Here is Eveyln at the San Diego Airport looking lovely.

Here are our red "trumpets" growing over our fireplace.

And Robert and Christa hard at play.

Colette and Robert at the airport on my way home from a week in Atlanta.

May 2,nd - Robert outside of PF Chang's restaurant where we all had a nice lunch.

And our day at LaJolla beach.

WHAT WE'RE READING:

Its another grey day today - and cold - good time for curling up with a few good books. Or sitting on the deck with a cigar and a good book. Robert has just finished:

and he says it was good - a quick read. Now he is just starting on:

He has read every book Bernard Cornwell has written. I've had both of these on the e-reserve list from our wonderful little library for weeks, and of course they both came in at the same time! Figures.

I am re-reading one of my favorites:

a terrific Christmas present from Colleen and Randy a couple of years ago. It is Nigel cooking through the seasons and its fun to read during a cooler day in Southern California where we don't really have seasons. It remains one of my favorites. And from the novel section, a book from the library

Its by a San Diego county author Debra Ginsberg. The book is fictional story of a woman making her living as a psychic but she doesn't really believe in psychics until a murder happens and she starts actually experiencing her psychic abilities. Its too early to recommend the book, but I'm enjoying it so far, and I like the cover.... black bird with a tarot card in it's beak! And, the action is set in neighborhoods in our area so its fun. Life is good when you have good books!

Here are our baby herb plants sprouting from seed. These we kept indoors because the weather was cold and rainy the last couple of weeks.

Happy Valentine's Day! Robert took me to a romantic lunch at ......McDonalds. You would think he would have learned his lesson after taking me to Applebees on our Anniversary that year that almost resulted in divorce, but no. Anyway, it forced us to cook something to have a nice meal for the day.

So, we made this Baked Rigatoni with Beef recipe from the Cooking Light website. It turned out really good - Robert gave it a 10 which is the only 10 rating he's ever given something I cooked. Hmm, I own dozens of cookbooks, but as those who know mre know I am more of a cookbook reader vs. an actual cookbook cook. Anyway, we enjoyed the meal and had a nice day.

I haven't given up on my project on the book The Food You Crave. Mid-week last week we made Macaroni and 4 cheeses those cheeses being sharp cheddar, monterey jack, ricotta and parmesan. The big difference was roasting butternut squash and pureeing it as a key ingredient to lighten up the calories and sneak some vegies in. Surprisingly Robert liked it more than I did. I thought it was a little too sweet. But learing and trying is the point.

Starting another project - I am going to cook as many recipes from Ellie Krieger's "The Food You Crave" cookbook as look appealing to Robert and I. Ellie is a nutritionist with a show on Food Network. So, if I can learn to cook these, we should have a repertoire of good for us, lower fat and calorie recipes.

There are several blogs on the web where people are cooking their way through a single cookbook. It started over a year ago when a woman named Julia, in a tiny apartment in New York, decided to cook every recipe in Julia Child's book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". She blogged about it as she went along and completed each of 380+ recipes in 365 days. Amazing!

Here is our first try. Greek-Style Stuffed Peppers, page 188.

I couldn't find bulgar wheat at our store so we used brown rice. One of the nice things about this book and FoodNetwork.com is that you can see comments of other cooks who have made the recipes - their ratings, and their suggestions for adjusting the process.
This turned our really good. It was a little bit of a hassle to make,

but the good flavor was worth it.

Here is how ours would have looked if we had a food stylist.
Here is Evelyn my beautiful mother-in-law on her last visit to see us in San Diego. Why is she appearing in this post about cooking? Well, for a couple of reasons - one she is a great cook! Second, she is fun to cook with and easy to be with. Third, she doesn't criticize even when I have made something horrible tasting.

See below:

This is a picture from FoodNetwork.com of a recipe we slaved over during one

Thanksgiving season visit. It is a sweet potato gnocchi by Giada De-Laurentis. It was completely awful - could not be eaten. I can't remember what we actually ate for dinner that night - probably popcorn.

Why tell this story when I am beginning a new cooking adventure? Because this week I made my second in-edible meal and sure enough we ate popcorn. The recipe came from this little book:

We made a good meal out of it a couple of weeks ago. Here is the concept. You layer food into a Dutch oven and cook it at high heat and you have your meal in one pot, not just stew like because the foods are spooned out separately. The author has written the recipes for two people cooked in a 2 quart Dutch oven. You can double or triple for additional servings using larger Dutch ovens which is what we did when we cooked Thai Chicken which had bell peppers, bamboo shoots, string beans and bok choy. I had never tasted bok choy and I really liked it. Robert liked saying "bok choy" for some reason and went around the house repeating it and chuckling. We doubled the recipe but cooked it in a Dutch oven that was too big. I adjusted our oven to a manual temp gauge. But because the pot was too big there wasn't enough moisture and we had a little overdone bok choy that I was able to get out of the pot before serving.

So I ordered a little 2 quart Dutch oven on the internet and we tried another recipe. I didn't adjust the oven this time thinking that the overcooked bok choy may have been because I wasn't measuring the oven temp properly. Out of the oven it came and the chicken was still raw. We tried to cook the chicken in the microwave but it turned into a real

I'm not giving up on it until I try with the right size pot and right oven temp.

Today we planted our first herb garden, well not really a garden but in pots. The motivation is to be able to cook with fresh herbs without spending a fortune at Ralph's.

It is a sunny hot day today, a good day for planting.

Some we are planing from seeds in one mini-greenhouse and a couple of pots.

Some we have as plants from a nursery in Carlsbad.

Me in my new gardening hat.

Robert without a cigar...imagine!

Robert with the finished product!

Taking a page from my lovely sister-in-law, we are starting a blog to remember the fun we are having together and to share our pictures without clogging people's email accounts.

Wish us well as we try to figure this out!