blackberries and steam rollers

Saturday was T's perfect day - for a few hours at least. We went off to the park for a playdate with D. The boys played trucks in the sand and the woodchips, ran after a ball, slid themselves and some trucks down the slide, spun around on the new spinny things and ran up and down the hill and in the bushes. While they were doing all that D's mum and I found some blackberries to pick so when the boys were a bit tired and "fursty", they had blackberries, grapes (from home) and juice. Off they went into the bushes to look at some steamrollers parked up on the road and suddenly there was a flaglady there. "Is there construction?" they asked. There was, the crews were expected any time. So we spent almost an hour and a half watching dump trucks back up, a small steam roller back off a trailer, two big steam rollers move up the street and get water hosed into their tanks, the asphalt paver move slowly up the street and then stop and have the rollers all oiled, the tar get sprayed onto the road by crews and the construction guys walking up and down the street, talking and drinking coffee. For some reason the coffee seemed especially interesting to the boys. They even got to chat to a couple of the steam roller drivers who waved at them as they drove by. Eventually we managed to drag the boys out of the park to take them home for lunch.


On Sunday T got to play with his Auntie K and Uncle T while I went shopping for a bit.

Dinners on the weekend were Saturday night pasta with arugula pesto and sundried tomatoes (from the market) with roasted beans and tomatoes from the garden. Sunday night I made a corn and tomato pie adapted from the zucchini and tomato tart from digginfood.com (here is what the uncooked pie looked like)





and warm mushroom lentil salad with goat cheese from a recipe I ripped out of a magazine a while ago and found when I was cleaning out my recipe stack. I used our basil, rosemary and oregano and they were delicious. I think I could have cooked the pie a bit longer but I need to get a shield for the shell as it gets too brown for my liking. Last week I made a squash and cheddar pie with a few tweaks from my Rebar cookbook - it was yummy. (I didn't have garlic to roast or smoked cheddar so used strong cheddar and less cream and more milk that the recipe called for as I ran out of cream...)




The tomatoes are still coming out of the garden - I make a couple of batches of moonblush tomatoes a week and tonight I made some more tomato sauce. Saturday afternoon I made basil pesto and a batch of tomato sauce but I simmered the sauce a bit too long and it turned into more of a tomato paste. (tomato sauce in the making)









The weather is cooling down and rain is coming either tomorrow or Thursday. T starts preschool again on Thursday - school start is early this year as the district is shutting down schools for the Olympics. I don't know how my baby has become such a big boy - second year of preschool already!


Now I just have to deal with the giant spiders in the garden and soon, I imagine, to be appearing in the house - their usual surprise place is the bathtub. I'm learning so as not to freak out too, too much. I can, on occasion, even deal with them myself. I'd rather not but then sometimes my bug handling husband is not home and I must be brave and do it myself. As T would say - I do it!