Fresh from the garden...And a tornado!

Yum! Yesterday I picked our first batch of Strawberries that were not damaged by birds! (don't ask me about the damage done by the slugs!) We got a nice basket full of berries and had them for dessert last night. We topped our home-made vanilla ice cream with the yummy berries and... unfortunately, we were so excited about eating, that I forgot to photo the dish! But trust me when I said they were remarkably yummy! My honey built a strawberry cage to keep the birds out and it's working! Now we've discovered a few teeny-tiny slugs eating our berries. I read somewhere that if I put down egg shells they slugs will not cross over them. So, I've got a bunch of egg shells that I'm going to lay out under the plants and hopefully......keep fingers crossed!

Last Saturday we had some friends over for dinner. As always, we had great food. But one of things that I tried out that day was Lemon Basil syrup. I made the simple syrup and added two bunches of basil to it and let it cook for a minute or two. Then strained the basil out and added two cups of lemon juice to the basil simple syrup. I then put that syrup into a bottle and when the time came to serve drinks, I used chilled mineral water to a 1/3 of a glass of the syrup and topped it with basil flowers and it was delightfully delicious! Of course the basil came out of our garden too!

And because we've had such strange weather... our greens and herbs have already begun to bolt. The weather has been so back and forth. We'll have 90+ degrees for a couple of days and then we'll go back down to 70's for a few days and back and forth. As a matter of fact, we have had our first Tornado sighting on Tuesday! About 5 miles south of us. And I was out in the thick of it because I was out driving around trying to locate my honey! HE rode his bike into work and when I looked out around 5p.m. it was bad! High winds, clouds that looked totally dangerous and the air smelled funny. Anyhow, I took off in the car thinking I'd try to find him along the highway on his way home. I got out on hwy 50 and went about 3 miles and ran right smack into a wall of rain and hail! I couldn't even see half way out to the hood of my car! I ended up inching my way slowly, slowly, slowly. There was no way to see across the hwy to see if he was on that side of the road. I eventually made it to the intersection of two hwy's where I thought he might be, when my phone rang and it was him telling me he was home! Evidently a stranger in a truck gave him a ride home. That stranger was on his way to Louiseville which is where the tornado sighting was! Luckily, there was no damage from the tornado but it sure was hairy making my way back home! Thankfully, my honey got a ride before the marble sized hail had started to come down! I had no idea that we were about to get any thing like that! I believe it's time to plug in our storm radio!