Detox from Traveling

After six days of traveling, my body needed good, healthy food.  It craved vegetables and calming food.  So last night. I made the following Roasted Vegetable and Arugula Salads w/ Toasted Pecan Goat Cheese Rounds.

Roasted Vegetable and Arugula Salads w/ Toasted Pecan Goat Cheese Rounds

Arugula:  I just washed the arugula (out of the garden) and tossed it with a light vinegrette dressing.

Roasted Vegetables:  I mixed up 2 T olive oil and 1 T balsamic vinegar with some salt and pepper and brushed it on a 2 whole portabella mushrooms and 1 cut up red pepper and grilled them.

Goat Cheese Rounds: Crushed some pecans.  Cut the goat cheese in rounds and coat with the pecans, by pressing into them.  I heated a nonstick skillet and set these in the skillet toasting the pecans and slightly warming the goat cheese.

Assemble as desired.

I also made a cold walnut and brown rice salad to go with this.  The dinner had good flavor.  It wasn't spicy, but it was tasty, and yet, calming on a sore stomach.  

Lunch

First, I must address my blog header.  As you've noticed I have been playing with how my blog looks.  Please rest assured I am still in the process and will figure out how to make my header full-size, so there isn't a bunch of pink, but possibly not for a couple weeks. 

Now onto lunch. One of my favorite things about working at home is lunch.  It took me a few months to relax and realize I didn't need to feed Joe every day.  He doesn't eat much for lunch and often not the same as I.  So he knows he can ask, but now, we just break for lunch individually and it works great.  A huge benefit to me is I get to eat what I like and almost every day I saute up some vegetables. 

Today's lunch made me very happy.  I was lucky enough to go to the farmers market this weekend and while it's early - there are GREENS!  I bought enough Swiss Chard and Kale to feed a family of four for 2 weeks and I'm eating it in 3 days by myself.  And I splurged on some expensive greenhouse tomatoes that are really good.  The other thing I bought were farm fresh eggs in a variety of colors - even pretty pale green ones!

I am sure this would be very unexciting for most.  But all of these leads into today's lunch.  I knew today was Kale as I finished the Swiss Chard yesterday.   I sauteed up a little onion, garlic, and the chopped stems of the kale in a little olive oil.  Then I added the chopped fresh kale, salt and pepper, and covered it for about 10 minutes.   When it was really a brilliant green color and soft, I broke two eggs in there.

With a sliced tomato, this was heaven.  The tomato was perfect, no sugar or salt or anything on it.  Now that may look like a big plate of food, but I go by the rule that I can eat as many greens as I want - it just can't be bad for me!

Happy lunch to you all!  And to all a good afternoon!

Adobe Town

We are going to explore the outdoor side of this foodie today. 

What you might ask is Adobe Town?  Well it would be a good question, as the first four years we lived here I thought it was a ghost town or something.  Turns out it's a place in the desert East of Rock Springs with really neat geography and it's pretty remote.  The roads to it are all dirt and the one we took went right through a very remote working ranch.  After you got through the ranch, the roads got worse. 

We spent two nights camping in Adobe Town this weekend and can't believe we've never been there before.  This is the perfect place for early season hiking and camping when there is still snow in the mountains.  With all our moisture this spring, it was green and full of flowers.

This was the view from our campspot.  In my mind, this Adobe Town area is a cross between Bryce Canyon and the Black Hills.  It's beautiful.  This is called the Adobe Town Ridge and we camped on top of the ridge.

Like I said there were flowers everywhere.  These were big flowers for the desert and came in white and all shades of pink. I think some call them Desert Roses.

On Saturday we went for an 11 mile hike.  We hiked down to the bottom of the ridge and hiked about 5 miles, climbing out and walking back along the top.  There are a lot of beautiful birds, ground birds and what I think were swallows.  In addition, there are lots of antelope and wild horses in the area.  The horses are so beautiful; they like to run from you, but then often, they'll circle around and follow you a bit.  There is an elk herd in the area, but we didn't see any elk.



Indian paintbrush.

The rock formations were stunning and there are many types of rock, including both red and green rock.



To get to this area one drives by many remote oil and gas wells.  For the past few years, there has been a group trying to protect Adobe Town from drilling and I can see why.  It would be very sad to sit on that ridge and see a gas well.  We will go back to enjoy the quiet and beauty of this place.

The Beginning of a WY Growing Season

I will end this week with some pictures showing where our landscape is as of June 3, 2011.  Everything is late this year, the lilacs on our street aren't blooming yet, but finally this week the trees really moved forward and I took the yard and garden seriously. 

The cherry tree off our deck is in bloom, but the big question is, will we beat the birds to the cherries this year?

Around the corner of the house, we have an apple and cherry tree blooming right next to each other.

I spent some time outside this week.  I have some deck planters done, but I bring them in every night, will I get to stop that next week?

I'm desperate in this desert environment and trying every method I can to grow vegetables.  The big garden at my friend's is planted.  The problem is our last frost date is still over a week off.  So while we haven't killed anything, it's not really moving forward either.  Below are 2 earthboxes I've planted with squash and cucumbers, we'll see how they do.  I've been covering them each night with upside down plastic bins; they seem to like the cover. Yep, that is the sunniest spot in the yard!

The garlic and shallots continue to do well, and you can't see it yet in the picture, but mint and chocolate mint are taking over the left side of this top bed.  Hey, whatever will grow in that shady spot, I'll take it!

In the bottom bed of my little corner garden I have herbs, kale, lettuce, carrots, radishes, chard, and marigolds planted.  Will it get enough sun? Only time will tell.  This is a mid-morning picture, but it will get a good 4 hours of sun early afternoon at least for the next month.

As the growing season begins, so does the flooding.  The snow in the mountains is finally starting to melt and flooding locations are being discussed in every news report.  The next couple weeks should be interesting.