FauxPas

The always popular roasted cherry tomato and feta pasta with lots of fresh basil. And a few strawberries from my plants, served with a bit of vanilla ice cream.

I use this basic recipe but I skip the diced onions - instead I just use a chunky salsa (like Pace). 🙂 And I like to use good homemade chicken stock. https://www.pressurecookingtoday.com/quick-and-easy-spanish-rice/

I know that I'll have days/evenings when I don't much feel like cooking so I do two things to get by. One is to try and make sure I have a few items in fridge/freezer/pantry for those times and the other is to make myself do a bit of prep ahead of time. One of my fave non-cook meals is bean salad over lettuce. I used to can my own but now I buy it - Paisley Farms brand (from Costco?) when I was in the US, I think. Easy to keep a jar in the pantry/fridge. It usually contains kidney, garbanzo, green and yellow beans with onion and red pepper so I feel like I am getting protein and veggies along with a bit of sweet and sour vinegar tang. Yum. I make Instant Pot Spanish Rice (itself very easy to make with chicken stock and jarred salsa) and keep some meal-size portions in freezer. If I have cooked beans in freezer, I add some + a bit of salsa and then microwave. Or I add frozen green peas and/or diced ham and microwave. I also like an apple with cheese slices. Cut up the apple or not, ha. And cottage cheese with fruit or cherry tomatoes. I sometimes lose interest in prep as it gets later in the day so I try to do as much as I can earlier in the day. Having pre-washed and chopped veggies etc makes it much easier for me to follow through on meal plans. And if not that day, then most things will keep until the following day. I don't know if I'm really addressing your topic very well though?

I wanted to ask if the 50 pounder referred to the halibut or the zucchini. 🙂 Just ask @Shelby, ha. @Duvel, that Käsespätzle looks like what Mac 'n Cheese dreams of becoming when it grows up. We are boring. 🙂 The new Warba potatoes (a local craze, the farmstand got rushed when they first came out) are available at local farms so I made potato salad served with a roti chicken for a couple of nights. (I used to enjoy roasting a whole chicken but my husband is one of the early bird Costco shoppers and he sometimes grabs a $5 bird, the day-after ones.) Two nights of chicken + potato salad with local tomatoes and cukes (greenhouse, but very good). Then back to fajitas! Chicken, this time. We get tortillas from a local farm, a Mennonite woman who lived in Mexico for years.

Thank you so much, not sure why I couldn't find that on my own. 🙂

Hoping @Shelbywill reply. I did a search for her eggroll recipe and couldn't find it, but I did find several mentions and photos of the eggrolls she makes. Would love to see her recipe again. Pretty please, @Shelby? 🙂

That's awesome! I had a couple growing at a place in Arizona, but they never formed any fruit so they may have been just the ornamental variety. They were still attractive and unique though the actual fruit would have been nice! How long do they take to ripen, do you know?

I hope you'll share details of your harvest with us!!! 🙂 I start peas from seed, they tend to be pretty easy to grow here on Vancouver Island as it's not usually very hot.

It will be so pretty as it fills in! Looks like some nasturtiums in there also? What variety of cherry tomato, do you know? I have "Husky Cherry Red", a few "Sweet 100", "Sugary" grape tomato, and several "Sweet Million" cherry plants. I would have had more of the "Sweet Millions" but some of the ones I started from seed didn't fare very well. So I'm glad that I bought a few plants at the nursery when they were on sale. I picked the first strawberries yesterday. I just have two hanging baskets with plants but they have quite a bit of fruit for their size. Not enough ripen together to do a full dessert usually but enough to enhance a fruit salad or have with a bit of yogurt. I have some snap peas too but lost some as I discovered that my cat likes to munch on pea shoots. And not just dainty little nibbles either, ha. 🙂

We had strip loins one night and then made fajitas the next night with the leftovers. No plated photos though.

