Summer's Bounty

Hello, friends.  I hope this finds you well.  Last week, several bananas were getting very ripe, so they were frozen for smoothies.  Tropical Storm Debby brought us 4" of rain, which ushered in oodles of mushrooms.  Mushroom gravy and rice was made, using foraged chanterelles.  Elderberries and chanterelle mushrooms foraged the rest of the week were dehydrated.  A reishi mushroom was also foraged, which will be dried.  I canned tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes, and got five quarts.  One jar didn't seal, so the contents went into the freezer for the next round of canning.  Tomato skins were dried for bird suet or tomato powder.

reishi with a McNibs photobomb

Last week's harvest included apples, pawpaws, cucumbers, eggplant, figs, tomatoes, beets, parsley, as well as the elderberries and chanterelles.  The replanted green beans and butternut squash are coming up nicely, and the fall pea harvest is as well.  Many of the green beans are already crawling up the trellis.  Our garden produce was used in sauteed cabbage and onions, spicy cucumber chips, apple beet salad and pesto.  Hummingbird food and golden paste for the pups were made.  I wanted to give an update on one of the garden experiments, where I cut the broccoli back to the bottom 4 leaves when harvesting, to supposedly regrow larger shoots.  Most of the plants ended up dying, and the two or three that remain don't look like they'll be producing anything.  I'm thinking there wasn't enough energy left in the plant to produce more, so I'll go back to cutting it higher up, and at least getting small shoots.  Same with the cabbage.  There aren't any small heads forming, just random leaves.  I believe there are varieties of both plants that may be more likely to do better with regrowth, but for what I'm growing, it didn't work.

I spotted this butterfly on the dwarf Joe Pye weed, down at the pond.  It appeared something had munched on a large portion of it's middle, but it was still carrying on.  Perhaps there's a good lesson there.  At the grocery store, our dog food, and the blueberries used in my smoothies were on sale, so I stocked up on those.  I've been shopping more at Aldi, when I can, as their organic celery is only $2.19, compared to $3.59 for the same thing at Food Lion..  Considering I use 14-15 a week for juicing, that adds up.  They also have better prices on organic bananas and cilantro, which I use daily in the smoothie.  There was a frugal fail last week.  I was especially concerned about remembering to bring a cooler, when heading to a co-op and other errands 45 mins. away.  Well, I remembered it, and my phone, water and snacks, but when I got there, realized I had left my wallet at home.  The trip wasn't an entire waste, as I was able to pick up items J had ordered online at Tractor Supply, on the way home, but that was awfully silly of me.  

We did savor the lone peach I spoke about last week.  Too bad there weren't lots more.  There were many tiny apples, probably 25 or so, and I wanted to do something fairly easy with them.  I researched suggestions, and decided on apple butter.  I cored them, and cut out any bad spots, but left them unpeeled.  After steaming, I ran them through a food mill, then they went into a slow cooker with sugar and spices, which is cooking as I'm typing.  I think I'll can some up for presents.  Though I'm not taking part in the Everything Counts challenge, I'm happy with the cooking and preserving that's happened this past week.  Are you finding good ways to use summer's bounty?