Everything about a spring garden is sweet and full of promise. When I'm tending to the summer garden (our tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant, corn and more) I feel so grateful to be surrounded by the fleeting beauty of sweet peas, strawberries, chive blossoms and roses (not pictured).

A few days ago I was shopping at our local nursery and was thrilled to find a Stevia plant.  Have you heard of it? The leaves are sweet and can be used as a natural sweetener and sugar substitute. The next time I boil Ginger Tea I will  toss in a few leaves instead of brown sugar. Might also be refreshing combined with mint, lemon and ice water on a hot summer day.

Some of the flowers currently blooming in our garden. Most significantly, the Magnolia is blooming for the first time in 2 years.

Pho is one of my favorite foods to eat on a cold day. I always feel warmed up after eating a bowl especially when it's homemade. Without worrying about MSG in the broth I always drink the whole bowl of soup after finishing the noodles. This is a recipe for Laotian style Pho with ox tail that I've used before. I made it again the other day and thought I'd share it. For garnish I used chopped Cilantro from our garden sprinkled on top of the noodles and on the side some Hoisin and Vietnamese Sriracha sauce.

I thought would be new and different if I took bits and pieces of my garden and took a photo of it rather than photos of my garden. Here we have some fava bean leafs, rosemary, kaffir lime and a daffodil.

Soraj and I attended another cooking class over the weekend with the amazing Pim. I've taken a few of her classes before but this was Soraj's first time. We learned to make Ramen from scratch including noodles and broth. We both agree, the final product was the best bowl of Ramen we've ever had. It's not easy...but absolutely worth it.