good food good friends good evening

last night gio and i had a few friends over for dinner - casey frank, steve best and rebecca vaughn. super cool!

this is probably going to be our last dinner party until we remodle my house....
or i make a different dinner table for the dinning room....

last night we all were pondering how we could keep the out door dinning in the cold weather.
there of couse is the wear warm clothes but this answer is only for the person dinning not the dinner.
our biggest problem we found earlier this year was the food got so cold so fast!
we also dicussed hanging a canvas drape around the dinner table.....??? is this then dinning inside not out?
or we can have a wood burning cast iron stove out around us or a fire pit table? who knows, i just hope we get invited over to other large warmer house this winter for dinners!hint

but as for last nights dinner party i think it went smashingly. every guest brought a bottle of wine. casey frank brought over pomegranate wine super delicious! i have nerver had it before last night.

i also made these little italian cookies named farfalle (butterfly in italian) but i don't really know the recipe.
gio took me to a restaurant over on tennyson and 44th named parisi, they have the best pizza in denver... they have a wood burning oven...tastes like italy!! and parisis have astonishing desserts as well.
gio, mira, zac and i tried one dessert - farfalle cookies, and i fell in love with these little beauties but i have search the internet looking for a recipe or a reference to the cookie but i have found nothing........

so i went on fact finding mission to parisi to see if i could get any info on the cookie dough.
the guy at the counter said he did not know exactly what the dough was made out of but he did know that it has cream chees in the dough.
ha ahahaha . so i have come up with my verison of the dough (i have only made it once) and i think i did a good job and the cookies taste great but their not as good as parisi...much to my chagrin.
has anyone else ever had these? they have jam in the middle....

here's to the stupendous summer dinner we've had and to more to come next spring!

jenny vs. aphids

the garden has been very good to us this year.
even part of the leftover garden has been super; the priests left us mint (which has been made into tea), oregano, sage (which flowered in spring) and forever bearing spinach chard (fed us from march until june and is back again)

i have had more chilies this year than ever. i used to try and grow bell peppers out here but never got many. this year i switched to cubanelle peppers for the sweet and pablanos and habaneros for the hotties. i have made some great salas from these peppers.

we also have acorn squash and zucchini that keeps rolling in. i have given away atleast fifteen pounds of zucchini this summer. i 've grown cabbage and brussell sprouts for the first time this year, they've been good - cabbage looks great in the flower garden! as well as broccoli once it's gone to flower.

but then the unwanted guests moved themselves in... the aphids! those little sap suckers moved in on the tomatoes and the bassicas with full force!

gio and i started the all out annihilation of the aphids. the battle raged on for five days. we did suffer some casualties, three tomatoes plants had to be removed. the three plants that i cut down were just acting as aphid baby makers! the poor plants had no new growth and no fruit or flowers - they were dying.

we kept up on the spraying soapy water on all the plants and after the removal of the baby making three the aphids started to die off in large number!!! and this next part i am a little confused about....... the large black ants moved in all over that tomatoes and seemed to be eating all of the aphids........eating? i am not sure but after that day no more aphids!!!!

so next year i need to do things differently in the garden, more companion planting and not having too many of the same plant near each other...... and more food stuffs......asparagus!!! and more beans....

aphids. i have learned more about them this year than i've wanted. nils told me that aphids are good for you skin....just crush 'en in!