Grilled Peaches, Patty Pans and Pumpkin Chai Soap

Hello, friends!  There have been a lot of gardening related activities going on around the homestead.  Sweet potatoes have been dug, and are drying.  We got several football-sized ones in this year's batch.  The ants had found some of them, so it's good we dug them when we did.  I cooked up some that had gotten cut up during harvesting, and the dogs enjoyed them last night.  It takes a month or so for the sugars to change, and make them nice and sweet, so we'll wait a bit to enjoy them.

The sunflowers on my table were a birthday surprise.  Sunflowers are one of the most cheerful flowers, don't you think?  J harvested sunflowers in our garden, and the heads are drying for winter use for us and the birds.  Some of the heads that had fallen over and were being eaten by the wildlife went to the chickens.  They didn't seem terribly interested, until I began removing the seeds from the heads, then you can bet they were pretty excited.

I tried something new with the okra this year. We're growing both red and green varieties.  The green okra grows so tall that I can no longer reach it.  For the past 2 or 3 weeks, I was bending over the stalks to get to the okra, but they were getting too tall for even this, plus it was really making my neck sore, straining upward for many minutes each day.  I decided I'd try pruning them this weekend.  Quite a few plants had side shoots with buds already, so I'm sure they'll be fine.  We'll see how the others fare.  We are getting some much needed rain today, which ought to encourage them to grow.

A neighbor gifted us with a large amount of patty pan squashes.  Unfortunately, many were wormy, and many were picked too large, having big, tough seeds.  Not being one to waste food, I did manage to cut nice rounds out of the top portions, which have no seeds, for freezing.  The sides were cut away and put in the vegetable broth bag I keep in my freezer, adding to it until there's enough to make a nice batch of broth.  The middle pieces with all the big seeds went to the chickens, and other bits went to the compost.

 
Try as I might, I could not get a clear photo of the Pumpkin Chai soap this morning.  I'm going to chalk it up to very dim light, rather than stinky photographic skills :o).  Once I finish this post, I'll be moving the Pumpkin Chai soap to the drying rack, and starting a batch of Kitchen Thyme soap.

We tried the second grilled peach recipe I had been wanting to try this weekend.  I bought big, beautiful, organic peaches, but unfortunately they didn't have much taste.  I'd like to try the recipe again with some really good peaches, and see what that's like.  We thought they were decent, but not wonderful.  Here's what I did:

Grilled Peaches with Honey, Balsamic and Cambozola

Cut peaches in halves, remove the pit, and place on foil cut side up

Add several bits of Cambozola cheese in the indentation where the pit was

Drizzle with honey, then balsamic vinegar

Grill until soft (5-10 minutes or so)

The original recipe is on Pinterest.  If you'll click on my Pinterest link in the sidebar, and go to my Yummy Eats board, you'll find it there.  The two things I did differently were using Cambozola rather than Gorgonzola, because it needed to be used.  And, the recipe called for grilling the peaches cut side down, then turning over and filling with cheese and drizzling while on the grill.  J felt this was pretty much guaranteed to be an ugly mess, and I had to agree, so our peaches stayed upright the entire time, were put on foil, and I added all the ingredients before grilling.