May I just say...

 ...that I have waited almost my entire adult life to have fresh herbs growing somewhere in or near my house for cooking at a moment's notice?  I have fond memories of all the delicious foods I ate in Europe when I backpacked in '01.  Mind you, this was before the age of cell phones and selfies and posting pictures of food.  I took a 35mm camera and rolls of film (remember those?) and it was too precious to waste taking pictures of food, but I wrote about food in detail in my travel journal.  I have dreamt of recreating those meals with fresh herbs.  I dream about food, is it any wonder I am overweight? 

Dave and I are attempting our first full blown garden this year and seem to be having more luck with plants growing in containers due to the amount of clay in our soil.  Last summer we'd moved too late in the growing season in June to attempt a garden, but we did splurge and buy a $15 large pot of 5 herbs at our local farmer's market.  I am proud to say that 4 out of the 5 herbs survived the winter in our window sill and 3 of them are pictured above.  Last night I cooked a meal of fettuccine pasta with a from-scratch white wine Alfredo sauce with ham and rosemary and I baked a focaccia with sage and thyme.  Martha Stewart eat your heart out!  I am also having success with Italian basil I planted and am growing outside.  More on that later but I am really crossing my fingers that I can keep it indoors through the winter.

 Here is the focaccia rising on my baking stone.  It has 20 sage leaves chopped and kneaded into the dough and topped with another 10 as well as drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt.  Num num!  I used my "00" flour from Cossetta's for this recipe.  I think here we think of Stove-Top when sage is mentioned but it can be a very delicate rich flavor.  I still think about the sage farfalle pasta I ate twice in Rome and the sage topped foccacia I ate in Brindisi.

 Here is the bread after it is baked.  We sliced the whole thing in half and then sliced one of the halves into strips to eat as bread sticks for our meal.  I worked tonight and for my lunch sliced a portion of it horizontally to make open faced sandwiches with Swiss cheese and sliced garden cucumbers.  Num NUM.  The sage leaves are crispy after baking and I love just picking them off and eating them.  I am so thankful for my container herb garden!

And in knitting news...here is some more baby knitting I am hoarding for my personal collection.  This is of course a Sprinkle sweater knit from some Claudia Handpaints silk blend that I got on clearance from StevenBe's.  Dave took me there for the first time this winter and we were in the same neck of the woods as Ingebretsen's so it was a great shopping day for me.  I also knitted a star baby cap and multicolored sockies in the same colors to enter in the Washington County Fair as a knitted baby set.  This photo was taken after blocking but before I sewed the buttons on.