Last Night's Dinner

My current job has a few advantages. I work from home most days and I work on a schedule that is currently 3 hours different from where I live. So, while I have to start ridiculously early, I can start in my PJs. And I'm done by 2 pm my time - even though I've worked an entire day already.For the purposes of this story, that means that - when things are going well - I often have dinner planned and sometimes even in the works very early in the day.

By 3:30 yesterday, I had chicken breasts defrosting and a risotto recipe on the kitchen counter. But all of that changed when I went to water my herb garden. The neighbor across the street works for a food delivery company. Occasionally they get an over order and he brings it home to share around the neighborhood. We've been given industrial sized packages of oatmeal and monster sized cans of fruit. This time, he asked if we wanted ricotta. Well, sure! Ricotta is good stuff! We'll take some! And that is how I came to be the proud owner of a 5 lb tub of ricotta. Yes, 5 pounds.... No, really, I'm not kidding.

All I know about ricotta is that it is used in lasagna and stuffed shells. Neither of those dishes are going to happen on a Monday night in my house - unless I managed something crazy over the weekend. So, I went to my ever faithful friend, Google, and looked for chicken and ricotta recipes. For these last minute dinner searches, I have a very specific recipe searching style. I only look at things that I have all of the ingredients for already. Yeah, I know, not adventurous, but I've learned to live with it.

So, I'm paging through recipe after recipe (no, I will not be stuffing chicken breasts tonight!) when I finally come across one with promise. Pasta? Check. Tomatoes? Yep. 1 c ricotta? Puhleeze! Salt/pepper and fresh garlic? Of course. But then, the two ingredients that made me say "YES! I MUST make this recipe!" Fresh parsley and fresh mint!

Whoo-hoo! Some of the herbs of my garden! Yes, I'm easily pleased. But it was SO nice to be chopping these very freshly harvested bunches up a few hours later.

So that is the story of dinner last night. It was actually a fine "comfort food" kind of dish - flavorful, fresh and satisfying. I'll probably make a modified version of it again in the near future - especially since we have all this ricotta. And, BTW, if ya'll have some favorite ricotta recipes, let me know. 5 pounds of ricotta is A LOT of ricotta!

Progress and Wow!

Well, I did actually finish my work during daylight hours today, so taking these pictures and blogging was my reward. We've made progress on 2 components of the herb bed and - in the Wow! category - the plants have already made some progress of their own. So, without further ado...
I decided to settle the spearmint into their own container. They were literally bursting through the nursery starter pots and I know that they will take over whatever container I give them. I figured I might as well just let them go crazy from the start. I planted them yesterday afternoon. I expect all of those little tiny leaves to start spreading out shortly.

The lavender and aloe also made it into their respective spots yesterday. The aloe pot had all of those leaves on top, so I just scattered the leaves over the bed again. HTH laughed and asked if I wanted them to feel at home. I figure compost is supposed to be started with leaves anyway, so it can't hurt!


HTH and his dad, again, did a really cool thing for my herb bed. They installed a gutter over the bed so that the plants don't get hammered by the heavy roof overflow. Then they ran it over to this downspout. Very nice, right? But what, you may ask, is up with that concrete block? THAT is part of the cool part.





Straight from the mind of HTH, we have here a rain collection system. This bucket was used for food grade material before he cleaned it out for me. He then added this rain gutter joint on the top.







Once the seams around the top have been sealed - so that no mosquitoes can get in - this top will fit over the bottom of the downspout. Presto! Instant rain water for my plants without smushing them! Cool, huh?

Now on to the wows!




My little herbs have been quite busy since Monday. This little fuzz of dill in the middle of the plant was barely visible when I planted the thing. Happy sign from the plant and how cool is that?






And look at these little bitty leaves in the center of this oregano! I know, I know, I'm easily amazed, but this is SO COOL!





But this is my favorite. I had no idea that rosemary had such lovely and delicate flowers. The leaves in this picture are about as long as my pinky finger, so that should give you some sense of scale. But WOW! How cool is that!

I lied! Quick pic post

Instead of a leisurely lunch today, I'm taking a few minutes to post pictures from yesterday's work. I'm just SO excited about my herb bed that I can hardly stand it, so youl must share in the joy.
So, a few background bits of info. First, I'm planting in Earth Box containers. The terra cotta boxes have a screen in the bottom that the dirt sits on. Water is fed in underneath the screen by the black tube that you can see in the right hand side of the covered box in the center. All of the boxes came with covers that are supposed to help plant growth. However, my resident expert (and next door neighbor) said that he has never had any luck with the covers. Since they are a pain to deal with, I only did the first box with the cover and then dispensed with them for the other 2.
As you can see here, I've got a few random experiments growing. Although the back row of this box is cilantro, the front row - from left to right - is curry (who knew?), dill, and sage. All of these were grown in a local nursery green house and have been tested in our AZ sun. I'm hoping that they'll work for me.

And, just for perspective, here is the current state of work on the bed.

• In the end bed closest to us is the garlic - pulled up from the neighbor's yard and transplanted here.
  
• Then, there is a box with no dirt (I forgot that I needed to fill the ends, so I was VERY short on dirt) and 3 spearmint plants. You can see the screen that I talked about earlier in the bottom of this box.
  
• Then the cilantro/experiment box.
• Then the covered rosemary and parsley box. That is vertical rosemary. I thought they would do better in the box. I guess we'll see!
  
• The 2 pots in front of the rosemary are Spanish Lavender. They'll either end up in the last empty box or in 2 big pots. I haven't quite decided...
• Then, the farthest from this vantage point (and to the right of the rosemary in the 1st pic) is Greek Oregano.
• Then an empty box - no dirt, so no plants!
• The opposite curve on the end has most of the dirt it needs to be planted, but not quite all. At the moment, the aloe are still just sitting in their pot on top of the dirt, but that will change sometime in the next few days.
  

So, there you have it! Now I'm off for a quick lunch!

The project

Well, I've mentioned this to a few of you, but hadn't been able to post pics yet. All of the work that you'll see in the next few pictures is to create a small herb garden in front of the house. This is, believe it or not, another Lighten Up initiative. This is not, of course, something that simplifies my life or helps me balance competing commitments. It has nothing to do with lessening my impact on the environment or even address daily stresses in my life. But this may be one of the bigger Lighten Up projects of the year.


Most of Lighten Up has a lot to do with taking the useless edges off of aspects of my life. And it feels like this picture looks where HTH is taking the interlocking lip off of the bottom layer of blocks. It has to be done for the layers on top to settle properly and it takes quite a bit of time. There is a lot of dust and noise, and it helps to have the right tools. But, for the most part, the change isn't really that visible once you get it done.

When it is done properly, as you can see here, everything just fits. And, with Lighten Up as well as many of the changes that we do around this house, it somehow looks like it has always been that way. But change is being done as a concrete and block example of what I want Lighten Up to do for me.
I For some reason, I believe that, once my life Lightens Up a bit, I will be the kind of person that can grow oregano and parsley. This is, of course, a belief that is completely theoretical at this point, you understand. But I believe it nonetheless. So, instead of having a nebulous resolution about getting my life to that ever so lovely light point and THEN having a little herb garden, I decided to do this a little backwards. Having an herb garden that will require my thought and effort will necessitate changes in the way that I run my life.

And, if all of the work that was done to get this together was not enough, I also will be building the herb garden on this little reminder. After all, one of the purposes of Lighten Up is to give me more space to focus on what I think is important, so having this at the foundation of the herb bed sure makes sense to me!