Sunday, the NON-lazy kind

It's been awhile since I've posted a recipe and tonight's dinner was definitely worth a post :) We had Bobby Flay's Grilled Spice Rubbed Shrimp Nicoise Salad. It was fresh, colorful, and full of flavor. The ground fennel on the shrimp and the fresh basil in the salad worked so well together.  The shrimp tasted a bit salty on their own, but when eaten with the rest of the salad they were so perfect.

The Salad: Fresh green beans, cherry tomatoes, red onion, basil, fingerling potatoes in a white wine-honey dijon vinaigrette.

The shrimp: rubbed with ground fennel, coriander, and mustard seed.

The marriage.

Ross has been teaching me how to use the grill :) It is a bit difficult to light the grill because Roma chewed off the starter button when she was a puppy. Now we have to hold the lighter up to the hole in the back while turning the gas on...

My new project is gardening, which I know absolutely nothing about. Nothing. I checked out 6 library books on Native Texas gardening. Too bad, none of them came with a pop out gardener :) I haven't gotten very far in the books because they ask questions that I didn't know the answers to. How many hours of sunlight per day? Soil type? What color scheme are you trying to achieve? AHHHHH. Today I got outside and did some digging. It looks like all I did was make a big, fat mess of the front yard, but the old, dead stuff has to come out before the new can go in! I am going to chronicle my gardening adventures, so even though I'm kind of ashamed on the front yard, I'm posting a "Before" picture...

See that dead bush/tree thing, front left? Well I was standing on the shovel and couldn't even get the shovel in the ground around that thing. The neighbor said he broke a shovel on his. So, we resorted to other tactics. Behold...

It's not what it looks like....

Now there's no going back... Stay tuned to "Project Front Yard"!