Spinach Tomato Linguine & Garden Veggies

Hi everyone! One of our neighbors gave us some veggies he grew, so this week I’ve been enjoying them. 

I made a chocolate zucchini cake, added cucumber slices to a salad, and made one of my favorite pasta dishes (spinach tomato linguine) using the tomatoes. I have the recipe written down on an index card, but it looks like it originated from here, and I continue to modify it. This time, I left out the green onions (and obviously the feta cheese, which isn’t even on my written-down version, haha). I sautéed the frozen spinach first, in canola oil, then added the tomatoes. And finally I used garlic salt instead of both salt and garlic salt. It’s so simple, but so, so good! And the leftovers are great as well. 

I’ll definitely make this again soon because my cherry tomatoes have started to come in, and if this harvest is anything like last year’s, I’m going to have a lot of cherry tomatoes on hand soon! 

And yesterday Zach pulled up one of the carrots! 

As much as I’ve been enjoying my cucumbers, I’m glad that the cucumber harvest has started to slow down a bit. In addition to the ones pictured with the other veggies above, there were only five others I picked since my last post.
 

The seeds I planted for the broccoli, cauliflower, and snow peas have sprouted, but there’s no sign of the kale, yet.

Here’s another of my wolf sketches…

Look at that little face!

Sometimes when Leela naps, she’ll hold up a curled front paw as if she’s saying “YES!” I often imagine her dramatically thinking, “Victory!” (which always makes me laugh).

Peace. :)

Spaghetti & Meatballs & More

Hi everyone! This week I tried the new Lightlife veggie meatballs...

...and I think these are officially my favorite vegan meatballs! They were really good! 

In garden news, my cucumber harvest total is at 80! This week, I pulled up half of the cucumber plants to make room for some broccoli. Last year's broccoli didn't do well in the heat, so I'm hoping that planting it later will help. I also planted snow pea, kale, and cauliflower seeds, so we'll see how that goes. Oh, and I checked, but the carrots aren't ready to be harvested yet, so I still need to wait a bit more for them. The cherry tomatoes should be ready soon, though!

Here's Daisy guarding one of the cucumbers...

And here's another sharpie & colored pencil sketch...

P.S. Buttons got the all-clear at her follow-up appointment on Monday; they had to lightly sedate her in order to get a good look in her mouth since she was being incredibly squirmy, but they said everything looks fine!

Peace. :)

Pineapple Juice Popsicles with Peaches & Strawberries

Hi everyone! Yesterday I made pineapple juice popsicles. I blended together ¾ cup pineapple juice, 1 cup frozen diced peaches, 1 cup frozen strawberries, and ¼ cup water. 

They turned out really well; I had one today as I took a break from making pickles! I’ve been harvesting lots of cucumbers from my garden…

37 cucumbers so far!

Oh, and I realized I haven’t posted much art here lately… whoops… but I’ve been doing a sketch a day this summer (mostly looking through old animal books and using the illustrations and photos therein as visual guides), and here’s one that turned out nicely. I sketched this using an ultra fine point sharpie and then colored it in with colored pencils. 

Here’s Cringer sleeping next to a bag of potatoes! 

Peace. :)