A Couple Of New Firsts

The last two years I haven't done any gardening. Two years ago we were just moving in to our new house at this time of year and were just trying to get settled. Last year I was pregnant and, um, I just didn't feel like it. This year it was quite a major undertaking to get our yard ready for plant.

When we moved into this house, most of my feelings for the previous homeowner could have been filed under the category, "what were you thinking?" or "what the?" The backyard conjured up these feelings the most. She made 3 foot wide flower beds around the entire parameter of the back yard. And then she filled parts of the flower beds with bark and hideous plants, such as oleanders, which are also poisonous. Then there were other parts of the flower beds that were filled with red and white lava rock, repulsive.

We tore out all of the plants when we moved in, mainly because we didn't want them to poison our children. Two weeks ago, we neglected our children for three days as we did the back-breaking work of removing all of the rocks and bark. We then planted 12 tomato plants and still had quite a bit of room. So we also did 3 kinds of squash, green onions and green beans. Being the cheapskate that I am, I decided to use seeds instead of plants, I found seed packs at Walgreen's for $.20 a piece, you can't beat that. I had never used seeds before, but, most of them have been successful so far.

Me in action. Looking really good I might add.

Poor Jaxton, still in his PJ's, and feeding himself a bottle under the trampoline (it was the only shady spot in the backyard).Avery fending for herself. She was a big help keeping the two little ones entertained while we worked.

Here are some pictures of our beautiful seedlings. These are the green beans. Only about half of them were successful, so I think I will throw some more seeds in.

This is one of the kinds of squash. I didn't see any point in labeling, but now I wish that I would have because two of the spots have not produced any seedlings yet, so we may have spaghetti squash coming out of our ears and no zuchinni. I guess it will just have to be a surprise.

Between the yard work two weeks ago, and my trip to SF last week, I hadn't been grocery shopping in I don't know how long. So today I had the really choice experience of grocery shopping with Avery, Hayden and Jaxton. Hayden has such a hard time not picking up everything and staying with me and then when we hit the bulk foods section, oh my goodness. It really isn't her fault, they have unwrapped candy right at her eye level. Then both girls needed to use the restroom, and just our luck, the bathroom was closed for cleaning. No one was in the mens bathroom and Hayden was doing the pee pee dance, so we used the men's bathroom. It was lovely.

Anyways, I needed hamburger, but I found that it had really jumped up in price. So I was looking at my other options and ground turkey breast, which I had never had before, was actually cheaper, so I thought I would give it a try. I found a recipe for turkey burgers online and made a few adaptations. They were so delicious, plus the ground turkey is way better for you. So it is a win-win. Here is my recipe:

Southwest Turkey Burgers
1.2 lb. ground turkey breast
1 T. chili powder
1 T. grill seasoning
1 T. cumin
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/4 medium bell pepper, chopped (I used an orange bell pepper)

Put all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix with your hands. I grilled mine on my indoor grill and they took a little less than 10 minutes.

They were pretty spicy, but my kids really liked them. Hayden, who usually does not eat dinner unless we are having cold cereal, even ate her whole hamburger. I served the burgers with sweet and spicy sweet potato fries that I baked in the oven. I had never made anything with sweet potatoes either, but the kids loved them. The girls even gave me a round of applause for as Hallie said, "the best dinner ever."