Our First Taste of Our "Crop"

We decided a couple of months ago to try our first "garden."  I have been wanting to build a container garden for quite some time, but Drew was not as much on board with the idea. The "realist" that he is saw a lot of work involved, whereas the practical optimist in me saw fresh vegetables and herbs and less trips to the grocery store for those items (as well as some money saved--can you tell that I can really be a "salesperson" sometimes?)  So, we compromised (after several sales pitches by yours truly) and used mostly pots that we had around the house, as well as a couple of "topsy turvy" planter kits that I bought on clearance at Ross ($2.99).  I love the topsy turvy containers.  The plants in those are extremely easy to take care of, bugs never seem to reach them, and you cannot over-water them.  They have grown rapidly with very easy care.

I will admit that I feel a little bit like a kid with the amount of excitement that I get "checking" the plants every day.  It is fun to watch the fruit or vegetable plants begin as a little sprout or seedling, grow flower blossoms and then morph each day a little bit into something that we enjoy eating.  Even though watering the plants daily is actually a task that has to be done, it is something I really enjoy.  Therefore, it never seems like a "chore."  And, it only takes a few minutes--a few minutes that I get to check the progress of our little plants!  It's so exciting.

Well, the day finally came yesterday--the day we got to taste our first tomatoes.  We have been enjoying our herbs very regularly.  There is nothing like the taste of fresh basil!  I have been putting it on a LOT of dishes. But, yesterday was our first taste of vegetables (or, I guess tomatoes or fruits.)  Besides a variety of tomatoes and several herbs, we are also growing red bell peppers and yellow squash.

Some of our cherry tomatoes from our topsy turvy planter.

Luke was excited to help make dinner...which even involved picking our own tomatoes.

Some of our "crop"

Rolling out the whole wheat pizza crust.   Click here for the very simple recipe.  The dough literally takes 5 minutes to prepare.

Teamwork!

Brushing on the sauce.  We like our pizzas thin, so the dough recipe makes two pizzas.  We made one with tomato sauce base and the other with a lemon olive oil base.  They are both delicious~

Time for our toppings, including freshly picked lemon basil and cherry tomatoes from our garden.

Into the oven it goes for a few minutes.

And Voila!  Here is one of our pizzas which would soon be devoured.  Luke said it was his favorite pizza ever!  I think it had something to do with him being the chef!  :-)