Sat, I had some girlfriends over for brunch. It was make your own waffles day. I tried out this sour cream waffle batter recipe I'd been eyeing for a while, set out some fresh fruit, syrup, jam, all the fixings I could think of, and thought I'd let the girls go to town. A ricotta cheese tart (that I have a great photo of but can't get to cuz work blocks off most picture viewing sites, and I forgot to grab it last nite) and skillet potatoes rounded out the meal. Oh, and some virgin peach bellini that looked totally disgusting and only tasted nominally better, so we'll forget about that.
The make-your-own part was a great idea, I thought, until I tried the first one, poured too much batter into the waffle maker, and made a huge mess. The dogs fortunately licked up most of the mess. But after that, it was G-makes-the-waffles-while-the-girls-got-to-catch-up kind of morning.
The biggest hit had to be our new whipped cream maker that I pulled out for the ocassion. The girls were super addicted, and when G finally got around to grabbing some waffles of his own, he went a little crazy with it too. Went so crazy that he ended up getting cream all over the place -- his face, his leg, the blinds, the floor. Again, we realized how lucky we were to have the dogs to help with the clean up, but even they couldn't work miracles. But at least I didn't hear another word about my waffle making abilities after that.
I guess the one nice thing about the hot weather was that the garden seemed to go a little crazy. Veggies started cropping up like crazy towards the end of last week. Or died, I guess. But the beans for example, took off. Any bean recipe ideas out there? G can't stand them too, so especially if you have something that even bean-haters would love, please send them along. I know I can make something cheesy, like a casserole, and he'd go for it, but it seems like such a shame to cover all the fresh beans with cheese and cream.
The squash are still coming along beautifully too. So far, I've been great at using them as they crop up. That ricotta cheese tart for example took care of most of what we harvested the end of last week. But by Sat, already, there were already a few more almost ready to pick. The plants keep growing and growing too, they seem to take over pretty much where ever they're at, so good thing we didn't try to plant much around them this year.
G's pride and joy -- the one million and one varities of peppers (hot, sweet, and bell) that we have planted are finally starting to appreciate his love and attention. We've already been grabbing serranos for every meal, but I think we'll soon have some full grown bell peppers too.
If you're a sweet pepper fan and are having a hard time growing them in your garden, you might want to give this one a try. Its called the Aconcagua and seems to be thriving with very little fuss. I think they get much bigger than this when they're full grown, so I haven't had a chance to try it yet. But in terms of ease/lack of finickiness, its been a great addition to our garden this year. 
And then our eggplant . . . I gotta say, I'm a little confused by our eggplant. The new plants we got from a nursery this year are totally dying. They don't seem to like the heat at all. And they keep getting chewed up. We've been wondering who the culprit could be, until G got Mia licking one of the leaves last week. So we're pretty sure it must be her eating the plant. But who knew that eggplant leaves would be so attrative to dogs!! Anyway, I'm sure that's not helping any. But what's funny is that our plants from last year that were out all winter long AND hang out in a part of the yard that gets a lot more heat seem to be doing pretty darn well.
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