Spring days...

It's been a busy long weekend! Hope everyone had a safe and happy May 2-4 (even though the 24th is tomorrow...) On Saturday, Kari and I headed out to go to Temple, but there was a Bar Mitzvah going on, so we quietly ducked out. I don't mind sitting through them once in a while - especially if I know the child or the family, but in this case, we were packed into a lobby of over a hundred people I didn't recognize, and these things tend to be LONG. So off we went to Wool Tyme instead. I was good! I didn't buy yarn! I bought a few ergonomic Prym crochet hooks (dirt cheap), a tape measure and some beeswax votive candles. Then we had Pho for lunch (YUM) and headed off to Sue's to record the podcast.

Podcast over, we went to a couple of garden centres and bought some plants. Two roma tomatoes, two golden roma tomatoes, one sandwich tomato plant (I think it's called Sunshine), six cherry tomatoes (YIKES), two bell peppers, one chocolate mint, one rhubarb plant, and a few house plants (I got aloe, jade and wandering Jew) and a bunch of pots and soil. I took a picture of our finished product yesterday (Kari's balcony garden) but I can't get the pictures off the small camera easily, so I'll add it back in tonight after I get home. We added two basil plants to our little garden yesterday when we went to buy more soil. I planted some chives, marjoram, cilantro and parsley in jiffy pellets at home, and once those have sprouted, we'll transplant them to go live with the rest. I also harvested several pounds of rhubarb from my mom's yard (the patch was a bit out-of-control and already bolting and it's not even JUNE!)

Apparently this is what my teeny tiny Wandering Jew will become!

Food - I got ambitious last night and decided to prepare a bento for lunch today. I think a bit more planning will have to go into grocery shopping this week - the pickings were slim :) I made a big pot of quinoa & bulghur with tamarind sauce and a tiny bit of Valentina's thrown in, daikon radish seeds and soy beans. DELISH. I fried up three slices of tofu, cut those into strips, and put that in, with a container of sesame ginger sauce for dipping, added a polish cucumber pickle and some pickled turnip (which I'm discovering I don't like on its own), a little container of longan berries and strawberries, and a peach/passionfruit greek yogurt. Totally awesome. Next time though, I need to make myself a small breakfast bento too so I don't end up noshing on my lunch at 9am. Tomorrow, I may tried some shrimp and broccoli with the quinoa stuff.