Living Insanity's Loving Food

We have tickets to see Mike Isabella (former Top Chef X2) at the DC Metro Cooking Show November 5th :) Hubby and I are super excited.

We are able to harvest some of our veggies now :) we've harvested yellow squash and a hot wax pepper and a cubanelle pepper. Yellow Squash from last week, it's bigger and with a lot more squash right now We have a baby eggplant right now. It's about 1 inch long so far. The flower stem seems too weak to hold an eggplant. We'll see if it grows to edible size. Some peppers which are supposed to turn red and be very hot! Like a thai chili We have about 10 green baby tomatoes and we still have some tomato flowers so we'll have even more tomatoes growing soon. My husband's work gave him several tomato plants. We drilled holes in the bottom of rubbermaid containers and made it into a tomato planter My honeydew vine is out of control. It's taken over an entire veggie box. Lesson learned for next year. Give melons lots of space all to themselves!

Cake Ingredients 2 cups flour 2 cups sugar 2 sticks of unsalted butter 6 tablespoons Hershey's Cocoa powder 1 cup water 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 cup buttermilk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 2 eggs Sift flour and sugar together in a large mixing bowl. In a small saucepan, combine butter, cocoa, and water. Bring to a rapid boil. Pour the mixture over the flour and sugar. Mix well. Combine buttermilk and baking soda in measuring cup. Lightly beat the eggs and add in buttermilk/soda mixture. Mix well. Add salt, cinnamon, and vanilla to mixing bowl. Mix well. Last add everything in the sugar/flour/chocolate bowl to the mixer. Mix well. Pour into a greased 16 X 11 X 1 inch jelly roll pan. Bake 20 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven. Frosting Ingredients 1 stick unsalted butter 5 tablespoons Hershey's cocoa powder 6 tablespoons cooked black coffee 1 pound box of powdered sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup chopped pe...

Check out how big everything we planted on Mother's Day has gotten in the first raised veggie box! The flowers on some of the peppers have started turning into little peppers. They are really cute! I have one lone strawberry that is turning red so far. Hopefully more will follow. The nursery had some new plants out so we are trying some beans, watermelon, cucumber, zucchini, honeydew and spinach in the newest raised veggie box. The plants seem so small in comparison.

and grilled hot dogs for dinner tonight! I made this potato salad based on Tyler Florence's recipe . I skipped the onions, capers, lemon juice, and eggs. I hate eggs. 2 baking potatoes, cut into large pieces and boiled until fork easily slides in. Let cool and then cut into smaller bites 2 stalks of celery, diced Dill pickles, we had the long thin cut for sandwiches and I diced about 4 of the slices Pickle juice Mayo Yellow mustard Salt Pepper Fresh dill, ripped from the stems Chives, I cut a few from the garden but didn't like how they were browning in the potato salad Paprika, a sprinkle to finish off the potato salad

Here are some of my plants from last weekend. The cilantro and dill have really filled out and the strawberries have flowered. My husband built a raised vegetable box and we filled it with tomato plants, pepper plants (hot and sweet ones), and some eggplant. Cilantro

See those tiny little sprouts? I lovingly collected the dill seeds and cilantro seeds when my herbs bolted (went to seed) last summer. Then the seeds were planted a few weeks ago and here they are growing! The rosemary plant is new. I did not dig up my rosemary plant for the winter and bring it inside and therefore needed to buy a new plant. I will dig it up this fall and bring this guy inside! See my chives? I didn't have to plant them this year! Those chives came back from last year without any extra care from me. Chives are awesome! New this year I bought sage because I ate incredible fries with fried sage in Boston in December and I also bought Cinnamon Basil. Last year we had three basil plants, Michael, Thai, and Greek. The Thai and Greek were the biggest producers of the three. I'm sure I'll end up buying a Thai or Greek plant soon.