A birthday meal for someone special

Our recent trip to the Heard Museum yielded a new book.

I know Grasshopper thinks up these plans just so she can pay a visit to the gift shops.

Anyhow...  Cook books are hard to resist.

I picked out a few recipes from this book...

... to help celebrate TJ's birthday.

I cooked it all outside.

The fajita style ones were my favorite.

Can't you tell?

These are lox and cream cheese with capers.

The Cuban style quesadilla was prepared with jambalaya rice, black beans, ham, and Tabasco.

Que delicia.

The french fry lover

Grasshopper loves french fries.

I helped her make her own.  We peeled and cut the potatoes.

Patted them dry and added salt.

Frying in the wok.  They were delicious.  I have to figure out how to make them more crispy but everything else about them was fabulous.

Grown with love

These are ready for preparation.

                            I am sorting through recipes in order to spice up (not literaly) our menus.

Freshly baked

n one of his saturday visits, the BIL made bread. 

My bread machine is small.

But the flavor of this load was BIG.

Must make more.

Peixe fresco

Carapau freco!!! Quem quer carapau fresco?

In 1976 and again in 1988, I heard the women selling the catch of the day as they walked through town.  I recently learned that someone I am getting to know through the education circle comes from a Portuguese family...  from the Azores to be precise.  She has never been to Portugal.  I feel fortunate that I did have a chance to live there if only for a short while. 

Carapau (mackerel) and salmon for those of us that eat fish in our house.

The zuchini side dish was to die for.

Natural fertilizer

The BIL shared that adding egg shells to coffee grounds is a good thing.

Grasshopper ground the egg shells and i added them to the coffee grounds.

She sprinkled it over our small patch of growing vegetables.

I grew a radish.  I ate the radish.  It was a small radish.