Noelle likes Good Food

Before I got married I definitely did not like okra. My experience was with okra that had been fried and had sat too long, and tasted like greasy mush. Not very appetizing. But my husband, he loves okra. Rumor has it when he was a kid he requested a fried okra cake for his birthday. He got it too. I wish I could see the picture of his big bowl of okra with candles pushed in for him to blow out. I am sure it was a magical experience. Since we got married I have had good fried okra when it is fresh out of the pan and super crispy. So, I like it now. But, for the two of us at home I hate frying stuff. The main reason is not even because it isn't healthy, but because it makes a big mess. I have to clean so much anyway, why would I do that to myself?  My new mission was to find ways of preparing okra that didn't require frying. I found that roasting it in the oven produced very tasty, slightly crispy, nuggets of okra gold and I have been doing that since last summer. But roasting ...

Hey everyone! I can't believe I have only blogged once since classes started back in January. I was challenged in many ways, but it was a great first semester, and I finished my last final on May 5th. I decided not to take any classes over the summer, and will start back up in the fall. Since school has been out I have catered a wedding, worked a lot, and last week I had surgery. The surgery went really well, and I have just been resting and healing since then.  Now, onto the purpose of this post. Besides all the working and resting, I have been gardening. I don't know a lot about gardening. My strategy has been to prepare myself as much as I can through research and reading gardening books, and then do it myself and learn from my failures and successes. This year I started everything from seed and some stuff has done better than others.  Here are my pepper plants. I have had problems with little bugs on the undersides of the leaves and I am reading around to try and f...