Miscellaneous Tidbits

In no apparent order, here are a few pictures I took during the past few weeks.  

When the kids were over we made a dessert. Bayleigh got to lick the frosting spatula. YUM

It was Wyatt's turn to spend the night and he dis quite a few things while he was here. He helped Meme make pickles.  His favorite part was peeling the garlic.  If he knew where my garlic stash was he probably would have peeled it all.  He loved this little gizmo.

He chopped cukes with his knife.

 And was very proud of the end result.

He liked shelling October beans and amazingly he stuck with us thru the entire process.  All together we shelled 2 cookie sheets worth. After they were dried they weighed in at 2 pounds.

Wyatt collected his favorite rocks from the creek bed and proceeded to write messages on some of them.  This kept him busy for quite some time.

And he had fun playing with the teapot.

This is the first real haul from the garden this year.  We have had many many more since this first picture was taken and it has resulted in a variety of canned items. Tomatoes are coming in big right now.

Salsa...........

Blackberry jam................

Corn for the freezer and jars of spaghetti sauce for the pantry.

Pat made a new frame for the recipe Dad wrote for us 31 years ago. He used leftover scrap flooring and replicated the peg corners like the kitchen cabinets. I LOVE it.

Bayleigh Came to Visit

Bayleigh came for the night. We picked her up from daycare a week ago on a Friday night and we did a lot of things in the few short hours she was here. She brought us some artwork that she and Wyatt made at school. The colors matched the kitchen perfectly so they were hung above the computer.

We made pickles.

We picked blueberries. She ate a lot of blueberries.

She helped Papa mow the grass.

She played in the sandbox.

She picked the seasons first tomato.

A good time was had by all.

Let the season begin.....

The food preservation season that is.  I started a bit of canning this weekend.

Pickles.  These are the only pickles I make. I got the recipe from an old canner and it does not use an approved canning method so I store them in the fridge.  Louise stores them in the pantry and has been eating them for 90 years but I just can't bring myself to do that.  That food sanitarian in me just errs on the side of caution. Have done 6 quarts thus far and there are tons still growing on the vines.

Bean vegetable soup. I used some of my onions that were not going to store well as well as some of my baby carrots that I pulled to give my peppers some extra sunlight. I added some of my dehydrated peppers and jars of broth.  I incorporated a variety of dried beans; lots of limas.  Dried beans are some of the easiest things to can, they just take a longer amount of time.  Through the winter months is when I usually can all my pintos, black beans, navy beans, etc. Heats up the house a bit and fills the pantry and keeps me from storing empty jars.  You see, it is just as easy to store jars with beans in them as it is to store them empty, just a whole lot tastier. 

Miscellaneous stuff.  In the jars are dehydrated squash. I am covered up in patty pan squash right now.  Not sure what all I will do with it besides use it in stir fry.  So I  experimented with dehydrating some.  Also pictured are basil, the first of the cherry tomatoes, dill, sage and a few asparagus spears that popped their heads up this weekend.  

Corn.  One of the farmers at the farmers market last weekend had his white corn available.  So I bought a dozen, used 2 for dinner and we canned the remainder with the mini potatoes that we dug up this week.  We grew 4 different varieties of potatoes this year and the red skinned ones were the first ones that were ready to dig.  There are always some that are the size of large marbles so I sorted them out and I threw them in with the corn.

So this is the beginning. Tomatoes are in our future as long as we can keep blossom end rot at bay.  I sprinkled them all with epsom salts (magnesium) tonight.  We will see what that does.

Wyatt came for the night

We took him with us after church Saturday night.

He was so excited to be coming by himself.

We had fun riding bikes, picking blueberries, harvesting in the garden and playing with dominoes.