August 22, 2014

Been a while so just thought I'd post a few things. We had three of Nelson's golfing buddies here for several days. They were wonderful guests and we had a good time. They played golf everyday.  I just heated up some frozen appetizers the first night they were here, made dinner the 2nd night. Then they took us out to dinner and the last night two of the guys made a seafood past dinner so there was little work except clean up for me to do. 

I have been feeling tied to the kitchen lately. Once the garden comes in, I can hardly keep up with all that needs to be taken care of and it's also time to dry some herbs to take home. So far have dried oregano, parsley, and tarragon.  Waiting for the most recent dill to get a little bigger. And older dill I will harvest seeds from soon.  I've also dried many vegetables to use in soup - cabbage, yellow squash, zucchini, some small tomatoes (red and yellow) and dragon beans. We'll see how that works.

As you can see from picture on right, I've canned a lot of stuff.

The dry conditions of several weeks ago have been replaced by rain almost everyday though we've only had one stretch of all-day rains. Mostly it rains late afternoon or evening, so it's not so bad. Picked the last of my cabbage yesterday, still have a one head in the refrigerator. Made coleslaw today with the one that was there before. And I have some mixed pickles fermenting that includes cabbage.  Cucumbers are still coming in slowly, but still lots of flowers too.

L & B brought me a lot of tomatoes all at one time so have been able to can quite a few. Ours were coming in, but we never seemed to have enough to can a whole load, so mostly we've just been eating or making sauce with. They have so many, L said she never wants to can another, but now she is making tomato juice.  They also gave me beets, so I canned some of those as well.  I've supplied them with squash and bush beans - though they aren't taking enough of those.

We are starting to have more tomatoes turn ripe though so have picked quite a few in last few days.  We've had a lot of little pear shaped yellow tomatoes. There was a mix up with plants at the school where HJ and Butch start the seeds and things were mis-labeled. Would never had planted all these yellow tomatoes if they have been labeled correctly. But as a result have tried two new Tomato jam recipes - yellow tomato-ginger jam  (okay- but won't make again) and tomato-basil jam (used some red and some yellow) which I like much better. Second time I made that, I added some jalapenos to give it a little more kick. It's good with cream cheese on crackers.  And made a little tomato juice today and used all the yellow tomatoes I had, plus red ones- peculiar color,  but tastes okay. Not sure I will do that again though.

Started to rip out some plants that are finished and cleaned up the herb garden which was very weedy.

Grandma Chloe's childhood home, Brookdale, was sold a few weeks ago and a very nice family (The Brackens) has moved in from California. Philip (he's Irish - love his accent) and Linda and two daughters both recently out of college. They are raising chickens but are trying to decide what else to do on the "farm."    Just got the baby chicks and the girls are enjoying how cute they are.  The previous owners had started a garden, so they are reaping the benefits of that.  All are lovely folks.  I've been invited to stop by and plan to do that soon.