Monday, July 23, 2012 at 02:00PM 
Today we harvested some young kale. Garden is moving slow this year with the lack of consistent sun.
How is your garden? What have you harvested lately? Have you made something delicious with your garden crops? Love to hear from you.
Friday, July 20, 2012 at 08:07PM One of my first jobs was cleaning houses. My mom had a house cleaning business and on the weekends I had a few small houses of my own to do. I liked cleaning even at the age of 15. Weird I know - but organizing, cleaning and putting thing in their place made sense to me.
To this day I really enjoy cleaning. It is so satisfying to have everything sparkling and smelling good. I am always looking for ways to clean greener and these products from Twist Clean are awesome.
Twist makes plant based cleaning products. Specifically scrubbers, sponges and cloths. These products are made from loofahs, cellulose and other plant materials. Many of them are compostable. Priced from .99 to $4.99 these are a great choice if you want to toss out those unnatural, petroleum based cleaning tools.
I recently picked up the Scrub Sponges. "The Scrub Sponge from TWIST is the perfect multipurpose scrub sponge for your kitchen, furniture, bath and outdoor purposes. Unlike the conventional yellow-green scrub sponge, the TWIST scrub sponge is dye-free, and also doesn't use any plastics or toxic adhesives. Best of all, they are priced to compete with the conventional yellow-green scrub sponges! " They are even hand sewed. How can you beat that?
More and more stores are starting to carry these. I have seen them at Whole Foods and my local co-op. I hope you get a chance to try one of these products out. I would love to hear about it!
Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 04:08PM 
Life can get pretty hectic and finding time for Mr. Ramon and I can be a struggle. With this lovely summer weather and late night sunsets I want to cook and eat outside every night. This Sunday we had the opportunity to cook and eat together at a reasonable hour of the day - a rare treat.
Being excited about the new potatoes we harvested I immediately thought of a rustic potato pizza as the main course. I had eaten one at a local pizzeria that is forever burned in my mind. We built the rest of our simple meal around the idea of pizza.
We needed something to munch on while we prepared and cooked. Mr. Ramon loves an appetizer. Fresh, warm, crispy baguette, double cream gouda and some spicy salumi. How does it get better than that? Wine - yup that makes it better!
Mr. Ramon picked some lettuce from the garden and added some pretty cherry tomatoes for a simple salad dressed in champagne vinaigrette.
I have to admit I cheat once in awhile when making pizza. Trader Joes makes a really great freash pizza dough. They even have a whole wheat version for those of you trying to make pizza actually healthy. I go for the original but today had to settle for the garlic and herb version. It makes putting a pizza together so easy.
When it comes to kitchen gadgets and tools I have to really be sold on them. I try to have tools etc. that do more than one job. Earn their keep so to speak. One of the first wedding gifts we received was a pizza stone. We started making pizza every Sunday and that stone blew my mind. Not to fret if you don't have one. You can make pizza on a large cookie sheet if need be.
Potato Pizza
Makes 1 12 inch pizza
Prepare your potatoes the following way.
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees - place your pizza stone in the oven on the middle rack if using to preheat.
Put a large piece of parchment onto a cutting board or a pizza peel if you are using a stone. If you are using a baking sheet place your parchment on it. Lightly flour the parchment. Place your dough in the center and start working it outwards to create uniform thickness and a shape that fits your stone or pan. We went for square.
Sprinkle the mozzarella across the dough then layer the potatoes across the cheese evenly and overlapping a little if needed. Don't feel the need to use all the potatoes. If you have extra that is ok. Top with goat cheese, onions and rosemary.
Slide onto pizza stone or place baking sheet in the oven. Bake until the edges are brown and crispy looking about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes then cut and serve. I also like potato pizza cool and leftovers for breakfast with a soft egg on top.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012 at 04:55PM I am a really lucky girl. Mr. Ramon loves to bring me little gifts when he travels. I like that. It feels nice that he is thinking of me when he is away.
He just got back from a week long trip to Los Angeles where he was visiting his family. While they were out one day he picked me up a box of French macarons from Bottega Louie. This amazing place is a restaurant, patisserie, gourmet market, cafe and bar. Full of tasty and beautiful things.
The French macaron is a wonderful cookie. Wikipedia says "A macaron is a sweet meringu-based confectionery made with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder and food coloring. The macaron is commonly filled with ganache, buttercream or jam filling sandwiched between two cookies."
The flavors he brought me were - salted caramel, strawberry, violet, pistachio and passion fruit. They were almost to pretty to eat.
While not something I seek out these were the perfect little treat. They had a crispy outer shell with an airy soft melt in your mouth center. I really loved the salted caramel and the strawberry.
Friday, July 13, 2012 at 10:46PM Growing up in Oregon everyone had a garden. My best friend Marcia's family had a big garden that we took the liberty of playing in and eating from. I loved carrots fresh from the garden all warm and still a little dirty. They were so sweet and earthy. But one of my favorite things fresh from the garden is tiny potatoes. Thin skinned and crisp. I can just brush the dirt off them and eat them out of my hand. Of course I also can think of 100 other ways to prepare them.
This year Mr. Ramon and I have our first garden together. I have not grown potatoes since I was a girl and I didn't do any of the planting - mostly the eating. So together we picked out two types to grow. A small white potato and a small red potato. We decided to go with the method that seemed the easiest - potato bags.
Potato Bags are nylon pots that you plant your potatoes in then add dirt continually as they grow until the dirt is to the top. They have handy little openings on the sides so you can harvest potatoes when they are young. We did not know a lot about growing potatoes so the employee at Sky Nursery told us to just us regular soil and not to feed them. Sounds about right if you think about where potatoes flourish - Idaho and Ireland. Lots of dirt. We were excited to see them grow big and bushy.
All of a sudden while Mr. Ramon was out of town one of our plants started to go yellow. I remembered that they were supposed to flower at some point and they had not yet. This could not be good. I was worried and scoured the internet for potato plant disease. I was sure we had failed in some capacity. To much rain, not enough sun......
Well Mr. Ramon came home and I showed him our plant. He quickly said "maybe we have some potatoes?" He shoved his hand into the side pocket, dug around a bit and pulled out a small white potato.
I was so excited!! We have potatoes - we may not have many and I am still unsure of what happened to our plant but we harvested what we had.
We took this little guy inside and washed him off. I then sliced him and sprinkled him with salt. I was in heaven. Crunchy and starchy. So tasty.
So now we put these new potatoes to use - smashed, roasted, potato salad. Looks like there will be potato recipes coming your way!
