It has been a while...

...but that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking. I need to get better about bringing the camera into the kitchen; I never seem to have it around until after the souffle has fallen and the cake has been carved, as it were.

There's too much to catch up on properly, so I'm going to pretend we've experienced a leap in time, and I am therefore only responsible for the most recent cookin'. Last week being the hubby's book report on Bunnicula for his children's lit class, and today being Easter, we have recently made carrot cake cupcakes (complete with cream-cheese-frosting carrots piped on top) and hot cross buns (a Mason family tradition). I made a brisket last weekend from the recipe in this month's Martha Stewart Living, though I have no photographic proof because it smelled too good to leave intact long enough to capture on film. OK, on memory card. We have also been averaging about 2-3 loaves of homemade bread per week, but we cheat and use the machine for the dough, so all we can really take credit for is measuring ingredients and baking the loaves.

Homemade pizza and granola are still staples around here, and we've recently been making the latter with homemade maple syrup, made with the sap from the trees in our back yard. My parents taught me to tap and to sugar, and while I enjoy the process, this will likely be the last time I do it until we have a real sugar shack, as the heavy steam from this year's batch shorted out the stove controls on our electric range. Oops.

I've started seeds for a variety of veggies this year, in the happy anticipation of a large crop of free produce in the summer/fall. I'm planning to give this a go: http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html, and will be adding to that separate plantings of peas, strawberries, shallots, onions, watermelon, zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, heirloom and mini yellow tomatoes, sugar pumpkin, and cucumber. It'll be a lot more work than our small garden from last year, but I hope it will also be more rewarding.

That's it for now. Happy Easter, and I look forward to a real (read: non-summary) post soon.