Strawberry Bliss

No, I don’t grow strawberries in my garden (at least, not yet). However, every three weeks a Mexican man comes to my door selling them. I always gladly buy a box from him because his strawberries are locally grown, always fresh and cheaper then at a local grocery store.

Fresh strawberries with a little bit of light cream make a perfect dessert. However, if I want something fancier, I make chocolate cowered strawberries. The recipe is simple.

1 pound fresh strawberries (washed and dried with a paper towel)
16 onces milk chocolate chips
1 – 2 tablespoons of butter (optional)

Insert toothpicks into the tops of the strawberries. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate chips and butter (adding butter will make the chocolate cover shinier). Dip the strawberries into the melted chocolate and insert the toothpick into Styrofoam so the chocolate may cool.

You can stop here, or you can go additional step and decorate your strawberries with white chocolate stripes. Just melt a little bit of white chocolate chips and use a wooden spoon to make imperfect lines on the strawberries.

Tasty, Beautiful, and Healthful: Homegrown Tomatoes

For the past two months, I haven’t bought a single tomato, yet every day we have tomatoes in salads and/or other dishes. Where do these tomatoes come from? From my garden!
The homegrown tomatoes are so much tastier then the store-bought ones. Picking these sun-warmed, rich in color, and shiny tomatoes from the vines in my garden is much more fun then choosing those hard-as-stone clones in the store.
To grow their best, tomatoes need three things – heat (we have plenty of that in California), water (unfortunately, it is not as abundant here as heat, yet the sprinklers turn on three times a week), and fertile soil (unfortunately, the soil in my garden is very poor).



Being an inexperienced gardener, I made some mistakes with my tomatoes. I didn’t pinch the suckers (side branches that form in the joints where the leaves meet the stems). As the result, my tomato bushes became too big and soon outgrew the two-foot sticks that I used for support. The branches began to fall and some of them broke; it was a lot of pain tying them to each other, to the fence, to the near growing tree… Next year, my tomato bushes will definitely have nice and tall wire rings to support them.
Despite all these hardships, all of my six tomato plants (one “Beef”, two “Early Girl Hybrid”, and four “Grape”) produce wonderful fruits.

To Keep Those Tiny Feet Warm

When my baby was born, he got a pair of lovely baby booties as a present. Once, when I was putting the booties away, I looked at them closer. Though they were store bought, they looked a lot like handmade ones – the bottom was crocheted and the top knitted. I told myself “Hmm, I could probably make a pair like these myself.”
Back in Ukraine, I used to knit a lot, but once I moved to the States, I never had had time for that. This was the time to start again. The following day, I started making my booties. A friend of our family was about to give birth, and I decided that if my knitted booties turn out fine, I would give them to her little boy as a present.
The booties turned out okay, not perfect, but still decent looking. I hope they kept little Brian’s feet warm and cozy.



While knitting those booties, I discovered that I had missed knitting a lot. Moreover, the thought of creating something for a little person who is about to arrive into the world gave me a lot of joy. That is why I was so eager to start knitting another pair for the baby girl of our friends. I used the same type of yarn (100% cotton) for these booties, but this time they were pink. I also made them a little bit bigger than the first pair because the baby girl was to be born in August (a very hot month in California), so they would fit her in autumn and/or winter months.



With my next two pairs (for twin girls of my husband’s coworker), I tried something new. I found a photo and description in an old magazine. At first the description didn’t make any sense to me, but after a few attempts, I finally got a cute little bootie. Then it was easy to knit the remaining three. For these I used light pink 70% acrylic - 30% nylon yarn.
Now I am establishing a tradition of knitting booties for my friends’ babies. Two more friends of mine are expecting little ones, which means that I have two more knitting projects to do.
My own baby is too big for booties now, but as the winter is approaching, I plan to knit him a few pairs of warm and cozy socks.

Pesto

Homemade pesto is a great and easy way to use fresh basil. The most popular dish with pesto is pasta-pesto. You can use almost any pasta you like, long or short. Pesto is great for sandwiches too (for example, pesto, mozzarella, and tomatoes make a brilliant combination).

Makes about 1 cup
• 2 cups (2 ounces) basil
• 2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup (2 ounces) pine nuts
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 2/3 cup (2 ounces) grated Parmesan
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
Using a blender or food processor, blend the basil, garlic, and pine nuts to make a coarse paste. Add the olive oil and blend until quite smooth. Add the grated Parmesan and process briefly. Season with salt and pepper.