HJ Waxing Moon

Given my grape allergy, you can imagine I miss out on a lot of delicious things. Chicken Marsala. Boeuf Bourguinon. Cinnamon raisin buns. Sangria. I do alright with most things, but every once in a while I feel a little deprived. Especially on the Sangria. Now, every place I've worked that made sangria used vodka in it, but my brother (whom I do trust as an expert in the field of alcohol's history) informs me that sangria is intended to be a low-alcohol version of wine, hence juicing it down. So, this is more of an exploration of sangria than a true recipe, but we're going to go for it. The important thing to note is, make the flavors work together. This recipe was intended to be a seasonal-foods recipe, hence the name. In effect, this is basically a party punch. Things You Need: Wine! You can use grape wines, obviously, but here we're using mead/honey wine. Because I had a 3/4 bottle of mead that I couldn't drink straight. Make the wine about 50% of your ...

I know I promised a garden update ages ago. I even took pictures! On June 22. Let's see what we have here... Yes, let's start with an epic fail. I have no idea what was supposed to be in this planter. Badly cropped in the original photo, you can see a scrap of the plastic wrap I put over these to try to get some greenhouse effect on my seeds. Fabulous! All nice and warm and cozy inside there. Problem is, there were apparently no drainage holes in these herb planters. Oops. So no drainage + no ability to evaporate + a gap for watering that allowed the rain in = SWAMP BUCKET! We since took a drill to the bottoms of these buckets and added a few drainage holes. Having mud fling out at you from the drill bit? Not as delicious as one might expect. Actually it probably is, if you expect it to be kind of gross. So here in this little failure, you can see again the swampiness, the label that is half washed off from the condensation of the greenhouse canopy, AND the scraggl...

What We're Eating: Made a nice yogurt parfait for breakfast yesterday. 2 big dollops of plain, full-fat* Greek yogurt homemade granola another dollop of yogurt homemade granola diced peaches  * I haven't found any low-fat/non-fat yogurt or sour cream that's not filled with extra starches. At least the fat is naturally-occurring! I ate this sitting in the backyard on the patio, on a nice warm summer morning right before we attacked the garden. It was nice to take a moment to appreciate the work we've done already, that I could just wake up, head out there and eat my breakfast. Also, fresh and yummy!  Monday was so warm, we just wanted something refreshing for dinner. Enter: Cucumber-Watermelon soup! Cucumber Watermelon Greek yogurt Fresh mint Fresh rosemary Salt & Pepper This is really supposed to be a "savory" soup despite the sweet ingredients, so the pepper is essential. We used the immersion blender, but a regular blender would...