CSA Week 2

Here is the eggplant w/ caponata I made last week.  It was AMAZING.  I look forward to making it again.

Here is our box from week 2.  It included two colors of pluots, peaches, red leaf lettuce, green beans, watermelon, summer squash, zucchini, bell peppers, gold potatoes, tomatoes and a dozen ears of corn. 

 As you can see this is way too much food for Jorge and I so tomorrow we are receiving our first small box.  As of today we still have 2 heads of lettuce, some rosemary, 6 ears of corn, 8 tomatoes, 1 zucchini, the green beans, 2 bell peppers, half of the watermelon, 5 pluots and 3 peaches!
Sunday I made these balsamic pork chops and sauteed squash with rosemary.  Last week I did sauteed squash with chives and it was delicious, this week with rosemary, not so good.

 And since I'm getting tired of sauteed summer squash and zucchini, I tried this risotto and didn't realize till I was cleaning up I forgot to put the peas in, oops!  It was so delicious, miraculously Jorge ate it all up.  See he'd been complaining about my rice lately so I had stopped making it for a while, just meat and veggies, going partly paleo.  And since the rosemary was so bad on squash I decided to make these rosemary pork chops which were not nearly as good as the balsamic ones.  I also served this with black bean and corn salad.  So it was a very big flavor explosion.  The chops had rosemary, the risotto basil and the corn and bean salad cilantro!  It was a bit much for me but Jorge loved it.

 Unfortunately the watermelon has seeds so it's very difficult to eat.  They're not the type that are easily chewed so I blended half of the watermelon up into agua de sandia.  Normally when making fruit waters I don't like to strain out the pulp but I had to in order to get the seeds out.

Happy Birthday to my in-laws

It was my father-in-law's 60th birthday and my mother-in-law's 56th when I realized we have no pictures of our parents in our home.  We have plenty of pictures of ourselves but none of the rest of our family.  So I decided we should get some taken and am happy with the results.  Although Jorgito was very difficult and wouldn't take a picture with his brother.  Next time we will schedule it before nap time, not right when nap time should be.

 Joaquin is 5 months old now.

 Then we went to Romesco for dinner.  I had a cucumber martini.

4th of July

This year was a fun 4th of July for us.  Everybody was complaining it was midweek and we couldn't stay up late but I think it was a great time.

It started off with me making red, white, and blue sangria to take to the beach.

I attempted to make these mosaic jello stars.  Unfortunately mine ended up too thick and the stars fell apart.  So we just ate the jello with spoons.

We only went for a few hours and Jorgito laid down in the sand and licked it.

The boys had fun playing with Italia who is right between them in age.

It was a very overcast and cold day which was more enjoyable than if it had been super hot.

Jorgito was terrified of the water and kept running away from it.

Then we went to my parents house for dinner and a few fireworks.  Here Joaquin was helping Uncle Nicky open them up.

Jorgito was scared of the fireworks too.  It was still daylight so we only light a few.

For my contribution to dinner I used the potatoes and chives from my CSA box to make the roasted potatoes I made for Easter.

CSA

We joined a CSA last week and are so happy with it so far.  We opted for the large box but may have to cut down to the small one.

 I love being forced to use new ingredients and try new recipes.  I'm tired of making the same things over and over again.  So yesterday I made this salad with the cucumbers and sausage with the green bell peppers and finally a strawberry peach crisp for dessert.  

I opted to add on 15 pounds of white peaches to jam and enjoy.  This is on top of the 2 dozen peaches and nectarines that came in the regular box.  Unfortunately they were rock hard upon arrival then ripened to rotting all in one night.  So I ended up throwing 8 of them out and salvaged many into a jam but because they were over ripe it made a very soft set jam and I prefer jam a little harder.  Jorgito has decided that the only fruit he likes are grapes and so we have a whole bunch of peaches left over and are getting our next box tomorrow!

Tomorrow I'm making a roasted beet salad with the beets and Thursday I'm looking forward to making this eggplant with caponata salsa. 

Birthday Parties

This summer is the summer of 1st birthday parties!
First was Izaac's which I don't know why I didn't take any pictures of :(
Then came Mila's where Tre and Mila's big sister had fun playing in the water.

Followed by Penelope's where I brought peach sangria.

And finally Noah's.

At all of these Jorgito was tired, he had either been woken up from his nap early or never went down for one.
Next month we have our niece Amalia's and then Ryan's in September.

County Fair

The last time I went to the county fair was in 2006. 

Teachers get two free tickets on teacher days so I finally took advantage of the offer.  I had been wanting to take Jorgito to see the animals. 
He had a great time looking at all the animals although he was terrified to touch the cow or goats. 

He only touched the sheep in the petting zoo and this horse with a lot of encouragement.

They had a cool little cowboy area with lots of free activities for the kids.  Unfortunately these little ride on tractors were a little bit too big for him to pedal.

He attempted to rope a plastic cow.

And played some horse shoes.

I look forward to going next year. 

Happy 8th Birthday Porter

My nephew Porter chose to have his 8th birthday party a bonfire at the beach.  We had not been to the beach since Tre was 9 months

Obviously that's way too long to go w/o going to the beach especially considering where we live.

As soon as we got there Tre started doing this...

 And he was starving so he inhaled a hot dog.

 Then asked for a bar and took it down to the water.  He LOVED jumping in the water.  It was adorable.

 Mommy taught Tre to dig his feet in the sand.  He played a little bit with the birthday boy in the background here.

 And he had lots of fun with Daddy too.

We played some game that Tia Luz brough.

It was really amazing watching Tre play in the water and so worth the sand clean up.  We are looking forward to going to the beach again soon.