Last week was my birthday. I don’t get excited about them anymore. Who wants to be older anyway? (besides my teens that is!) Jon is always sweet and finds a way to do something special for me. This year he gave me a card, inside he listed reasons why he loves me. It is just beautiful and something I will treasure. We went out for dinner too and spoiled ourselves with 3 courses. We don’t do that often, so it was a real treat.

My friend Yvette made my day by having a bouquet of pink roses delivered to me! Wow….somehow flowers just make me feel so loved and appreciated. Maybe because they seem like a decadent gift, something I wouldn’t buy for myself.

My kids, on the other hand, were pretty lame about my birthday this year. I try not to let it bother me, but I wish they could put a bit of effort into it. My son remembered and wished me a happy birthday, and my daughter bought me a generic card. Is it too much to hope for a thoughtful gift? Nothing expensive. Just something that shows they thought about my birthday for more than 15 seconds, you know? They could make me something or clean the house for me, or even bake me a cake— but they just don’t. Some years they do better, but maybe it’s just their ages. They are still so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t think about me much anymore. My daughter spent days on end planning her friend’s birthday party and creating a slideshow video for her…..I got a card (not even a MOM card, just a generic card you could give to someone you work with!) That shows you where I rank on her priority list right now! I’m sure when it’s my son’s girlfriend’s birthday, he’ll be stressing for days about what to get for her. (and asking me to buy it since he has no job!)

I guess that’s why I try to keep myself so busy all the time. I wonder how they would feel if all I did for their birthdays is give them a hug or a card?

I grew this tomato! Ok, not right from a seed- but it was a very small plant to start out. You can see it the day I planted it here. This one came from the Super Fantastic variety plant (not the upside down planter)  There are lots of tomatoes growing there too, but none are ripe yet.

Who knew I could get so excited about a simple tomato? You can see how this little guy looked 6 weeks ago here when I first discovered it.  It’s come a long way baby!

I’m dying to taste it right now, but Jon will be out all day today so I’ll wait and share it with him tomorrow. It’s my first home-grown tomato after all, I have to have an audience to appreciate it with me:-)

Mine came out a little smaller that I expected, so I’ll make them larger next time when dividing the dough. Here are a few of them hanging out in the frying pan (5 minutes per side is all it takes), and another shot showing the second side that doesn’t get as browned as the first side. I always wondered why that happens and now I know:  it’s because after they cook on the first side, they rise a little bit into a dome shape in the pan and when you flip them over, not as much of the muffin touches the cooking surface.

I split them with a fork and tasted one with some homemade raspberry jam. YUM! They are delicious, and pretty simple to make with my stand mixer doing all the hard kneading work.

While I was waiting for the dough to rise, I found some recipes for Cinnamon Bread. I wanted to make the kind that is rolled and when you cut it you get a nice spiral in the middle of the loaf.

Here’s a shot of the first loaf from the inside.

Looks pretty tasty, right? Well, the cinnamon and sugar oozed out all over the place and the side of the loaf kind of caved in when I was trying to get it out of the pan (the sugar made it stick)  The loaf also seemed to split open and come un-rolled a bit, even though I pinched the dough together along the seam really well and baked it seam-side down. The picture of the outside of the loaf isn’t quite as attractive:-( It ended up almost like a great big sticky cinnamon roll which is fine if that’s what you’re trying to make.

The good news is that it tastes wonderful!

Back to the drawing board to try for a loaf that looks a bit prettier. My second try is in the oven right now. I reduced the sugar filling, used white instead of brown sugar and I tried an egg wash on the dough to ‘stick’ the cinnamon mixture rather than butter this time. So far so good- nothing is oozing out yet. I’ll post pictures when they are cooled and I’ve sliced into them.

The other good news is that it smells fantastic in the house today!

Next I want to try making mini blueberry pies. I watched Anna Olsen making mini cherry pies on Food Network recently and they looked great. Unfortunately it’s not easy to find tart cherries around here. Plenty of sweet cherries, but they aren’t ideal for baking.

The next 2 photos are of the large plant, the Super Fantastic variety. It’s probably 3 1/2 feet tall and very bushy now. It’s just loaded down with fruit in all different stages of growth. The largest 2 tomatoes are right in the middle of the plant, so they can’t be seen here. Every day I see more and more coming. I can’t wait to taste them!

Now I know you’re just dying to see what’s happening to my Upside-Down Tomato planter! C’mon, admit it Well, it looks really weird at the moment. It’s trying to grow up the sides of the bucket and it’s popping out with lots of flowers now. I can see just one little tomato coming right underneath. I’m not convinced about this method of growing tomatoes yet. For this one I used a variety called Patio. I guess different varieties all grow at different rates, so to have a proper experiment I should have used the same variety for each method. Oh well, it’s not scientific but it’s fun!

My pea plants are growing like weeds. I love the way the little tendrils reach out like a million little hands and grab on to anything to hold on and help them climb. The tomato cage I put around them works perfectly. All of the plants are covered in pods now, with lots more coming along. None of them have gotten to eating size yet, but I’m checking everyday. I love eating fresh peas right off the vine. None of these are going to be cooked. IMO it ruins the fresh taste.

