Food from the garden

I'm so thrilled to say that our dinner tonight came partly from our garden. Actually, I'm pretty thrilled with how things turned out! I was watering the garden this morning and realized the romaine lettuce was ready for harvesting. I brought it all inside and cleaned it up. Afterwards I called Steve to tell him we needed to have salad soon. Steve has a real knack for cooking that I've never possessed, so he immediately started coming up with ideas. My thoughts revolved around what I needed to go buy at the grocery store to make caesar salad. But, Steve suggested I make some croutons and then make salad dressing. As usual, my first thought was "I can't do that!!" To quiet my reluctance Steve looked up a recipe for dressing and as we went through the ingredients I realized we already had everything including the blender for mixing it. Then he reminded me that we had leftover steak and chicken in the fridge from our Father's Day cookout on Saturday--I was beginning to think I could actually do this!

The boys were still napping so there was no better time for me to make the dressing. Click here to see the recipe we used. It calls for just oil first, and then olive oil--I only had olive oil so I just used the amount of olive oil listed first and omitted the second amount of oil. I actually wonder if that was some kind of mistake. I can't imagine it needing even MORE oil! I found a similar recipe on allrecipes.com and that recipe stated that the dressing is better after sitting in the fridge for a day or two. I'll have to check on that in a couple of days. It wasn't bad, but I still think the oil taste was a little strong--but it wasn't bad at all on the salad.

By the time I got to the croutons the kids were all awake. They were all fascinated with the idea of making our own croutons so I decided to enlist their help. I gave them each 2 slices of bread and a plastic knife. They really did a nice job cutting the bread into small pieces. We put the pieces into a big ziploc bag and added some melted butter. I sprinkled it with garlic powder. That's when the idea hit me that I could use some herbs from the garden. The kids and I all marched out to the garden to cut off some oregano and parsley. I chopped it up really fine and added it to the bag. The I lay the bread on a single layer on a cookie sheet and let it cook at 350. Not sure about the time--I just kept checking it. The croutons were a HUGE hit!! I don't think I will ever buy croutons again--they were so easy to make and so good!

The final dish included the romaine, croutons, fresh bacon bits, hard-boiled egg, left over chicken and steak, and our homemade dressing. Steve also added some kalamata olives. It was actually quite good.

I have to admit it was a little weird for me at first to be eating leaves that had been growing in my yard for the past month. I KNOW it's even healthier than the stuff you buy at the store, but it's just a mental thing at first I guess. It just seems strange. The kids didn't have the same problem. They were sooooo excited when I brought the lettuce inside. I can't seem to get Kaeli to eat any vegetables, but she was absolutely loving the fresh lettuce. They really couldn't get over the fact that we were eating stuff that *WE* had grown.

I'm definitely hooked now! Why had I been so reluctant to start a garden? This is fantastic! The weeds haven't been bad and it's been very low maintenance. Of course, I'm so excited about it that I can't wait to check on it each day--that probably helps in the maintenance department. We have the very beginning of one tomato. We also have the beginning of zucchini and cucumber. I think it's only a matter of a few weeks before we start getting food from the garden on a regular basis!

I've been getting back into couponing lately and being much more conscious of what we spend at the grocery store. So, to make dinner without spending a single dime (utilizing what we already had in the house) was so great! I have to admit that is HIGHLY unusual for me. Of course, I couldn't have done it without Steve's help. I keep hoping his cooking skills rub off on me, it's a slow process but I think it's happening. After all, I came up with the idea to add herbs to the croutons all my myself--it's progress!

Oh, that reminds me of a cute thing from Sunday. Steve always surprises me with breakfast in bed on Mother's Day (he's GREAT at cooking breakfast, by the way). The kids and I talked about making breakfast in bed for Steve for Father's Day. I asked what we should make.....Kaeli said "cereal?" I laughed and asked why we would make cereal when he always makes me such a great breakfast. Her response?....."because that's all you know how to cook for breakfast". I still get a little chuckle from that. She was absolutely serious!