The weather here today is absolutely glorious. This is the best time of year to live in San Diego. It hasn’t entered the part where it’s so hot that I have to shut the house up and away from any blistering sunlight, but the relative gloom of the winter has blown away. Now we get bright sunny days with a sweet crisp breeze blowing through. It’s still just a touch chilly for it, but we are days away from leaving all the doors open all day and letting that breeze play through the house.
In celebration we spent as much time as possible outdoors this weekend, playing in the garden, letting the kitties pretend they were outdoor cats, and firing up the old grill.
When we lived in Orange County, I used to love to go to this Aztec restaurant where they served simple grilled or panfried meats with rice and fresh sauces. This weekend we tried a version of that here at home. I found this recipe from Martha that was pretty close. It’s basically a pesto made from parsley, and since my parsley and cilantro are growing so abundantly they’re threatening to choke out anything else, I used a whole mess of herbs from the backyard. The sauce I remembered was a little creamier, so I think next time I might toss in an egg to make it a little more mayonnaise-y.
Then Bear, bouncing back from his KIDNEY STONES of last weekend (I threatened to take a picture of the offending stone to share on the blog, but he vetoed that idea. It was a horrible ordeal, but he’s feeling much better now.), decided to have a little fun with his baking book and whip up a little dessert.
His crust was perfection, and so was the lemon filling. The meringue was a little on the weepy side, but it’s not considered one of the hardest desserts to make for nothing. I think we need to spend a little more time whipping it next time.
The flowers I’ve planted so far are springing up fabulously, I’ll be sure and share pictures of that soon. I still have quite a lot of work to do out there, but now it’s just the fun stuff, the planning and shopping and planting, the dreaming of new possibilities that spring brings.
