Happy Memorial Day, peeps!

Butter Crunch





Barn in Field Acrylic

Well, so much for my new year’s “intention” to write more.  I have no excuse, but I will say that I didn’t want to post with text only, and I hadn’t figured out how to download and save photos on the computer I’m currently using (which I don’t like, by the way).  I finally had a chunk of time and just sat down and figured it out.   Derek accidentally knocked my laptop on the floor when he fell asleep on the sofa, and sent it to an untimely death.  I was very lucky, though, that he was able to retrieve and save almost everything on the hard drive, including all of my food blog photos.  When I get a little cash set aside, I think it’s time to buy a new computer.  In the meantime, I’ve been taking some painting classes, starting with Wine and Canvas, which is a fabulous idea, by the way.  I started playing with watercolors when I lived in Mexico 25 + years ago, but I think my medium is oil, so I coughed up the cash to take an eight-week oil painting class. That’s wiped me out for a little while, especially after just getting back from New Orleans for Jazz Fest, where we spent a small fortune eating!  Big Surprise there, huh?

Anyway, I have a little time at work this morning while waiting for the last minute rush of psychiatric and detox admissions before the long weekend, so I thought I’d say hello.  We’ve had an extraordinarily mild winter here in Indianapolis; in fact, it would not be completely inaccurate to say winter this year has been a long spring.  I’m afraid we may pay for that with a super hot summer, but I’m not going to dwell on that yet.  We’ve been enjoying fresh herbs for months now, and our tomato plants are happily in the ground.  Derek picked our first lettuce from the garden this week and it was so gorgeous and delicious I could have wept.  We tried some Butter Crunch for the first time this year, and I think it may be my new favorite lettuce.  It has the creamy buttery taste of a Boston, with just a little of the crunch of a Romaine, and it’s spectacularly pretty.  In a week or so, we should be picking baby arugula and mixed baby lettuces.  I can’t wait!

This weekend I’m going to make The Frugal Gourmet’s recipe for Graduate School Pot Roast on the grill with grilled vegetables.  Pictures to come!