Summer Fun

It's been a fun, but busy summer. Here's a pictorial review of what we've been up to over the past few months:

Enjoyed a visit from Nana - May

And from Grampa and GG - June

Went to the beach - June

Went to the Butterfly Conservatory - July

Planted a garden and built a fence around it - May



Feasted on cucumbers from that well-protected garden - July

And undoubtedly the best of all was our August road trip to meet Uncle Joel:

 

Garden Volunteers

My friend, Anne, commented a few posts ago that I haven't mentioned my garden this season. She's very right and the reason is that I didn't put one in this year. I prepped my 4 square-foot boxes and had them ready and waiting and then six straight weeks of incredible morning sickness (lasting from the time I woke up til 4 pm, at least!) kept me from every planting anything. I was blessed by the garden fairy, however, with garden volunteers: tomato plants that just decided to plant and sow themselves from fruit that fell last year! We've had a wonderful crop of unexpected orange and red cherry tomatoes that we've enjoyed so much! I LOVE garden surprises like this!

A garden full of volunteer tomato plants! What could be better?!

Finding beautiful unexpected fruit is such a blessing!

Red and orange and simply delicious!

Featured Square, Week Whatever: CORN!

One of our lovely ears of corn!

Yes, corn! We were so excited when we saw the first ear of corn pop out. We'd just had two ladies on two separate occasions tell us that we wouldn't be blessed with corn because we "didn't plant the seeds right." The said, "corn will only grow if planted three rows by three rows." They both said the exact same thing and do not know each other, so we believed it must be fact. Well, fact or not, we have about 30 ears of corn growing wonderfully in out garden! We haven't tried any yet, but there are a few ears that will be ready when Michele comes home next week and try them we will! SO EXCITED!

I love the look of corn stalks in the garden...and I
love it even more that there are ears of corn upon them!

Canning Addiction

Sweet pickle spears - oh yum!

Absolutely the most divine bbq sauce

Pickled tomatos - so pretty!

Salsa and hiding behind in the quart
jars is roasted roma tomatos

I've become addicted to canning. It's just so fun that I can't stop myself. Last Friday, I made sweet pickle spears, roasted roma tomatos and garlic, and salsa. Saturday morning I made pickled cherry tomatos with garlic and rosemary. And Sunday afternoon, Michele and I made barbecue sauce. I just love the whole process from planting to harvesting to preparing to cooking to canning to enjoying the fruits of my labor! This weekend I have a craft show to visit (not vending just supporting friends), our church picnic, another church event tomorrow, and I'd like to wedge some canning in there tomorrow afternoon. I don't even know what I want to can, but it will probably be variety #4/5 of pickles (I've already made bread and butter, garlic dill, sweet pickle spears, and relish (though I don't know if that counts as a pickle variety, hence the 4/5)). I plan to do either kosher dill or a zesty sweet - I'm really leaning towards a zesty sweet this week and a potential kosher dill next week if I can harvest more pickling cukes. Like I said, it's an addiction!

A Simple, Garden-Grown Meal

A delicious, simple, garden-grown meal!

I don't always take pictures of my meals, though it seems that I do throughout the summer when that meal is made up of garden fare. This meal was very fun. I made mini grilled cheese sandwiches with tomatoes from our garden and asiago cheese. I paired it with a pickle slice I made from a recipe a friend sent me - oh yum! - and some tomato slices that didn't fit in the sandwiches. It was a simple, fun, and fresh meal for a lovely Sunday afternoon.

The pickles we so fun to make and they came out so crisp and delicious. The recipe is from a very popular local restaurant to which Michele and I have never been, but we always mean to go. It's a barbecue place, but I think they have something vegetarian. Regardless, their pickles recipe creates a divine pickle!

Dinosaur BBQ Garlic Dill Pickles

Getting Up to Date: Squash Patties, Blueberries, and Broccoli

I have been sick in bed with the flu for the last week and a half (and then on Thursday I ventured outside for the first time in a week to get a little fresh air and after five minutes got stung by a bee! After which event I discovered that I have a "vigorous localized reaction" to bee stings, which means it caused a very itchy, painful rash radiating away from the sting halfway down my arm and side! Not a good time!)

So, I thought I would quickly update you on what's been going on with me, aside from my lovely summer flu and bee sting.

