Fresh from the garden

Hello y’all!  Been a while again, I know.  Seems like we have not slowed down since before the fourth of July!  When things have slowed down a little bit, I have spent my computer time completely veging.  We are getting ready to be gone again for a few days, so I thought I better take advantage of a nap to try to get a post put together.

We put a garden in this year.  We started out with grand plans.  Then the birds ate many of our seeds.  No green beans, no Indian corn.  No sugar snap peas.  Other stuff didn’t cooperate.  No carrots.  No lettuce.  One lonely yet productive ornamental gourd.  We have had great success with the rest of the garden.  Tomatoes, Zucchini, Yellow Squash, Green Bell Peppers, Jalapeño Peppers, pumpkins (mostly for the blossoms.) 

Our tomatoes have flourished.  We have six plants, and none of us actually eat tomatoes.  Yeah…  So what in the world did we want them for?  Ross loves salsa!  Riley even eats tiny amounts of it with him.  So we decided to give canning a shot this year.  We have so far canned about 18 jars of salsa.  WooHoo!  Ross can have about 1 jar a month and have a little more to share.  We also have grand plans to make some homemade pizza sauce to can.  We will see what we come up with there.  Ross has had a great deal of helping hands through the whole process.  And those hands haven’t really been mine.  I hold down the fort and try to prevent any other catastrophes.

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(Make sure to click the view full album to see all the pictures a little bigger.)

We also put up a bunch of sweet corn again this year.  We ended up with about 9 dozen ear, 24 bags, that we put in the freezer.  Just down the road, 30 minutes away, there is a farm that commercially grows sweet corn.  One of their biggest customers is Del Monte.  As they harvest the corn, they have to check for insects.  If any bugs are found, so much before and after that ear are culled and sold as seconds.  That is what we buy.  We do not even try to grow our own corn.  It just isn’t worth it when we can get this corn so easily!  Everyone in the family pitches in and helps with the whole process.  The boys were awesome shuckers this year.  Braden has been the most interested and involved, being Ross’ shadow through all the steps of everything.  Riley, Tanner, and I helped out with shucking the corn by staying out of the way.  We swam while the work was being done.  :)  We did get in on the tail end up the shucking though.

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I have also made loaves and loaves of zucchini bread.  I bake 4 at a time and usually do 2 batches each time I have the oven going.  It is oh, so scrumptious!  We have cooked dozens of pumpkin blossoms.  Have you ever had any?  If not, try ‘em sometime.  The process is simple.  Dip each flower in egg & milk, dredge in cracker fine crumbs.  Fry in butter.  MMMmmmm…  Delicious.  No pics of either of theses.  Hmm… Need to get Ross to man the camera for me sometime.  I will try to get you some pics to tantalize your taste buds.

Here is a sneak peak at the newest additions to our family…

More details to come.

Whew!  Time to get some more zucchini processed.  I am making more bread to take with us on our trip up home.  If we see you, you might just be able to sample a bite or two. 

Until next time,