I want to laugh but I can see a lot of work ahead for you! 🙂 How many tomato plants do you usually grow? Everything looks so wonderful though. Well, except for all the zucchini .... 😄😄😄

At this point, I was going to be a smartass and ask if you had turned the water back on. 😆 (It's the kind of thing I would forget to do.) But then read further and saw the ice was happening! How big is it? It certainly looks like it has good capacity, 20 cu ft or more? I wish we had gone bigger, we got a 13 or 14 cu ft one, but it fills up pretty fast.

Oh wow, it looks awesome, so healthy! How's the flavour (though I guess you really want to let them ripen?)

Oooh, looks like lots of lovely basil! Do you have a fave way to use it up?

Welcome home! Funny, I was just listening to Jimmy Rankin's North Country. I think you might be familiar with The Rankin Family? The song is about a homecoming in the Fall, but somehow I thought it might appeal. The original version: And JImmy:

No strawberry dessert this year? 🙂

Just saw the most recent episode and they went to Rouge in Calgary, which I had been hoping for (or something similar)! (see above comments) Oh, that made me happy - but I wish they had shown a bit more of the restaurant and its environs. 🙂 And next week, out to the mountains and the Kananaskis region. Ok, they only showed going to Canmore, but a girl can hope. 😄

I'm guessing it might just be a bit of pulp separation but it's hard to say for sure. Is there a best-by date on it or any info on when it was bottled? You could open it and pour it out slowly to check it. If it looks like mold or has a bad smell, then you'd probably want to bin it, but otherwise it might just need to be shaken up a bit to blend it back in. BUT of course I can't say it's not gone bad with any certainty. 🙂

Quick veggie dinner - a mushroom fried rice that I made earlier and reheated, stir-fried veggies and a couple of purchased egg rolls.

Although I am most definitely not the most experienced grower, I have learned to do some blossom-pinching when my plants first start to bloom and it really seemed to make a difference with them bushing out sooner. I've also always been told that frequent harvesting keeps yields up. We don't have the longest growing season here and it almost broke my heart to pinch off those early fruits but it certainly did seem to pay off in heavier yields later on. Someone a lot more experienced may offer clearer guidance but I would say it's a good idea to pick at least a few of the green ones because it will also give you a chance to test the flavour and see how it develops. Even green, they may be tasty, right? And how can you resist sampling the fruits of your labour? 🙂 @Shelbymay chime in, she's had quite a bit of experience and may have better tips. Plus other gardeners/growers. I will post this from Sandia Seeds on growing peppers. They sell a LOT of pepper seeds. They are trying to discount the practice of pruning the plants back here, but also have some comments on picking blossoms and green fruit. https://www.sandiaseed.com/blogs/news/how-to-prune-pepper-plants-for-maximum-yield

I'm curious about these rainbow ones - can someone tell me a bit about how are they made? The colours are so clear and they look so pretty! Are they layered and then sliced or .... ????

yeah, sometimes we don't have a lot of time to shop around and also just want to get a brand we know! 🙂

Time got away from me and this was plated very quickly. Braised Filipino adobo with rice, steamed carrots, and a mix of frozen corn and edamame that needed to be used up. I used pork shoulder for the adobo.

Almonds are largely grown in California and Canadians are stuck for now with a 25% tariff in retaliation to US tariffs on them, as far as I can tell. 😒 https://halifax.citynews.ca/2025/03/11/california-almond-growers-grapple-with-uncertainty-as-new-tariffs-could-hit-exports/ If you are willing to consider changing brands, Loblaw's/Real Canadian Superstore has 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of President's Choice fine almond flour for $19, so less than what you used to pay - less than $9/lb. https://www.realcanadiansuperstore.ca/en/fine-grind-almond-flour/p/21411825_EA?source=nspt Have you had a chance to shop around if you don't want to switch brands? Even Thrifty Foods here, which is often the priciest store, has the Bob's Red Mill almond flour for $19. I would have expected you could find something a bit less, given you are in the larger population centre and not on an island, ha. YuPik is a nice Canadian company that does bulk stuff. They show $24 for a kg of almond flour. But I understand if you don't want to risk switching to a different brand than what you have used successfully in the past!

Most definitely. Which is why it looks like the Alberta Beef Producers are influencing next week's challenge. Still, I hold out hope for more creativity with the selections.