Veggie P*rn and Gingerbread.

I am getting all the new catalogs for the gardening season of 2008. Even the Mushroom season of 2008. Mmmm. Shiitakes, lightly saute'd with butter. ('Scuse me while I go wipe off the drool...)

Anyway, I am just utterly astounded at the variety of... well, everything! I swear there is 20-30 types of tomatoes! Reds, yellows, some sort of purple, big, tiny, sort of stripey, wow! Carrots, yellow, orange, fat, thin, long, you have your choice. Corn, white, yellow, red, multi, this year even has (for you Barbie Doll lovers out there) pastel colored corn! I am sort of planning out my garden. I have been so frustrated with the quality of corn (the llamas liked it, no one else did...), that I said I wasn't going to plant any next year. (My Darwinian gardener coming out again.) Husband has been putting extra soil in, and getting a trailer set up for my ATV, so I can collect llama doo for putting on the soil. He asked that I give it another chance. Hmph. Maybe. But I do want peas.

My dear neighbor might get to have venison, if I lose them to deer again this year! Sheesh...




Husband has been gone so I have made gingerbread for cookies. Why does Husband need to be gone, you ask? This recipe calls for a tiny bit of vinegar. That is a smell that Husband can't stand, I have seen him turn green and go outdoors. So, if I cook with it, he can't be around. He doesn't mind it in things, mixed, but the odor of "raw" vingear just makes him ill. (Which makes cooking a dinner he likes, chicken with sweet and sour sauce, a bit of a challenge. Hot vingear smell allllll over the house. Not a good thing, poor guy.

Well, in the knock me over with a feather department:
My niece and nephew came over last year, we made cookies. They seemed ambivelent, at best. I didn't bother inviting them over, figuring they would be bored. Ahem.

I was taking over some funds to my niece for a school fundraiser, (Auntie IS a pushover, yes she is...), and Niece spoke up, "Auntie, are we going to make gingerbread this year? I would like to make a house, I haven't ever made one before."

I in my sophisticated and suave manner, said "Gahuh, huh?"

She: "I would like to do cookies again, but I would really like the house this year, if we could."

I mumbled something about we'd have to see when I could, and oh, and that sort of thing. I know she's not been here since I adopted the llamas, and would like to see them, as well, so I at least have some OTHER activity, if her attention span is that of a... really short attention span niece, ahem. So, as you can see by the above photo, I am getting ready. By my calculations, I can make a gingerbread house, big ginger family, maybe a ginger pet or two, and still have enough left over to have way too many cookies!

Or I could just make a gingerbread skyscraper, and gingerbread Godzilla, and see what happens...