Easter with friends

We spent Easter Sunday in Baton Rouge with Oliver's best friends from high school (it works in our favor that they married one another). Mandy's* Easter goodies were impressive as always (her baking and cake decorating skills are second only to my cousin Amber, a full time cake decorating professional). Pictured here are Mandy's hollow Rice Krispie Treat eggs filled with M&M's, coated with white chocolate and individually decorated. Just below them, in those perfect clear take out containers, you'll see traditional Rice Krispies, coated in dark chocolate and each uniquely decorated. There were also very cool ostrich eggs made of white chocolate, filled with pudding and topped with a cake ball to look like egg yoke! 


As a person who barely cooks and never bakes Mandy's skills impress me. Add to that that she did all this with two little boys and a five week old girl and I am speechless. AND she goes back to her full time job at a biology lab next week. High five to super woman!


One of the couple's several sister/sister-in-laws** also made half a dozen of the ever-impressive silk tie die eggs. Except to make this fun decorating technique even better then usual - they filled their eggs with cash! Way to up the intensity of the same old egg hunt! Thanks again to our friends for making us feel like family on the holidays. We'll never be able to find the words to tell you how much it means to us. 

*For anyone at our wedding, Mandy made the mini Whoopie Pies that disappeared in seconds after the dessert table opened. 
** Shout out to Sam's sister Stephanie!
***I also had the pleasure to finally meet Kari and Stewart, of www.raringstogo.blogspot.com. Kari is Mandy's younger sister as well as a fellow blogger. Check out their blog soon - they'll be moving from Texas to India later this month!

Homemade biscuits on a Saturday morning & other random things


While Oliver made biscuits this morning I went straight from bed to the garden. The early bird gets the worm and I had some worm getting to do. By the time he called me in to eat (bacon, eggs and biscuits) I'd squished another dozen cabbage worms of varying sizes. 


Also, this morning, the Beekman Boys responded to my plea for cabbage worm help with two ideas: "make a spray using real soap (must have lye) or use row covers". The soap spray idea led my Google searches in a new direction and I found several sites that suggest masking the cabbage scent in an effort to hide them from the white cabbage moths (who lay the eggs on the leaves that then hatch into the worms that are eating the plants).  My new plan is to make a lye soap spray as suggested by the Beekmans AND refertilize with a second round of fish emulsion. The fish emulsion is so pungent that it will hopefully overwhelm whatever natural scent is attracting the moths. 

The photo on the left is the view from my garden into my neighbor's front yard. Like I've said before, this is the most beautiful springtime I have ever seen in Atlanta. EVERYTHING is blooming at once! And there haven't been a string of violent storms to knock down the fragile blooms. Azalea, hydrangea, dogwood, cherry blossoms, jasmine, Bradford pears, daffodils, irises - all blooming together and they're everywhere! I'm loving it (it helps that over 29 years I've developed a total tolerance to Atlanta's pollen).

The photo on the right is Topher getting ready for his shower. "Get out MOM!" Ok not really. I'd just finished cleaning the bathtub and he jumped in to lick the faucet. The light was so pretty that I grabbed the camera. He's a little cat version of a Vermeer painting!

And last for today: when life gives you lemons you make lemonade. When life makes your eggplant explode on the grill... make baba ganoush! Earlier this week Oliver grilled dinner in the backyard. Whenever he does this he throws an eggplant on the grate afterwards and lets it bake while we eat. Well during that night's dinner an unmistakable burp erupted from the grill! Oh no! Eggplant explosion! No matter though, it still makes a delicious snack.