Dear Kid,

Happy Monday and hope you had a good weekend.

For us, the weekend included the First Spinach Harvest.

Yeah, it was a lot of spinach.

The spinach we grow is Malabar Spinach which is stupid easy to grow. Plant seed, ignore, harvest, ignore more, harvest more.

We (and by “we” I mean Dad took the stems out to the compost bin and I did the rest) made two kinds of spinach. Yum.

We also had homegrown beets.

We did not eat the weeds (which were the balance of the weekend’s “harvest”).

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Things NOT to do when you’re cooking.

1. Overcook the green beans. Mushy. Keep an eye on those babies.
2. Cut a whole bunch of onions.  Easy to tear up. Hard to see. Therefore hard to keep an eye on the green beans.
3. Step on the Puppy. Hoping something drops on the floor. Except onions.
4. Undercook the green beans. Better than overcooking. But too crunchy.
5. Cut a whole bunch of yourself. Good for the Band-Aid people. Not so good for anyone else.
6. Experiment with a new recipe. Generally better to make something once and then go for variations. Except sometimes.
7. Burn the green beans. Tricky little buggers.
8. Miss when transferring soup to a container. Makes the Puppy happy. Not so good for anyone else.
9. Set off the smoke detector. Hard to see through the smoke. Leads to stepping on a barking puppy.
10. Forget the green beans. Tricky and sneaky little buggers.

Happy cooking.

Love, Mom