New dinner recipes tried

 Hello, everyone. 

There was a gap in posting because of the disorganization conected with the big freeze and power outage. I have a renewed appreciation for heat and electric lights now!

DD2 had a camping trick she shared with us, when we were puzzling in the chilly dimness.

She taped a flashlight onto the neck of a bottle of clear liquid and the light refracted around part of the table.

The new food is part of renewed emphasis on healthy eating. Sliced mushrooms and onions, roasted broccoli tops and carrots, and cute little meatballs. Tasty!

A garden puzzle

 Hello, everyone.

This spring--yes, we're almost in spring now as our average last frost date is coming up in a few days--we have unidentified plants popping up. They popped up last year, too, and I don't know whether to call them allowable as their tiny flowers must be feeding the little flower flies, or weeds. They're really small even when they're as big as they apparently get.

That little thing that resembles parsley or cilantro is it. It's much smaller than a cilantro seedling. The leaves get more divided as the plant gets older, and it has very tiny white flowers. The flowers are not in the umbel form we see on parsley, cilantro, and fennel. It's especially likely to sprout in the clay that has been turned into my herb garden. But it seems content to sprout in potting soil, as here, too. (This is a pot of basil.)

The herb garden last year. The Italian oregano has grown a lot, with graceful stems leaning over the stones, and even a stray branch or runner at the base of the stone now. The assorted basils have mostly died out, not having been pruned, and more rosemary and a Greek oregano have been added. The bare bit by the barbecue has acquired some rain lily seedlings. Who says I can't have flowers with my herbs? 

Returning to Bentsen Park

 Hello, everyone.

It was a pretty warm day here today, but in the morning it wasn't too bad. We went to Bentsen Park to take a walk and view the birds.

The birdseed feeders were empty, but orange halves had been put up on the fruit boards. Every feeding station was full of birds who were waiting for the chow to come. (They usually feed through the end of February at least.) The first station was full of chachalacas on every branch hoping for the food truck to stop for them. 

At the third feeding station, where the loop joins with the entry road, we saw a sight.

There is a flock of turkeys that lives in the area--wild Rio Grande Turkeys, not loose domestics--and they had come out to the open-area feeding station to look for food. The tom was majestic! With them were also (at least) a dove, an oriole, a kiskadee, and a cardinal. The kiskadee is on the ground by the pole in the first picture. The cardinal is perched on a branch in the second one.

The last time we walked at Bentsen, we had seen just the tom by himself, at this same place. And once before, we had seen the flock at a different feeding station.

It was a pleasant walk today, and we enjoyed watching the turkeys.

Lemons, lemons, lemons

 Hello, everyone.

The homestead has a lemon tree--"Valley lemon" aka Meyer lemon. It is a mature tree and produces a lot of lemons.

Besides filling every available container with lemon juice for freezing, we are trying out various recipes.

There has been a batch of lemon marmelade made. (DH's very first time to make this.) It came out very well.

And we are making a jar of spiced preserved lemons. (Yes, he used a quart-sized jar. We're going to have to eat a lot of bits of lemon in a few weeks!) This is our first time with this, but it's basically a salt preservation and should be fairly straightforward.

There was a batch of lemon jelly tried, but we have concluded that the recipe he found online was not correct--probably didn't have enough sugar, plus the peels were not to be boiled with the juice to extract the natural pectin. The taste is good but the jelly refused to gel. 

We also found a tasty lemon pasta recipe, added a can of tuna (the good kind, canned in olive oil) to the sauce before stirring in the pasta. It was good, and it used up the juice of half a lemon and the zest of the lemon too.

More about that tomato

 Hello, everyone.

We had a couple of rainy days and I went out and saw this:

It's not yet ready to let go of the fruit, so it's still out there, getting redder.

At the other end of the yard, the first fruit to develop on any of our pomegranates:

We aren't sure if it's going to get redder or not. It feels juicy in the hand, but the skin doesn't feel like it's "papery" and it may still be storing up sugars and juice in the little arils. This pomegranate shrub is not the "Wonderful", it's one of the other two. The tag promised red fruits but as I've never actually seen the fruit of the variety, it's hard to know what "red" really means.

January in South Texas, at least this year

 Hello, everyone.

As we often do, we planted a winter garden. There were some little rows of lettuce, some little rows of "salad mix", and some tomatoes.

The best of the lot, at this point:

These are one of the large-tomato varieties...they have proven to be really susceptible to blossom-end rot. And they were late to get going as a heat wave hit after they were planted. The coloring up is just now building steam.

A springtime placemat

 Hello, everyone.

The other day's post was experimentation with fabric and embroidery. Today is the project.

The Carnival season extends from Twelfth Night (Epiphany) until Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday. (It succeeds rapidly on at the end of the Christmas festivities.) The placemat is themed to go with the whole time of Carnival.

Rosca de Reyes is the Spanish name for the King Cake.

Boeuf Gras (Fat Cow) refers to the ancient custom of giving up meat during the whole season of Lent. 

All of the fabric is from stash.