Wooden Flowers?

These look great in a vase and require no water! Where did I find them? We went for a walk and noticed these dead bushes bearing wooden flowers! We finally figured out that they are dead protea bushes. We cut a few dead twigs off the dead bush and ended up with a bouquet of wooden flowers! [I think it is illegal to pick live proteas in the wild in South Africa, so we made sure these bushes were dead and that the flowers were empty (i.e. the seeds had already been carried away by the wind before we picked).]

Bay & Garlic

Well, sadly it looks like the bay tree didn't make it. Also, my garlic didn't survive either :( Well, better luck next time! :)

Poor man's Pesto

This past summer I managed to only make one small batch of pesto, but surprisingly, I was rewarded in early winter and managed to get out another batch to last through winter. I was a bit short and substituted the shortage with wild basil. Because of the price of pine nuts, I substituted them with whatever nuts I had in the house. Freezing pesto in ice cube trays is great, especially for grabbing cubes to defrost and make sandwiches or to throw in thai green curries, pastas, etc...