Jalepeno Heaven

Mike picked some jalepenos off our plant and I was so taken by the waxy, vibrant color that I just had to take a picture. These went into the freezer until our next batch of tomatoes is ripe for some SALSA!

Beef and Black Bean Burritos

I decided to try a twist on the traditional beef burritos that are pretty common in this house. I'm always looking for ways to stretch our food budget, so the addition of black beans to the beef seemed like a great idea to me!

I had a lovely picture of the beef/bean mixture to show you guys, and for some reason Blogger keeps downloading it sideways. So just imagine a nice mixture of beef and black beans with cumin, coriander, and chili powder. I also added some corn I cut off the cob, and the reason I did this is because of these guy:

I had some salsa ingredients I picked from the garden, and I wanted to add some of the corn that my in-laws brought from St. Augustine. Since I had about half a cob's worth of corn left, I decided to add it into the beef and beef mixture.

Here's the end product, along with some green beans. We both really enjoyed this - it was nice change. Mike ate three of them, I had two, and I still had enough left over to make five more! We'll have enough for two lunches, so for two meals feeding two people, it costed me:*

$4.00 for 1.25 lbs. lean ground beef

$2.00 for 10 flour tortillas

50 cents for the seasonings and onion

Since the tomatoes and peppers for the salsa came from my garden, we'll say about $1.00 for the seeds, plus irrigation, etc.

$2.00 for the toppings - cheese, sour cream, etc.

50 cents for the black beans - I used dried instead of canned

NOTHING for the corn (thanks, in-laws!)

The green beans were brought fresh, and I washed, snapped and froze them myself. I'd say the 2 servings we ate cost about 50 cents.

For a total of $5.25 per meal for two people, or $2.62 per person, per meal! How's THAT for frugal?!?

*all figures are approximate

The Bounty for Today


My banana pepper is EXPLODING! I picked eight of them today, and there's lots more on the bush! Three of them were shared with the neighbors, three went into the freezer, and the others went into a salsa along with the tomatoes. This year is my first growing tomatoes, and I remember reading that once your tomatoes start to ripen, it's like a tidal wave. Whoever said that was right...I picked these this morning, and by evening four more were ready to be picked! But we're not complaning - just making ourselves fat on chips and salsa!

In the Garden


We're still getting some growth in the garden, depsite the full onset of summer here in sunny Florida!

My banana pepper plant continues to surprise me with how well it's doing. Clickity for biggity to see all the babies on that plant!!

Snap beans - waiting for a trellis! :)

In the background is the basil, which I've been religiously pinching off to encourage bushier growth. I swear, one day I trim it down and the next it looks exactly the same! The mint in the foreground isn't quite as fast a grower, but it's starting to spill down the sides of the pot! Time to make more Mint Ice Cream!

My Patio Princess tomatoes. I've been thrilled at thier production! They produce a fruit that's a little bigger than a cherry tomato. I got these from Burpee before I decided to grow mostly heirloom and open-pollinated seeds, but I've been so impressed with them that I planted the rest of the seed packet I had! I am also starting some Brandywine (heirloom) and Salsa tomatoes, which are specifically for making one of the very favorites foods. Mmmmm...salsa!

This morning I re-potted this orange tree into the tub you see here. I got the tub on sale, and although it's not really for growing plants, I put a layer of river rocks in the bottom for drainage and I think it will work just fine. Much cheaper than the other options I was looking at! It will make a fine home for this Page orange until it's big enough to go in the ground.

The bounty for today!



All washed up. The banana and bell peppers and the carrots will go into a stir-fry for tonight (stay tuned!) and the tomato will most likely go into Mike's mouth before I can do anything with it :) Our bounty is small this year, but hopefully next year we will have enough to really make a dent in our grocery bill and health goals!

Howie the guniea pig was more than happy to take care of the carrot tops for me. Gardening benefits us all!!

Heaven on an Egg...

The grocery store had a steak sale last week, and I took it as a sign. You see, ever since we got the Big Green Egg, I've been wanting to try a filet mignon. However, I'm just too darn cheap to buy them full price...really I'm too cheap to buy ANYTHING full price, but that's another story. But they were cheap enough for us to indulge, so indulge we did! I found these directions at Naked Whiz's web site, who is kind of a hero in the Egg world.

On the Egg.

This is after the searing, which seals in all the juices. After a rest, you're supposed to roast the steaks to get them to the done-ness you want.

This just might be my new favorite picture of Mike. We also had the first sweet corn on the season, also on the Egg.

The finished product. Along with the steak and corn, we had some mashed red potatoes and the carrots from our garden.

The steak was good. REALLY good. But I gotta say that this meal as a whole was really satisfying, too. Everything was very high-quality - home-grown carrots, potatoes from St. Augustine (3 hours away), corn from Zellwood (1/2 hour away). I LOVED this meal.

Everything except this disaster. We got some locally grown peaches from an employee, and I decided to make a mouth-watering cobbler in a Dutch Oven to try on the Egg.

Beautiful, isn't it? You should have seen it once it came off the Egg! It was burned almost completely black. We forgot (okay, I forgot) to put the Dutch Oven on what is called the Indirect Method. Kinda important. Oh well...live and learn.

Alien from Outer Space?


Nope, it's a CARROT! From my GARDEN!!! I can't tell you how satisfying it was to pull these out of the ground. These guys were part of the "stick some seeds in the ground and see what turns out" experiment we did on the patio. They're being harvested a little late because it took me awhile to realize that, um....carrots need water. They're Little Finger carrots from Burpee, and they had a delicious spicy flavor.

This carrot sprouted under my pepper plant. The science geek in me thinks it's interesting how it turned out white due to the lack of sunlight.

Speaking of pepper plants, this is my bell pepper, almost ready for its first harvest! Oh, and that is NOT a weed you see....NOT a weed!! :)