The event raised over $500 for the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre. Yeay, cupcakes for a great cause!

The best part is…drum roll please… I won the grand prize of the evening for the Best Tasting Cupcakes! How cool is that?  OK,  so the REAL grand prize winner was the Coconut Mojito Cupcakes, but they left before the judging, so the prize went to me as the runner up. The prize was a $300 certificate for a custom cake from Tartlets Pastry & Cake Design Check out the gallery of cakes on their site – just amazing.

Pretty fun evening, but I ate WAY too many cupcakes. My favorites were the Burger Cupcakes, complete with red, yellow and green icings for condiments, brownies for the ‘meat’ and sesame seeds on the tops of the ‘buns’. They were the winners for Most Creative Cupcakes. Aren’t they the coolest?

I wonder if these will be good enough to take to Cupcake Camp?

Yesterday was our 4th wedding anniversary and we took a walk all the way around the seawall (over 10km) and then stopped for a lovely Thai meal at a tiny restaurant in the West End. While we were there, we looked in to a new shop on Denman called ‘Cupcake’. It’s a very cute little bakery selling only…you guessed it…many kinds of cupcakes. They looked very pretty, but $2.95 EACH?? I think I’m in the wrong business!

Results: Well, everyone said the cupcakes tasted good. (my family is too polite to say otherwise though!) but they came out too dense for my liking., closer to a pound cake consistency. I wanted light and spongy. I like the taste of this recipe, so I think I’ll try it again making sure the eggs and all liquids are at room temperature and avoiding over mixing after adding the flour.

I don’t know what is happening with the other plant (La Roma variety) The leaves look paler and are curling and it’s growing quite slowly. I’m tempted to try re-potting it into a larger container to see if that will help.I can see a couple of tiny tomatoes starting on it, but the plant itself looks a bit  sickly.

Here is a picture in case anyone out there is an expert and can help me figure out what I’m doing wrong. I picked off a couple of the lowest branches as they were growing right along the soil. You can really see how neglected our lawn is in this photo! We don’t bother watering because then we have to mow it more often:-) We’re a disgrace to the neighbourhood but we’re saving water, right?

Here is my upside-down hanging tomato plant. It’s growing madly, but only has 3 flowers so far. Looking forward to seeing what happens with it!

By the time she married at 30, she really didn’t know how to cook, clean, sew or take care of a home. She had to learn by herself, and I think it was mostly via trial and error. She told me once my father went fishing and brought home his catch and she sat down and cried. She had no idea how to prepare or cook the fish.

Eventually, my mom became a decent cook. She made simple meals like roast beef, boiled potatoes and a plain veg, or chicken pot pie. She overcooked most meats and I think that’s why I grew up disliking meat dishes. She was very good at making soups and she taught herself to bake bread. I have fond memories of sitting beside the table watching my mom knead a huge lump of bread dough bending down to scoop flour out of the huge container on the floor. She did it all by ‘feel’, no measurements needed! Pretty impressive. She was also very good at extending ingredients to feed many on a tight budget. I’ve always been impressed with how my parents managed to raise 5 children on one salary and end up mortgage free in their early 50′s.

Once I became an adult, I realized there were a few things I could improve on from my mom’s way of cooking and baking. Pastry is a major one. I remember learning to make an apple pie in class at school. I came home and made it for the family and everyone exclaimed about the incredibly flaky, light crust. Even though my mom made pies regularly, she overworked the pasty dough, kneading it until it was smooth with warm hands and re-rolling it over and over. She didn’t worry about the fat being chilled or the water being ice cold. Her pastry didn’t taste bad, but it was pretty tough to get a fork through!

So, here is the blueberry pie I made last night. I love the pastry star cut-outs for the top crust. Not my idea, but looks great anyway. I could never get my head around doing a proper lattice top. I had fun making it, using a combination of several recipes I found online. We didn’t wait for it to cool completely, so it was pretty juicy, but I must admit it tasted fabulous. How can you lose when you’re using delicious local berries (these were frozen from last Summer)  This is what’s left this morning.

I moved them down off the back deck and into the yard to catch more sunlight.

I added a Red Pepper plant and I’m trying to resurrect a little basil plant I bought last week that seems to be dying. I added some seeds to these pots. We love to cook with fresh basil, so I hope some of it survives.

I planted these Little Marvel Pea seeds about 2 weeks ago.  Last time I tried to grow peas I waited too long to stake the vines and they got hopelessly tangled and I couldn’t stake them. I’m on it this time- stakes at the ready!

I’m a bit concerned about my upside down tomato project. It’s growing, but it’s trying desperately to grow UPwards, so it’s now bent double on itself and pushing into the bottom of the bucket! I think I should have started with a larger plant so that when it tried to bend, it would be long enough to get around the botttom edge of the bucket into open air.  Not sure what’s going to happen, but I’ll watch and see.

Here is today’s photo – it just looks like a blob since it’s all bent up. Poor thing is all confused!