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The excitement in our home this evening is the harvest of our first big heirloom tomato.

With it, we’re making my favorite salad–Caprese Salad.
I’ll tell you all about how we do caprese tomorrow.

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You might know that we’ve been experimenting with margaritas.
Well, we’ve grown a little tired of them.

And as we have an abundance of mint in the garden, we’ve moved on to mojitos.
Plus, they’re about as perfect as a summertime cocktail can be.

(Did you know mint is very easy to grow? See hints below.)

Here’s how to make [...]

We saw this windchime over at Tudal Winery (a family-friendly winery by the way).

It really struck me with its simplistic beauty, and thrifty means of repurposing materials.

And with all the empty bottles we have around, it’s easily created.

Plus, it’s a great way to showcase that special bottle and delight in the memories of the time [...]

Finally! We harvested our first tomato:

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Though it is just now starting to get too hot in the Napa Valley for peas to grow, we harvested our first crop only yesterday.

Tom added them to his Wild Mushroom Pappardelle (recipe below).

Wild Mushroom Pappardelle with Garden Peas

Ingredients

Fresh pappardelle
1/4 cup good olive oil
1 medium shallot, diced
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon [...]

This season’s first harvest from the vegetable garden:

This weekend, we noticed the first of our heirloom tomatoes.

It’s officially (finally) summertime here in the Napa Valley.

Seems to me that, this year, a lot more folks are doing vegetable gardens.

Maybe I’ve just been paying more attention, maybe it’s the ever growing popularity of everything organic/slow food/locavores/food porn or maybe it’s thestupideconomy.

Anyway, this is our first year of gardening in the new place. And it’s been a challenge–so different than in past years.

And I realized that, [...]

I so can’t wait until it’s time to eat these with some of our basil and some fresh mozzarella.

Mmmm…caprese.

We got a great start on our garden today.

As we are in the new space, the garden this year is a challenge.

We’re not yet sure of the soil type(s)/drainage or the pattern of the sun, but most of all, this yard is really small.

I know there are a lot of folks out there that have a [...]