Wednesday, May 22, 2013

in Just- spring

This is a post about all the spring-ish-food-related things I've been up to lately, because this is my life: I spend my time thinking about chemistry and mostly what I'm going to eat for my next meal. 


Aaron and I made ravioli a couple of weekends ago. We filled it with ricotta we made ourselves, which, ironically I now love (so easy, so cheap, so delicious), and served it with a lemon cream sauce and asparagus. I wanted to make something that screamed spring, and this seemed like a good option.

We also made lemon bars the other week, using the tart pan I got for Christmas. It took some serious math skills to make this happen, since we used Metropolitan Bakery's lemon bar recipe, which is written for a 17"x11" pan. Ta-da, math is very useful, kids!

More spring-related (okay, actually just garden-related) activities: I made pistachio pesto using the basil plant in my windowsill. It was really great. The basil plant is still alive, which is a significant triumph for me. Fourth time's the charm! However, some very suspicious brown marks are creeping up all of the stems, probably because my pot is small and has no drainage whatsoever? I have no idea what I'm doing. I also bought three sun gold tomato plants (like yellow cherry tomatoes) and four jalapeno pepper plants. The lower leaves of the sun golds are all turning yellow and falling off (????), but the jalapenos seem to be doing just fine. I'm thinking about planting some zucchini and maybe some strawberries. Anyone have any tips for any of these?

Or anyone have any suggestions for our next kitchen adventure? We have a sort of three day weekend coming up, and we need a project in case the cicadas come out of the ground and I have to lock myself indoors for six weeks because I am terrified of large, flying bugs.

5 comments:

Kristen said...

What a gorgeous spring meal! Um...I'm always thinking about what I'm going to make/eat next too. Is that a bad thing? I keep threatening to buy some plants, but never seem to actually commit to it. Our newest kitchen adventure is ice cream. We bought ourselves an ice cream maker for mothers/fathers day and now we have to perfect recipes for ice cream, frozen yogurt and sorbet! Also, I hate east coast bugs. They're huge and nasty.

amanda said...

wow! you guys are so fancy. I keep wanting to try making pasta one of these days. Good luck with the garden. SO glad your pistachio pesto turned out well! who knew??

And oh my, so glad I'm not on the east coast because I FOR SURE would be locked indoors.

I don't have many adventure ideas...but can't wait to see what you guys come up with!

Rollercoasters said...

The ravioli looks AMAZING!!!! I am thinking I might have to make something like that this weekend--I just bought some asparagus & that would be an awesome meal! Your posts are always so happy--I love reading them :)

Sara said...

Sounds so delicious! Congrats on keeping the basil alive! I never had luck in a pot, only in the ground. Maybe try a bigger pot with drainage? For the tomatoes, try watering them less. That's what we found worked for our tomatoes. Make sure you give the zucchini enough space. It's hard to kill, so don't worry about that :)

Sara said...

Oh yeah and as for kitchen adventures I suggest croissants! They're next on my to-do list for when we have time again (aka post graduation). Or Liege waffles. Those things are spectacular.