May... showers?

I keep waiting for spring to arrive, but it's hard to find around here. We've only had a couple of days that even made over 60 degrees lately and it's almost the middle of May! Looking at next week's forecast shows the overnight lows getting down within just a degree or two of FREEZING! This is messing with my plan to make the yard pretty and productive. Also it messes up my plan to shove most of the kids outside for most of the day. Not to mention the fact that our vacation to the Oregon coast is only a couple of weeks away now and I really would like it to, at least, not still be snowing.

Where is my warm weather??? (Of course, by July I'll probably be complaining because it's too hot... I'm a Washingtonian born and bred, after all.)

So, anyway... did I make any progress on April's list of things to do?
Get back on my cleaning schedule.
Plan my garden and set the plan in motion (seeds or starts?)
Sort all of the clothes that Cat has grown out of and donate them.
Sort all of the clothes that Bee has grown out of and get them into storage for Cat.
Sort all of the clothes that Bear has grown out of and get them into storage for Bee.
Start cleaning up the front yard for spring.
Reorganize the kitchen.
Start getting the house ready to sell.

Not too bad. I actually did work on organizing my pantry a little bit, too (which is practically the kitchen, right?).

So I'll make a new list for May, even though it's already half over and we're busy with preschool and soccer and Y classes and birthday parties (attending, not throwing).

To do in May:
Start garden!
Continue to clear front yard and plant.
Reorganize the kitchen.
Work on getting the house ready to sell.
Defrost freezer.
Clean out refrigerator.
Wash outside of windows.
Spring clean and de-clutter all rooms
Plan for vacation and house sitter.

That should keep me plenty busy enough...

Spinach pesto

Yummy!




Fresh Spinach Pesto
2-3 cups Fresh spinach
1/3 cup Parmesan Cheese
3 cloves Garlic
1/4 cup Walnuts, toasted
2-3 T Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Put all ingredients into a food processor. (Blender may or may not work, too. I haven't tried it.) Process until pesto-y. If it's not smooth enough, add a bit more oil. Also, this freezes nicely!

We've had this on sandwiches, crackers and pasta. I even sent some off to Hubby's office potluck. It's super tasty.

I brushed a little oil on top, just to make sure it kept it's pretty bright green color on the way to the potluck.

Spinach-pocalypse

(I'm testing the blogging app for my phone!)

Last week, I was gifted many bags of spinach.

Where did it come from? It... um... fell off of a truck?

I spent one morning blanching and freezing it... I'm pretty happy with how it came out.It's inspired me to plant greens and do it again some time.

Into the blanching pot with you!

I was amazed at just how small 30 bags of spinach becomes, though.

Ready for the freezer.

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So the phone blogging thing seems to work ok. Doing the text of a post is a bit of a challenge on the little "swype" keyboard and I have to edit online to get the pictures where I want them (as far as I know). Still, for loading up mobile pictures for a future blog post... not bad!