March Meals & the Garden

Hello, friends.  Lately, I've been getting bored with the usual lunch choices.  One day, I decided to make some shell pasta, and sauteed a few mushrooms with garlic, then added some cream and fresh parsley to top the pasta, along with grated Romano cheese.  It was good, and a nice change.  I pulled our lima beans, spaghetti squash and lambs quarter from the freezer for a dinner, and made cranberry relish with the last of the cranberries, an apple, juice of an orange, and a handful of blueberries that needed using.  The squash and lambs quarter dish used the last of the cream that needed using.  Another dinner was The Prudent Homemaker's black bean burgers with a Mexican quinoa dish.  A green salad was made, which used our home canned pickled beets.  The seed potatoes arrived, and are in pans in the studio, developing eyes.

It had been a month since I cleaned the bird feeders, so I cleaned them and the birdbaths again with 10% bleach solution, to avoid spreading mycoplasma among the finches.  I've only seen a rare bird since the first cleaning with sickly looking eyes, and nothing as bad as before the cleaning.  If you'd like to learn more about it, Julie has an excellent post on mycoplasma.  A sweater was mended.  Hummus was made for lunches.  The workshop porch and steps were sealed.  Laundry was hung on the line.  For a dinner, I topped cheese ravioli with sauteed garlic, mushroom, and chopped frozen parsley.  Another dinner was baked sweet potatoes, roasted asparagus and pinto beans, with home canned applesauce.  J tilled up the garden, took down the trellis, and amended the soil where the potatoes are going.  I pruned the fruit trees in the pond garden, and pulled up all the wild blackberry and grape vines I could, then cut the rest at ground level.

We dropped our taxes off at the accountant's.  Orders were powder coated on Saturday, including an extra one J had made, but afterwards I realized I mixed up two of them, and will have to repaint both the proper colors.  We continue heating with firewood, though there was one warm day and night we did not need any heat.  I enjoyed oatmeal with our frozen blueberries and figs.  Repainting the two stands was a major hassle, but after two tries for one and three tries for the other, we decided they were good enough.  My mistake was in not looking at the order slips, and just going on auto-pilot.  I'm usually better with details, but this one slipped by me.  I needed a simpler dinner than what I had planned, so veggie chik patty sandwiches were made, with our dill pickles, and a salad.  I don't know if it's the time change, or a shift in energies, but I hope the coming week will be gentler on us than the weekend was.  Wishing you a gentle week as well.