Shopping, Date-day, Basil, Crochet (A Bit of Everything)

Wow. What a busy summer it has been. Most of my spare time has been spent outside tending to my herbs and plants, watering fruit trees, weeding berry bushes, picking all the yummy wild berries, taking the kids to my parents' to swim.

Every summer I always wonder where the saying "the lazy days of summer" came from! My summer days are never lazy. In fact, right now I'm sterilizing jars so that I can made blackberry jam today from all of the wild blackberries we picked on Saturday. Summer is far from a lazy time for me!

However, despite all of the busyness, Brad and I did make it a point to take some time away this past Saturday. We headed to an area in Pittsburgh called The Strip. And we had SO much fun.

Admittedly, I ditched my gluten free diet when I indulged in freshly made almond-chocolate biscotti. And then I caved at lunchtime and ate a Rosa sandwich which was a pizza dough crust folded over and filled with marinated veggies and field greens. Oh my. Both were amazingly good. The taste buds were singing. I was back on board with the GF diet again yesterday, though.

 

 My lunch. YUM - MEEEEEEE!

There are a lot of ethnic markets in The Strip which is what makes it so much fun to shop there. I came home with a big jar of tahini (because Lily and I just can't seem to get enough of veggies dipped in hummus), a big jar of capers (I fell in love with capers in Ukraine after eating a tomato, caper, and mozzarella salad everyday), a crocheted headband (part of my anniversary gift from Brad), a small gift for my mom's birthday, some girly chopsticks (for Lily and me), and a fresh loaf of Breadworks bread.

And completely unrelated to our date, I have had a major crochet itch lately. Which is not good since I really can't seem to find any time to sit still long enough to crochet. Crocheting is typically my cold-weather hobby, but the bug has bit early this year. So, I've been working on a few small, easy projects and pinning some things I'd like to try to my Pinterest board.

And speaking of Pinterest... I really do love having the capability of saving all of the good things I find on the Internet to one space and in an organized fashion, for that matter. I used to bookmark things and my Favorites menu was getting out of control so this is so much nicer! You can check my boards out here.

Another thing, my basil is growing like CRAZY! I'm going to be on the lookout for some new recipes to try. I always dehydrate basil and make a ton of pesto, but this year I'm going to freeze some fresh as well as look for ways to use a bunch of it in recipes. The more you cut your plant, the more it produces. I'm hoping to share some of those recipes on here.

Well, I should get back to work!

Have a blessed day!