The Pizza returns!

One year later, and with the encouragement of my local colleague Reverend Beth Quick, "The Pizza" is making a come-back!

So much to say, where do we begin?

I burned the first potato of the season. Yes, yes I did.

You see, inspired by a writer/permaculturist named Heather Flores who has the crazy idea of "Food Not Lawns," we planted a front yard garden this year. Sunflowers, carrots, a blueberry bush, basil, spearmint, rosemary, tomatoes, two kinds of lettuce, zucchini and potatoes are blossoming magnificently in our front yard in a 10 by 12 foot plot surrounded by metal fencing. It's gone so well, I almost fear to write about it.

Most of these things I've grown before, to some success. We threw the blueberry in for fun to see what happened, and then I planted the potatoes, sure somehow that since I have no Irish blood in me (as far as I know), I'd have no luck growing potatoes. And yet, there they are, going gangbusters!

The instructions that came with the potatoes said that as soon as they begin to flower, you can gently lift the plants and pick the small, new potatoes that are growing. I was so excited to see a flower and read this guidance that I ran right out and picked one. I ran back in, washed it, and put it in the microwave, hoping to pop the little guy right in my mouth, not two minutes removed from the ground.

Bad news. Two minutes in the microwave for a potato one-half-inch in diameter is apparently at least 90 seconds too long. I was impatiently puttering around the kitchen as the potato was being nuked, when Lys asked suddenly, "do you smell something burning?"

Yes, yes I did. One positively petrified potato.

If at first you don't succeed...