1. While Michele was home last, we made yummy, yummy squash patties. I found the recipe on a very wonderful blog, Turkey Cookies, which is written by a Rochester woman, though we've never met. We used yellow squash for our patties and they turned out so yummy. We made two varieties - one with pepper jack cheese and one with smoked gouda - oh they we so good and got even better as leftovers! 

Yellow Summer Squash Patties with Michele

2. My friend Deb and I went blueberry picking a couple weekends ago. So fun! We picked loads of berries - and tasted loads of them as well.

My picking bucket of blueberries, very nearly full

And then I made Very Very Blueberry Jam - it is so incredibly intensely blueberry. It tastes like heaven!

Jelly jars of jam all in a row

3. Last week's Featured Square would have to hands down be broccoli. I have never seen broccoli growing, so it amazes me to see it in our garden. Beautiful heads of broccoli. Michele should be home this weekend and then we will feast - a great broccoli feast!

A beautiful head of broccoli

I am the Pickle Master

All the yummy ingredients for
pickles and relish

Oh boy did I have fun making pickles this weekend! Wow! And I canned for the first time in my adult life - we canned when I was a child, but I don't remember helping. I was VERY fun. I made bread and butter pickles and zucchini relish - except that I had such a wealth of yellow squash in the garden that I used that instead of zucchini, so I guess I should say I made yellow squash relish. I cannot wait for more things to ripen so that I can 1. eat them and then 2. can them!

Pickling cukes and onions taking
a COLD salt bath

The finished product: bread and butter pickles on the left
and yellow squash relish on the right. YUM!!

A Squash You Very Much Dinner

I wanted to have Deb over for dinner to thank her for caring for my garden during my Georgian vacation. I thought it would be lovely to feed her the very items she'd been caring for (which is a concept unique to garden-sitting and would be not at all appropriate for baby-, house-, dog-, or cat-sitting.) Unfortunately (or fortunately since everything was DELICIOUS) the only thing ripe, ready, and meal worthy was summer squash - zucchini and yellow squash. Well, that and pickling cucumbers, lettuce, and basil, but that doesn't really make a meal, does it? I had my doubts about making a meal out of squash, but it was really fun!

This was as delicious as it is pretty!

We enjoyed a Marinated Squash Salad - which I did serve on a bed of lettuce from the garden. This salad was SO good and refreshing, not to mention colorful!

Blossoms patiently waiting
in my messy fridge

Our entree was as fancy as can be with a Squash Blossom Frittata. Squash blossoms are best picked at dawn, so I arose from my bed this morning and dashed outside to pick these lovelies, then stored them in a glass of cold water in the fridge to keep until dinnertime. The frittata itself came together in a jiffy and was simply delicious!

Here it is while it's still cooking and before it is

topped with the cheese. I used both female

and male blossoms (the females are attached

to the tops of the two baby squash in the center.)

And here it is topped with asiago
cheese after a few minutes
under the broiler. YUM!!

This was so good! Oh, so good!

Now, I was at a bit of a loss about dessert. Since I'd hit on a theme, I didn't want to stray from it, so I googled "squash desserts" and got about a million hits! Whodathunkit?? I decided to try Zucchini Cake. I thought the green of the zucchini would look pretty against the white(ish) cake. For the same reason I used craisins instead of the golden raisins the recipe called for (color, color, color). The cake is like a light, fluffy cake version of its denser cousin, zucchini bread. The cream cheese icing lets the enjoyer know that it is closely tied to sister dessert, carrot cake. Zucchini cake is the less sweet, less dense sibling.

Deb, I and the garden thank you VERY much!

Featured Square, Week Six: Pickling Cucumbers

I get so much joy everytime I walk past this week's featured square and see fat pickles hanging off the vine. It's a very cool sight! I cannot wait to try my hand at making pickles - oh how I love pickles! Bread and butter pickles are my favorite.

I have two pickle-related goals: 1. to eat a carrot dog topped with my homemade bread and butter pickles and 2. to send my mother a jar of homemade pickles - I got my love of pickles and olives from that dear lady (oh how we had fun eating copious amounts of pickles, olives, and cheesecake when we shared an apartment!) So, to get started toward my goal, I need to find one of those fancy crinkle-cut slicers so that mine come out all ripply and cool like those that are commercially made and I need to settle on a recipe. Oh what fun!

Missing You

I'm actually in Georgia for the weekend having a wonderful time with my dad, stepmom, and Michele. . .but of course I am missing my garden. I found this picture of the daisies in my front yard and can't think of anything more cheerful!

