Spring has Sprung in the Garden

Here it is March and I'm already starting to use the garden to cook.

All the cold weather items are coming up like the garlic, onions and chives.

In preparation for a barbecue on Thursday, I'm starting to prepare some of the dishes, the first being these delicious cheesy jalapeño and chive biscuits. I prepared these for our summer salmon barbecue a couple years ago and these were a big hit. The chives in the garden a really healthy right now so I couldn't resist to go out and cut some to use in dishes for this meal.

On Thursday, our barbecue will feature our barbecued ribs on the Traeger We invited Bruce's office workmates over to visit with Bruce's nephew, Peter, and his wife, Stephanie, who are visiting from Iowa. They lived here for 6 months in 2009 and got to know everyone very well and are looking forward to seeing them all again. Peter is head of Bruce's company where the main office is in Iowa so I guess you could say we are entertaining the boss! I will only ever know Peter as Peter, though. Bruce's brother and Peter's dad, Paul, was head of the company before Peter but again, he was always just Paul to me. That's how family business is, I guess. You can read about the family business when we visited Iowa last June and stopped into Bratney office. I took this photo at the entrance of the building showing Bruce, his dad (who started the company in 1964), Peter and Paul.

Our menu on Thursday will be barbecue ribs, cheesy potatoes, coleslaw, baked beans, cheesy biscuits which I made last night and put in the freezer and apple pie for dessert. You can tell I'm eager to start eating summer food and do some barbecuing! I am going to experiment with a special mixed drink tonight to feature along with beer and wine. Another nephew has a blog on mixed drinks so I emailed him and he gave me some good ideas. Check it out at Bar on the Windowsill. Tonight, I will make the pies and hopefully decide on a special drink for Thursday. It's a busy week in the kitchen for me! I'm looking forward to it. Stay tuned.

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