Bean bag toss game

Next weekend I am going to have a garage sale, so I'm been busily rounding up all of our junk treasures. Among all those treasures are more pairs of ragged, holey jeans than I care to count.

Today I came across a bean bag toss game made out of jean pockets. Guess I won't be putting those jeans in the garage sale ...

Our first harvest!

Since the Land of 10,000 Lakes has not yet been warm enough to entice me to a beach, we bought a blow-up pool to play with. Joel and Rosemary are out blowing it up as we speak. I see fun summer times in the future.

The Swiss chard was longing to be harvested, so earlier in the day, Rosemary and I went out with a scissors. Rosemary was so incredibly excited to eat something from the garden. I was nervous it was going to be bitter, and did NOT want Rosemary's first taste of the garden to be an icky one. That could potentially wreck the whole garden for her.

I decided the smaller leaves were bland enough and gave her a taste.



She approved.

I then realized I had no idea what to do with Swiss chard, so I spent some time perusing the internet. I visited one of my new favorite websites, In My Kitchen Garden and did a search on Swiss chard. I found a delicious looking recipe for Hot Swiss Chard Artichoke Dip, which I'll be making over the 4th of July, if I have enough to harvest (note to self: plant more Swiss chard next year).

To be fair, I learned about this new favorite website through another lovely blog written by the owner of Whiteley Creek B&B. A beautiful place, a beautiful blog, and our first, beautiful introduction to Brainerd.

As I was saying ... not feeling like artichoke dip (and not having all of the ingredients), I started reading the comments to this post. Steamed Swiss chard with a poached egg sounded delicious.



And it was. My only complaint is that there wasn't enough ...

It was super easy and a good recipe if you, like me, are trying to lose 10 pounds. Minus the butter (which could have been substituted) and the bread, it is a Weight Watchers Core Recipe.

What did I do? I cut the stems and sauteed them with a slab of butter on high heat. Added the leaves, still wet from being washed, a little bit of salt, and steamed them for 3-5 minutes. Poached an egg and placed it on top (the recipe said to make a nest of the Swiss chard, but ... I didn't have enough). Add a little pepper and balsamic vinegar and voila!

I shredded my toast and ate it with the salad, but that's up to you.

I've been busy in the garden

And I want to share some pictures! Click through the picture to see more on flickr, and also to get the details of what I planted.

Here is our farthest north bed, in the square foot garden style.


The southern bed.


We had a lot of extra land and a lot of seeds that there weren't room for (not to mention some plants ... guess I went a little crazy at the farmers market). So, we decided we'd go ahead and give regular old vegetable gardening a try (as opposed to square foot gardening). I've dubbed this the squash garden, even though there are watermelons and cucumbers in there too.


And of course, the ever important compost bin.

Labeling your garden

I really like this idea for labeling your indoor garden. We have a lot of window space in our new place, and two bay windows just waiting to be filled with plants.

These labels appeal to my crafty side as well as my granola-head side. What a great use of scrap scrapbook paper!