My great and wonderful friend, Deb, is watching over the garden for me (and my wonderful neighbor, Rita, is likely watching over Deb!) so I know it is in good hands, I just am so afraid that I will miss something new and wonderful while I'm away. It's so worth it, though, to get to spend time with my family!

Secret Garden

My yellow squash truly amaze me. At first glance it just looks like a wild bunch of huge leaves:

But there's a secret garden of beautiful golden goodies underneath! It's just amazing!

Featured Square, Week Five: Peas

A special request from Michele was that we have peas in the garden this year, so I planted a box of peas and found my first pod today! They really seem to sneak up on you and are even pretty hard to see in this photo:

Can you find the pea pods?

I really couldn't bring myself to pick just one box this week, so here are a few of my favorite things:

Potato Flowers - I had no idea they would be so elegant and beautiful

Pickling Cucumbers - aren't they adorable!

Literally a "busy bee"

Boy am I proud of our garden! It amazes me every day!

Garden Pooper

Someone is pooping in my garden! I want to blame the dog down the street. I often see him walking around loose. We also have some outdoor cats in the neighborhood. I am no scatologist, so I have no idea how to determine what species the culprit is, but I'm pretty steamed about it! The problem is that with poop come flies! I took my morning garden walk and inspection and swear there were about 200 flies swarming around a nice pile of poop. I scooped it up and called for the flies to follow me to the trash, but they didn't. They instead resettled on the nearby fence rail like a flock of crows, just watching me and waiting for me to leave so that they could lure the pooper back to my yard for some more goodies! They are definitely in cahoots! I just know it! They will not get the best of me though! I am the master of my domain and I will deal block the problem pooper with a nice bit of chicken wire around the bed. Of course, a cat could climb or jump over the four foot high wire, but if she is willing to make that much of an effort, she really deserves the right to poop in my garden!

Please note my love for you, the reader, in that I resisted including any images of the offenses in this post. Who loves ya, baby?

Featured Square(s) Weeks Three and Four: Zucchini, Yellow Squash, and Cucumbers

The past two weeks I have been amazed by the zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumber in the garden - both in the square foot garden and in my traditional bed (I had too many things to plant, so I did a traditional bed as well.) I think it is the gorgeous squash blossoms. Last year, we got our first blossom in July or August and we only got two zucchini - we had no cucumbers at all! This year, everything is in bloom and it's so lovely!

Week Two Featured Square: Leaf Lettuce

This is my favorite square this week because, besides the rotten strawberry that Michele "ate", this is the first food I've enjoyed from the garden. I worked at home yesterday and at lunchtime skipped out to the backyard, picked a few leaves of lettuce and some basil, added some blueberries leftover from the french toast, and had a YUMMY salad! Oh how I love eating from the garden!

Michele's Birthday Weekend - Part Three: Garden Decor

Now, we did spend most of Michele's weekend relaxing, but we also opened a package we'd received from a delightful stained glass artist in Florida: Glass of Many Colors. I had commissioned this husband and wife team to make a set of four stained glass veggies for our square foot garden. Michele and I spent a fun-filled hour deciding where to put each of the four and then just admiring our handiwork. Aren't they gorgeous! We've decided we'd like six more: a beet, cherry tomatoes, a red pepper, a head of broccoli, an onion, and a yellow squash to join the current corn, green beans, carrot, and beefsteak tomato. When the sun hits these it's like you're in heaven! And, in addition to the beauty they add to the garden, the carrot is a welcome addition to my carrot-themed art collection: glass!

Michele's Birthday Weekend - Part Two: Gardening Edition

All week I've been excited to give Michele one particular, extra special birthday present: the first fruit from our garden! I've been watching and praying over this strawberry, hoping that no one (read: squirrel, bird, ground hog, rabbit, mouse, etc) ate it, and that it keep growing and and be ready for picking when Michele got home. I thought it would be the perfect present for her. And it was! She was so excited to see the very first edible thing (besides basil) in our garden. We weren't sure, though, if it was really ready to pick, so we just visited it a few times yesterday and marveled over it. Then, yesterday evening, we decided it looked ready. I picked it and presented it to Michele - oh, the perfect strawberry! She took a bite and . . . immediately spit it out! It's really too bad that it was thoroughly rotten inside! Well, as they say, it is the thought that counts, right?