weekend: garden flowers and baking triumphs and defeats

On Saturday, we went to our garden plot. We had not been in over 3 weeks, and assumed everything was dead because we were not watering and weeding it, so we planned to dig everything up. We were quite surprised to see that nothing was decaying; we in fact  picked 7 bell peppers, a bunch of basil, a few small tomatoes and a bunch of lovely zinnias.

Look at this gorgeous bouquet of zinnias. It is very thrilling being able to see these everyday in our house.

In other news, I made these cottage cheese muffins from this recipe. I thought they sounded so wonderful and healthy (they're mostly made of eggs, cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, and finely ground almonds--and I substituted sauted mushrooms for sundried tomatoes), but I hated them. Tim, of course, loves them because he loves all healthy/gross things. But I couldn't take more than one bite; I actually had to spit it out. So much for trying to eat healthy breakfasts. Alas, I will have to try to find some other method to eat a good Frühstück every morning. 


I did, however, have a triumph with this recipe. It's a quick and simple french bread. It's easy and uses very few ingredients, so anyone can make it with little effort. We've used in with soup for the past few days and Tim made little tomato-basil-olive oil crostinis with it. It would also be good for garlic bread or small paninis. I may even make a loaf every weekend to use.