Category: Uncategorized

Garden Update

Because we have yet to have a freeze, the garden is flourishing. Around the time I am supposed to be starting seeds for Spring crops, I am getting ready to get a winter tomato bounty.

We are expecting cold temps in the next week or so but so far no threat of frost. Crossing fingers!!!!

Another area in the garden flourishing is the mint area. The mint was planted in a wooden container a couple years ago and has since been neglected. Although mint is best contained (since it can take over a garden with its minty-ness) you can see from the photo below that the container fell apart and the mint is free to spread. It looks so pretty and I love the taste of mint so I don’t want to mess with it – for now.

The key lime is not as fortunate. We will most likely lose this one in the year. Luckily it gave us one last crop of limes before its demise. The citrus greening is too much work for me to try to fight. After the key lime we will still have the Persian Lime and Grapefruit trees. I fear that these won’t last past a couple of years unless some easy treatment exists for the greening.

Christmas Morning

Our social calendar has been way booked up lately so when I discovered no one in the family made plans for Christmas day I was excited. I had dreams of sitting at home in my pajamas all day. We would eat while watching sappy Christmas movies all day (Most years we record a bunch of lifetime or hallmark movies but this year we had a good share of Ion channel movies. They were perfectly corny for the day).
I started my day with an Amaretto iced coffee. I love the creaminess of soymilk in my coffee.

Pinterest has ton of recipe ideas that I say I am going to try but never do and when I do they look nothing like the beautiful photos that are taken. For breakfast I prepared pumpkin French toast the night before. All that needed to be done was throw it in the oven in the morning. Some substitutions I made was multi-grain bread for French baguette, 6 eggs instead of 8, wheat flour instead of white, and I added slightly less sugar in the topping (I am not a dessert for breakfast kind of girl). It was good but some of the toast was soggy; except the part that we reheated the next day. I love savory French toast (I am the girl who asks for no powder sugar and uses no syrup) so I probably won’t make this particular recipe again. My husband seemed to enjoy it though.

 
 
After the coffee was done, I treated myself to peach bellinis.
 

 
The day would have been perfectly lazy except we realized later we had no food prepared for dinner. We had to get dressed and luckily a great Vietnamese restaurant was opened for dinner.
I hope you had a happy holiday too!

Arles

Our visit to Arles in Provence, France started with our check in to this budget hotel.

And this was the view from our window.

Arles is a former roman town that is partly famous for one of its famous temporarily inhabitants.

Vincent van Gogh produced over 300 works during his time there. Arles was not my favorite town in Provence but it was still pleasurable visit.

 More pigeon houses?

The Roman Amphitecture. 
We were able to see some interesting bullgames here.

Espace Van Gogh

 Roman baths.

 The trail along the river that we liked to take.

Sardana in Barcelona

One of the most interesting cultural things we witnessed while in Barcelona was the Sardana dance. It is a dance unique to the Catalan culture. It is a dance to show their pride to their Catalan heritage. Catalans have a separate language and culture from the rest of Spain. We got to witness this inclusive dance that is done at noon every Sunday at the cathedral of Barcelona.