Good Eats!

John decided to treat us for breakfast on Mother's Day by making strawberry blintzes! Let me just tell you these were the best blintzes I have ever had, and how special, too, since I've only eaten blintzes at a restaurant, never homemade before. Divine! The next time you come out to visit us at home, we will treat you to blintzes for breakfast!



Friday night, I decided to make an Asian inspired dinner, pork dumplings, with udon (thick Japanese noodles) and veggie stir fry. I had bought a neat dumpling-making-gadget at our local kitchen shop a few weeks ago and wanted to try it out! The gadget actually works quite well! I used an internet recipe for the dumplings and got some advice from an old trumpet player friend of mine who is now a chef about pre-cooking the filling. Unfortunately, making the dough, rolling it out and cutting it takes FOREVER, so I don't know if I'll make these again anytime soon, but they did taste great! And they helped to satisfy my pregnancy craving for Asian food!



Now that the weather is nicer, we're spending more time outside in the yard, working on our garden. Not surprisingly, so are our neighbors, so we're getting to meet some very nice people! There's a retired University teacher, Don, who lives behind us and has a wonderful garden, full of raspberry plants, rhubarb, and pretty soon his tomato plants will be outside as well. He was helping teach me about taking care of our one rhubarb plant (taking off the stalks with the seed pods so you can harvest stalks from the plant all summer). He then gave us a huge handful of rhubarb stalks from his garden! Luckily I'd already had a bunch of strawberries in the freezer and now we had the makings for a delicious dessert, strawberry rhubarb pie! John made the pie himself, entirely from scratch, crust and all, while I was working on destroying the kitchen making the pork dumplings. I've only had strawberry rhubarb pie maybe once before, ages ago, so this was a completely different experience- wow! The sour tart of the rhubarb, and the sweet strawberries, and the yummy homemade crust...Mmm, Mmm, Mmm! I'm sure it would win any contest!



This was taken yesterday evening, while Renee was talking to her Grammie for Mother's Day. John had the excellent idea of giving Renee his bluetooth to put in her ear, making it easier for her to talk on the phone. You have to see it in person though, the picture hardly does it justice! As soon as you give the phone to Renee, she starts walking around the house while she talks, just like a teenager! At least with the bluetooth, it doesn't matter exactly how she holds the phone up to her ear! So adorable! And wow, thinking back to my childhood -talking on those old rotary dial phones- what a wonderful leap in technology!