Chickpeas and A Garden Party

Today for lunch Da'Gorgeouses had broccoli, chickpeas, fish sticks and bread. Now they've eaten all of these things before, but for some reason they SUPER enjoyed it all today. It was enough to make LongRifle say, "mmmm...I love it, delicious!" That's the first time she's used the word delicious by the way. Pistol was slightly less enthusiastic, until it came to the chickpeas. Her little face lit up right away and she gobbled them down as quickly as I put them on her plate. I must fess up to taking off the waxy skin before I serve them. Da'Gorgeouses just won't eat them if they've got that waxy skin, I'll hear things like "yukypoo" and "gross" if I serve them like that. Can't say that I blame them though, to tell you the absolute truth, I'm not a big fan of chickpeas (known to me as garbanzos). My sis & Welo are though, I remember they'd pop open a can and polish it off between the two of them. Maybe some tastes are genetically based.

Speaking of that, for dinner I made chicken, veggies and pasta with sun-dried tomatoes. Pistol asked for tomatoes and we handed one over, held our breath and waited for a reaction. She loved it, and even asked for more! LongRifle, not to be left out, also asked for tomatoes, we gave her one and watched her put it in her mouth and immediately spit it out adding a "bletch" just for good measure. LOL!! DrillSgt. WILL NOT eat sun dried tomatoes, he can't stand them, they rate up there with artichokes for him. I love sun dried tomatoes and artichokes so whenever I cook with them I make sure not to put any on his plate. It'll be interesting to continue to watch Da'Gorgeouses preferences on flavor as they grow up. I make sure to let them try everything, even the stuff I don't like (guava, papaya, yogurt, jello, flan---I think the last three are mainly a texture thing for me). So far they love all of those things, and I'm so glad they do.

DrillSgt. planted our mini-garden today.
It's going to get hot really quick so we'll see how those poor plants do. It was now or never as they've been sitting out there for a week! He even threw down a couple of seed packets for good measure. Our neighbor next door has had her garden planted for over a month now, of course she just puts us to shame. She's out tending the horses or gardening or mowing her lawn at 5 am, and she's outside doing something or other until the sun goes down. I'm sure any day now she'll be bringing over some of those full grown vegetables from her garden, just like she did last year! I wonder how long it will take those plants to grow? Maybe I can ask her for some advice, she'd probably like that.