The Perfect Weekend Breakfast

This is my ideal weekend breakfast:

Ingredients:

1. Gorgeous flowers from my own garden - the roses actually SMELL like ROSES unlike supermarket ones that smell like air conditioning.

2. A book I am enjoying, on my book stand from college, so I can read with fork and knife in hand.

3. Cute napkin (this one has a "T" on it...for "Tina". Wild, I know!) I got this for cheap at TJ Maxx.

4. Fresh hot coffee. The weekends are the only times I have coffee in the morning at home. On weekdays, I wait to have it at the office.

5. Bacon. My favorite is a nitrate/nitrate free, natural dry rubbed type you can get at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods - it is 40% less fat than regular bacon but it is more of a "real" bacon than "regular" bacon anyway!


This weekend's breakfast was the more easily available center cut bacon. Still usually 1/3 less fat and pretty good taste.

6. Over easy egg and buttered toast. These go together. This one got too hard in the middle. But what I like best to do is to pierce the yolk and squidge it around on the toast like it's jelly, then put the mangled egg white remains over the yolk, and eat it. An open-faced egg sandwich. These are cage-free brown Egg-Lands' Best eggs. They are so good and good for you! Much less cholesterol than usual eggs.


7. Behind me, a window, so I can read with natural light.

8. To the side of me, my parakeets, talking and singing while I eat.

9. Below me, my dog Sean, waiting for the meal to be over so he can lick the plate. He knows the sound of me putting down the silverware. It says, "Tina is done. Now I can lick!"

10. Off in the hallway or on the hardwood floor in front of me, Meg lays, wondering when she is going to get any attention.

11. NO CLOCK WATCHING!!!! I love not wearing a watch as much as possible on the weekends. This is an integral part of an ideal breakfast. Drinking my coffee slowly as I read. Finishing up when I want to get up, and not before.

12. Did I mention another important part of the ideal breakfast is sleeping in?

There you have it. My ideal breakfast. At least when I'm making it at home. If I'm out, I wrestle with also wanting pancakes (blueberry or chocolate chip?) and biscuits with sausage gravy and maybe some grits. MMMMM. I like breakfast!

How Does My Garden Grow?

My garden is really making progress! I pulled off my first batch of collard leaves and cooked them up - they're not as large as the ones in the grocery store, but very tender. I saw my first blooms in the flower garden section - two zinnias - one purple and one orange. And I have a bunch of tomatoes coming on. One plant in particular is doing great - I think it is a Roma.

Sadly, my bell peppers, parsley, and yellow squash plants are still lagging behind. But the previous weekend I put compost on them, so hopefully they'll start to surge. I want lots of yummy bell peppers and squash!

About a month ago I repotted my herbs and moved them outside. After the inevitable wilting for a few weeks from the change, they are now doing great.

There is something that has infested my new rose bush and the one that was already at the house. I've been spraying them both with a herbicide/miticide/etc. I think they're doing better, but alot of damage has already been done. My first two blooms on my beautiful yellow rose are all crippled. Grrrrr.

I also have some geraniums coming up nicely in the front of the house - I can't wait for them to get big enough to bloom.

I had to severely prune my mature geraniums this weekend - they were so leggy and crazy and not blooming much at all. I'm trying to root some of the stalks I cut off - we'll see if that works. I've done it before, but I don't remember how long it takes to get roots growing.

Oh, and one sad update related more to the yard than the garden - the mower pooped out on me Saturday and I couldn't get it started again. I'm not sure what's wrong... Time to look online again.