Pulse Check ft. Herb Garden

Let me start the post off here with a quick look at how much my herbs have grown, because I know you all care ;)

That empty pot you see there between my chives and aloe? Spearmint. Dreaded spearmint. When I plant something new, I always look up tips on how to grow it and love it so that it grows big and strong (don't worry I did the same thing when I had a baby too). However, half of the people who have grown spearmint complain that it was so hard because they "watered it too much" so they advised to water every other day. The other half advise to drown the seeds. You see the catch 22 here? I DO. So I just watered the plant each morning as I do its friends, and, well, you see how that turned out. I have another seed packet, but I don't know if I'm ready to try again and be disappointed. Luckily, G got me a book on herbs for mothers day, so I can move forward and hopefully not kill any more unborn plants.

As you can see my rosemary, parsley, and basil are growing beautifully, and the aloe has already come in handy since about a week after I got it, H decided to put his finger on the hot stove eye as I was making simple syrup for fudge. I was going to post a recipe and photos for the fudge, but after that fiasco that ship sailed. Maybe next time.

I'm not sure about my chives, and google seems to be withholding information as to whether 2 month old chives should look like a patch of sparse green hairs atop an old man's head. I'm trusting that eventually they will get their stuff together and look like real chives. If anyone has any feedback on that, let me know, but break it to me gently, for my frail heart can not take another loss as great as the spearmint.

That's all the update I have for tonight, but within the next few days I will hopefully have time to catch up on other updates. I've been working overtime a lot lately so if you look up the definition of exhausted in the dictionary, you MIGHT find my photo right there in the example section. Don't look, I look fat in that picture and I asked the guy who took it to delete it. ;)

Happy Tuesday, and well wishes!

Sunday Funday (but posted on Munday?)

I wanted to start the post with a little update on my kitchen herb garden. I couldn't find anything about one of those in the googolplex of blogs I've plowed through trying to figure out if I'm running my own correctly. So every few days, or whenever I see a difference, I'll just put in a photo. This photo was taken just yesterday, and even since then my Parsley, Basil, and Chives have all grown like crazy! I was expecting to kill them all so I'm pretty ecstatic.

Next on our Sunday to-do list? HOME GOODS! We actually got 2 $25 gift cards when we closed on our new home last month, so we finally figured we'd go spend it. We ended up going over, but it was well worth it. I didn't photograph everything we got (it was only the table piece, a pitcher, and a useless model boat for G's desk), but I did take a picture of the piece for our coffee table we got. I really wanted a cow skull with gold horns (I'm quirky, bite me)(that link is the closest thing I could find to what I saw in the store, and about twice the price)... but we could not agree on it so we brought this baby home.

Lastly, I finally got to make the pulled pork baked potatoes I've been dying to make. Next time I'm going to use a different sauce for the pork, as we went with an applewood smoked sauce this time so the pork was a bit too sweet for us. However, they actually turned out pretty good. Just scrubbed the potatoes, lathered them in olive oil, sprinkled them with salt, and popped those suckers in the oven on 400 for an hour...

...and voila! Throw some pulled pork in there and you've got the perfect meal! They would have been really good with some green beans on the side, but I just threw some mac on there and rolled with it, empty looking plate or not. Like I said though, definitely going to use a more "hickory" based sauce next time. Hey, at least I got some goooood leftover pulled pork out of it ;)