Green Chile Pesto and a Snake

We are harvesting like mad from our garden, which means at least some of my creative time is spent watering and weeding, harvesting, and cooking. It is so wonderful to have an abundance of fresh, organic veggies! We've been eating Japanese eggplants (grilled or in sautees), green beans (steamed until tender-crisp and topped with butter, or just munched on fresh and crunchy), swiss chard. I harvested our first sweet corn a couple of days ago, and our 2-year old is learning the fine art of eating corn off the cob. The peppers are coming in now, and I need to figure out what to do with lots of serranos. We've been roasting and eating the anaheims, and tossing them in with whatever else we're cooking. A couple of days ago, I finally made the pesto I've been threatening to make for a while (the basil is overflowing from the pots it's planted in) and added roasted anaheims. The result: delicious!!


And, perhaps it's the drought, or perhaps it's our charming personalities.... I had a Day of the Critters earlier this week. First, I finally found the big, nasty tomato horn worm that has been terrorizing one of the tomato plants. I had to pull it off the plant since it was obviously not ready to give up its tasty buffet, and its suckers were dang powerful. The bugger was over 3 inches long, and about and inch in diameter. It was also very squishy (shudder). Later, as Rhys and I were coming in the back door, a 2 foot snake slithered inside in front of us and went straight under the china cabinet. I intellectually love and understand snakes, and I knew this one was harmless, but I still squealed a little and shied away from the china cabinet at first. Aaron came home less than 10 minutes after the little snake came in the house, and by chance, he (the snake) decided he maybe didn't want to live inside after all and made a break for the door again. Unfortunately, he couldn't figure out the sliding glass door... Aaron caught him, and we got a good look at him.



Finally, I found a mouse in the drawer underneath the oven. And I squealed . I caught it in a big yogurt container, out of which he promptly jumped (no mean feat for a mouse the size of a small avacado seed inside a container with walls at least 5 times his size), landed on the floor and ran out the door (thank goodness it was cracked open wide enough). I squealed again.