Homemade Pasta

I bought a used pasta machine on Saturday and on Sunday Kevin and I made homemade pasta. We did a simple half all purpose, half semolina recipe to start. And we served it with basil pesto from the garden. It was really good.
I can imagine the process getting a bit easier with practice but not all that much so I don't think I'll be doing it on a regular basis. It was a lot of work. You have to put the dough through on the highest setting, then the next lowest setting till it's thin enough. Then you put it throught the cutters. And it was all very fiddly.

Baby News

Kevin and I are having a baby! I will hit the 12 week mark this weekend so it is now completely official and for real. We also had our first midwife appointment on Wednesday. We both really like the midwife which was a relief. And we got to hear the heartbeat! That was awesome. The midwife used a doppler machine on my tummy. First we could hear my heartbeat and then we could hear this really fast heartbeat - that was the baby! It`s alive! It was great. But now I don`t know how I could possibly think about anything other than the baby. It is hard to get anything done!

Baby Shoes

I made the cutest baby shoes. Not sure how well they`ll work on just because they`re a bit fiddly and stiff. But I love how they look.

Scroll Work Birdhouse

Finally mounted my scroll work bird house. I`m sure no birds will occupy it because none have touched the 2 birdhouses that I put up in the spring. But I think it looks really nice on the plain windowless wall of the garage so I`m not bothered.

Monster Zucchini Cake

Zucchini are doing well. I keep leaving them to become monsters so I`ve been doing baking with them. Made zucchini muffins last week and this week added zucchini to a chocolate cake.

This monster zucchini yielded 7 cups of mashed zucchini! I used the blender instead of grating it and that worked well. I managed to fit 3 cups of it into the cake just by taking a regular chocolate cake recipe and replacing the water with zucchini. So now I have 4 cups in the freezer that I will use for baking at a later date. I also have a couple big zucchinis in the fridge.

Cucumber

Just wanted to update that we are now regularly eating cucmber and potatoes from the garden. The potatoes are good, I can just grab some when I want them. But it is a bit hard to keep up with the cucumbers.

Garlic Braid

Well the garlic definitely isn`t getting any bigger. It is very small. Next year I will have ot get my act together in time to plant it in the fall. I love my garlic braid hanging in the kitchen though.

Mint Tea

The mint finished drying and I picked the leaves and crushed it up. It took me almost an hour to do that and it yielded 3 - 1 cup jars of tea.

We tasted and it tasted pretty good. We don`t know what type of mint it is but are pretty sure it`s not peppermint so it`s nice, a bit different than regular mint tea.

Drying mint

We have lots of mint. It's from the old owner so we had some last year but this year we have that patch and another patch that somehow sprung up about 10 feet away from the other patch. So I thought we should make sure to do more than a couple of mojitos with it this year. I put some in the couscous I made for dinner and the rest I hung up to dry. I put it in the huge closet in Kevin's office - a perfect place. It's supposed to be dark, dry, and well ventilated. I think it looks so pretty. I thought we could try just using it for mint tea.

Pea and Mint Couscous

I tried this recipe for Pea and Mint couscous today trying to mimic the couscous we would often buy to eat when we were in Europe in 2007.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pea-and-Mint-Couscous-101436
It is pretty similar. And I got to use 3 things from the garden! Peas, zucchini, and mint! There is so much food coming out of the garden now, it is so fun.

Pea season is coming to a close though - the plants are looking very brown and I had to use frozen peas for my thai green curry tonight but I got to put garden basil and cilantro in it.

Really Eating from the garden now

After getting back from vacation there is plenty to eat outside. Still lots of peas and raspberries. We had peas and carrots from the garden for dinner yesterday. The carrots were so fun to harvest because I just had to pull on the stems and food came out! We hadn't wanted to cook the fresh peas because we thought it would be a waste but they were so extra good. The carrots just tasted normal.
And today we ate the three zucchinis that most needed eating after being away for a week. I broiled them in the oven with peppers and onions and olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, rosemary, and oregano and we ate them with veggie burgers.
And here is a gold finch eating seeds from a flower in the backyard.

Quebec Trip

Kevin and I just got back from our holiday to Quebec. We got to spend a day with Kevin's family who happened to be vacationing in Quebec at the same time. We saw whales at Tadoussac. I've included a video that we took just from the shore when all of a sudden whales were everywhere. There are loads of whales in this area of the St. Lawrence because there are a lot of krill where the warmer water from the St. Lawrence enters the ocean and they also like the Saguenay Fjord which is right at Tadoussac. We saw minke whales, blue whales, fin whales, humpback whales, beluga whales, seals, and porpoises. We also went hiking along the fjord. We saw waterfalls at St. Anne Canyon. And we spent a couple days exploring Quebec City and got to spend a day with my mum who was also there. We got to see a free Cirque du Soleil show, watch the Moulin a Images which was a huge movie/slide show projected onto a big building, and saw The Bodies Exhibit that has been travelling to various cities. And we ate at nice restaurants for just about every meal which was great.