in the garden at rancho la puerta

One afternoon at Rancho La Puerta, we took a break from yoga, meditation, and nutrition classes to try our hand at cooking.  The Ranch offers afternoon-long classes where you pick (from their all-organic garden) and then cook (in their state-of-the-art kitchen) your dinner for that night.  

Led by the farm's head gardener, we headed out to the fields to collect our ingredients.

First up was fennel, which my mom had no trouble pulling up out of the ground in one easy swoop.

I, on the other hand, had to spend quite time trying to get my bulb to budge.  

While it took me a good 10 times longer than my superwoman mom, eventually I got one as well.

Then it was Gretchen's turn to hunt for some cucumbers.

But her luck wasn't much better than mine.

While the head gardener easily found copious large, ripe, and ready cucs, Gretters got a small, sad little pair of two.

Dickie Boy, on the other hand, was right at home and had no problem digging up whatever was requested.

He felt so at home among the nature that he opted to eat a worm he found crawling in his freshly-picked corn cob.

Gretchen was not all that jealous of this little pre-dinner snack

After we had filled our baskets with what we needed...

...the head gardener treated us to a little snack, fresh from the garden.

extra-juicy, bursting-with-flavor summer melon

With our baskets full and our appetites appeased for a bit longer, we headed back inside to get to work on our dinner.  Cooking class details to come tomorrow!

xoxo

KK