Look!

There's an itty bitty tomato growing on my tomato plant! About a week after I planted these tomatoes, a herd of evil spidermites attacked them. Spidermites are so tiny, they're hard to see. I could tell something was wrong because the leaves were turning black. So I grabbed a piece of white paper, held it under the leaves, and shook my tomatoes. Sure enough, tiny red dots fell onto the paper.

Spidermites hate the damp. So for the next week or so, I watered the underside of the leaves on my tomato plants. I was able to save 4 of the 6 plants. And the largest one is blooming and producing tiny tomatoes now. I've had such bad garden luck so far, I'm tempted to eat the green tomatoes now just so I can be certain I'll harvest something from the garden this year.

New Baby Muffins!

Dewey and I are an uncle and aunt as of late last night! So I've gone into cooking mode. Here is a Very Berry Muffin from Yellow Rose Recipes by Joanna Vaught. I used strawberries and blackberries. We'll bring these and a nice dinner for our nephew's mom and dad to enjoy tonight.

I've really liked everything I've tried from this cookbook. It's all very comforting and Texasy (Texasish? Texany? reminiscent of Texas?). If you get a chance, try the taco salad or biscuits and gravy.

Tex Mex leftovers

Dewey and I eat Tex Mex pretty often. And this is how the leftovers usually end up the next day. Last night, Dewey and I ate tacos with Spanish rice, black beans, red bell peppers, and onions. Today, I made a bowl full of Spanish rice, black beans, and wilted spinach with garlic.

Often, I'll make the rice for this by replacing some of the water with leftover salsa. (Sometimes I feel like Steve Martin in Father of the Bride running through the aisles of the grocery store, ripping packages of buns apart. Salsa and tortilla chips NEVER run out at the same time. I always have too much of one or the other.)

I topped the whole thing with Crystal's queso. This is THE vegan queso recipe. The recipe is offline temporarily because Crystal and her partner will be mass producing it for sale. Congratulations, guys!

Garden update: The kale was eaten by SOMETHING. It is no more. The carrots turned out the be grass. I planted tomatoes, and half of them have already succumbed to spider mites. Good thing I'm not counting on this garden to provide all my food.