to pinto bean ratio they had, but am definitely getting closer!

More from the La Copine cookbook. We are working it, peeps! This is the chicken agrodolce, grilled to perfection by my favorite man of the flame, Greg. It is brined in a homemade buttermilk of your choice, and is ridiculously tender and delicious. The salad used the last of the green peppercorn dressing.

When looking for something else in the basement, I found our last bottle of wine, bought who knows when, because we don’t really drink it, or much of anything boozy, anymore. Anyhoo, I decided to turn it into sangria, and boy was it delicious.

Bagel with cream cheese and all the things…

Finally, when we travel, as at home, we like to use as few plastics as possible. We often stay at hotels with breakfast included, and every manner of plastic plate, cup, and utensil, so we bring our own, plus cloth napkins. For a while, we had really cute enamel plates, but they do not withstand any sort of banging that occurs with travel, and chipped badly. So, cute divided luncheon style plates it is! This is our test run with salmon and roasted squash puree.

Happy Day!