Those poor poor people...

We generally have a very low food budget. More than once, I've had someone insinuate that we just must not eat well (either in quantity or quality). Au contraire! I have photographic evidence of the food our poor pathetic family is stuck eating ;-)

This got mixed into scrambled eggs and rolled up into a burrito. The sausage was purchased (well, actually, it was free because I had a coupon for it when I bought fajita meat), the onion, potato and peppers all came from our garden. Come on, you can't tell me that doesn't look delicious (and it was oh so yummy tasting too!)

We've also learned to make our own mozzarella cheese! yummy yummy yummy. So, we just had to snack on homegrown tomatoes and homemade, fresh cheese. Poor us.


It was interesting to make the cheese, this is a pic of scooping out the curds (that's a slotted spoon):


And here are the curds and whey separated:


On an only slightly related topic, seems I have mixed up my definitions of "vole" and "mole". Voles are little creatures that burrow underground and wreak havoc on vegetation--they eat all the roots, etc... They're also called field mice. Moles are little creatures that burrow underground and leave little raised up trails all over the yard (where the dirt pushes up above them), but they are insectivores, which means they leave your plants alone and eat grubs and such. Seeing as how we have tons of grubs and a HUGE overabundance (if there were such a thing) of earthworms, we are leaving our moles alone. We have at least one (surely more??) very very active ones around here. And today (sound the trumpets, bang the drums) Josh caught one with his bare hands....while holding Sedona. He is very proud of himself and his job description is no longer, "kill bugs, lift heavy sh**"; it's "kill bugs, lift heavy sh**, catch moles bare handed". Did you know you can take the tune of "He has the whole world in his hands" and change it to...."he has a little mole in his hands, an itty bitty mole in his hands, a terrified mole in his hands, he caught the mole with his hands". Anyways....yes, he noticed a bunch of earthworms suddenly coming to the surface and running for their lives (seriously, stick a shovel in the ground anywhere in our backyard and you'll find at least 10 earthworms), so he got a stick and dug a little hole. He saw a tail, so he ditched the stick and dug with his hand and grabbed the tail. Voila, mole. He threw it in an ice chest we had out there and came to wake me up, "I caught the vole!!" (we still thought it was a vole until we did a quick internet search, we had them switched). I swear people, 36 year old man acting like a 6 year old on christmas morning. I must admit though, pretty cool. We took lots of pictures, answered the 3 year old's ten million questions and then released it again (yes, released it.....I've noticed we have TONS and TONS of bugs at our new house and virtually no pest problems in the garden---I'll let mother nature continue on with her plan).
Proof of the mole:


The hind end of the mole as it scurried just as fast as it could back underground:


Other wildlife--we also have a ribbon snake hanging around. No one will be catching this. They are non-poisonous and this one's probably big enough to eat some rather pesky critters, so it can slither around as long as it stays out of my way.


The human wildlife has a new mei tai type carrier. I made this one with padded straps and it is light-years more comfy than the last one. It matches our living room drapes (exactly, I made those too), but I really liked the fabric, so oh well.