I LOVE to cook.  I love the entire process, the shopping, the chopping, the mixing, the cooking, the smelling, and the eating. 

That’s why when I couldn’t cook a decent meal not too long ago in the early stages of stopping smoking,  I’m not gonna lie, it really SUCKED!  Not only was I not having fun, but everything I made tasted awful and ended up in the trash.

Well, fast forward a few weeks and I’m doing ok now.    Disclaimer here… I’m not a trained chef, as a matter of fact I’ve only been trained in the school of my Mother,  Food Network and Cooking Channel. 

My Mother (I Love You!) taught me how to preserve food.  As a child I remember many of the meals being from food we had “put up”  from my Father’s (I Love You!) garden.  (Working the garden back then, well that’s another post for another day,  but what wonderful memories they are.   I always thought my Father could plant a rock and get a tomato.  I also was about 14 years old before I figured out my name wasn’t weed the beans!)

The ZMan is an excellent gardener too…

As you can see these are pictures of last years garden. 

We have already started some of our seeds, just waiting for them to start popping up. 

We “put up” a lot of the food from the gardens too, but there is no better taste than fresh from ZMan’s garden to my table.

Me and the ZMan have a very special date night when the potatoes are ready to dig.   

The ZMan digs me some new potatoes from the garden and I make salt potatoes and grill steaks.  We eat our dinner outside by the pool and when we take that first bite of our garden potatoes that are dripping with butter infused olive oil….  it’s…  it’s just…. it’s just Mmmmmmmmm!!!!  YUM!!!!  

Hands down that is the best bite of food I have all year.  It’s my favorite.

My mouth is watering right now.

We plant two decent size gardens with the usuals such as potatoes, several varieties of tomatoes, green beans, bell and jalapeno peppers, lettuce, cabbage, brussel sprouts, yellow and green squash, watermelon, and a decent variety of herbs.

It’s supposed to be about 70 this Saturday, so I plan to play in the dirt a bit and get the herb beds and big planter pots ready for planting.

I can’t wait!!!     It’s been a long hard winter and we are ready for Spring!!!

Hhhmmm, by the way…  What DIRT did you think I was gonna talk about???     Ah Ha Ha, shame on you  🙂

We would love to know what your garden plans are.  If you have any gardening questions for the ZMan, I might be able to get him to answer your questions in a post.

Y’all take care!

P.S.  salt potatoes are just whole potatoes boiled in very salty water.  The water should remind you of the ocean, that’s how  salty it should be. (kosher salt, please)

Lori