Weekend Recap, Vol. 3...

Happy Monday friends! Not much to write about following this weekend. I was off on Friday, and spent a lot of time reading through many new blogs. I also cleaned the house (not exactly any blogging material there...). While I did all of those things, Leroy laid around:

On Saturday we got up early to play golf, and then we did a bit of shopping. We're going camping this coming weekend, so we bought ourselves a tent, and then practiced putting it up in the backyard. We also bought some paint for a little furniture project that I'll hopefully be sharing next week!

I know I've shown so many tomato photos, but look at the redness of the garden tomatoes. They are so much prettier than any tomatoes I have ever bought in the store. This weekend we went ultra classy and used them in our grilled cheese sandwiches.

On Sunday we got up really early. I made french toast and it was delicious! It made 5 slices, and consisted of 2 eggs, 2/3 cup of milk, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg. It really reminded me of egg nog! I ate it with a banana and table syrup. Weird fact about me: I hate real maple syrup. Yep, it's true. I'm told this makes me crazy...

Later, we took Leroy on a long walk along the river here. The weather was great and we had a great time! I didn't take any photos for some reason, I really need to get better with that! My husband headed to football. I missed it this week because of a recurrent back injury :(. We lost, I think it's because I wasn't there :P As per usual, we had supper at the in-laws and I ate too much!

That's about it. I told you it would be boring!!! How was your weekend?

Going meatless...

No, we're not going vegetarian, but my husband and I decided to try to eat at least one meatless supper a week. Mostly, this is for economical reasons, but also, it keeps things interesting and I love trying new things! First on the menu was the Spicy Black Bean Burgers, from Skinny Taste. They were pretty easy to make, but you have to make them in advance because they absolutely have to be frozen when you cook them, otherwise they will not stick together and it would be really messy.

I forgot the hot sauce, which was unfortunate, but the chipotle mayo did add some kick, so it worked out ok. I also couldn't find chipotle peppers, so I bought a chipotle salsa and made the mayo that way, which was also great! Plus, it was so much easier because I didn't have to cut up the peppers or anything.

Don't be alarmed when the "burgers" are really sloppy before freezing. There is no way you could cook them without freezing first, they don't stick together at all. Again, you must freeze BEFORE cooking!!!!! Don't say I didn't warn you :P To freeze, line a cookie sheet with wax paper. Let them freeze this way for 2 hours, then move them to containers.

When BBQ'ing, put the burgers on a sheet of oiled aluminum foil. I used Pam to oil the foil (wow, that was an amazing rhyme - lol). I cooked them for about 6 minutes on each side and they were perfect. We topped them with 1/4 of an avocado and about a tablespoon of the chipotle mayo.

The other awesome thing about our supper tonight? We had tomatoes from our garden in our salad!! We had a few ripe yellow and red cherry tomatoes. They were absolutely delicious!! Wow. So much better than store bought tomatoes. I can't wait to get some more ripe ones.

So, overall this meal was amazing. My husband was a huge fan too. According to Skinny Taste, this is about 9 WW points, plus the salad was 2, so a total of 11 points for supper. That's pretty comparable to what I normally allot for supper, so I was happy. We'll definitely be making more of these in the future!

Has anyone tried any meatless recipes lately? I'd love some recommendations!

We have veggies!

It's so exciting, look what's growing in our garden! I took the photos with my iPhone, so they're not the best quality, but I did get to use my favorite photo editor ap (BeFunky) to make them all look like I took them with an instant camera!

Yummy cherry tomatoes, there are red and yellow ones!

Banana peppers! There are 4 or 5 growing on the one plant

And lastly, the green pepper was being a bit shy, since it's growing in the very back of our garden and I couldn't really get a clear shot! There is one big one, which you see here, and about 3 tiny ones growing on the other plants. There are 6 plants total, so we'll see how many we get!

Has anyone else been growing anything this summer? What do you plan to do with your goodies? We are going to be overloaded with tomatoes so I am searching for lots of yummy tomato recipes. I'm thinking homemade fresh salsa, bruschetta, and tomato and basil salad. They are not pictured, but we also have parsley, basil, oregano, and chives, all growing quite nicely :)

Our Backyard Transformation...

My parents come to visit about twice a year, and every time we decide on a house project we want to accomplish. See, for now my hubby and myself are not very handy. We can’t do even a sliver of the things my mom and dad are capable of, so we enlist their assistance! Hopefully over time this will change a little. My hubby is really keen to learn, and always tries to help my dad so that he might be able to do whatever task in the future. Anyway, this trip we decided to work on the landscaping in the backyard. I really wanted to plant a vegetable garden and test out my green thumb.

Here's what we started with:

My dad built us two raised garden boxes, one is about 4 feet by 8 feet, the other is small, only about 2 feet by 4 feet. I planted all of the vegetables and herbs in the larger bed. Also in the large bed, two lilies, a clematis, and sweet peas. In the smaller bed we planted a peony (relocated from the front yard) and a hydrangea. It doesn’t look like the peony is going to bloom this year though L Oh, and I almost forgot!! Next to the large bed we planted a rhododendron. I am really hoping it blooms this year, but I think it might be a bit too late. Anyone know?

For the beds my dad used mini ties and nails. He marked out the wood and cut using a reciprocating saw. Once all of the pieces were cut him and hubby nailed the beds together using …. Nails. It was pretty simple. He was done both beds in an hour or two, and then we went to work dumping many many bags of dirt inside. The whole thing was a pretty good workout! For vegetables I planted: one large tomato plant, one cherry tomato plant (which is supposed to produce both yellow and red), four green pepper plants, a habanero plant, and a banana pepper plant. For herbs we’ve got chives, basil, oregano, and parsley. We bought a trellis for the clematis, and the sweet peas. Hopefully they’ll like this system and climb like crazy!

Here’s the yard once we had everything planted:

And here it is today, 2 weeks later. You can see the sweet peas are starting to poke up through the ground, and the clematis is starting to climb! We have a few green tomatoes, and the herbs are doing well too. I really hope to see some red tomatoes, and some signs of peppers in the next few weeks. 

And over by the deck, the peony and hydrangea are doing pretty well. We also planted some nasturtiums to fill the space in between with color until the hydrangea blooms. Like I said above, I'm pretty sure the peony isn't blooming this year since we disrupted it by moving it from the front yard.

So that's our backyard makeover for now! I'll come back with some more updates once it gets even fuller and we have some yummy red tomatoes. Gardening with my mom was so much fun!! It was a great activity to do while my parents were visiting, and we got to spend a ton of time outside. 

Just to wrap up, here's a side-by-side to compare more easily: