Home At Last! with Patty Gironda

To celebrate Fat Tuesday at our house I cooked up some simple Louisiana fare! Oysters and shrimp. Simple, but, oh so good.  The oysters were consumed so quickly there was no time to snap a photo!  I cleaned and deveined a pound of shrimp, tossed them in a flour, cornmeal and cornstarch mixture for tempting taste of Louisiana! and a successful close to another Mardi Gras season all around the state!

I'm about ready to harvest my one lone sweet potato! I don't know about you but I love to know how my favorite foods are grown and what conditions are required to have good success. This was a sweet potato top that I was about to discard when I made the decision to plant it in about two inches of very dark soil in a raised garden bed recently struck by my neighbor's falling tree.  My big plans are cut ultra-thin sweet potato chips, deep fry them and serve them up with a Maytag blue cheese and enjoy my sweet potato as a delicious appetizer.  What's for dessert? Two watermelons grown from seeds!

I absolutely adore this time of the spring. The first fruit crops are being harvested and gracious friends share their bounty! I've cleaned and prepped two batches of early peaches and a boatload of blueberries. The blueberries are incorporated into our wildly popular homemade waffles and the peaches are in everything from "Hard Peach Punch" to our new breakfast dish, a vegan-friendly bread pudding with almond and coconut milks with fresh peaches. www.GirondasCasaBella.com