Eating From the Garden & Putting Food By

Hello, friends.  Last week, a small bouquet was cut, to enjoy in the house.  I dehydrated tomato tops, which will be turned into powder, once more are collected.  I harvested basil, and made pesto.  Sweet potato and a few buckwheat leaves were gathered, and added to smoothies.  I harvested spilanthes, lemon verbena, thyme and stevia, and dried them.  From the garden, we harvested tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, yellow, cucuzza and tromboncino squash, butternut and other winter squash, green beans, cantaloupe, honeydew, apples, figs, and pawpaws.  Apple Cinnamon Zucchini muffins were made with tromboncino.  I made them GF and vegan, and they turned out well.  A bread end was dried for bread crumbs.

Twice the past week, I saw mention of making cabbage steaks.  Having our cabbage that needed to be used, I tried it for dinner one night.  We thought it was pretty good, though I'm sure real butter would make it better.  Another new dish was tried, using our eggplant, tomatoes, broth, basil and garlic.  I'll be making it again.  While the cabbage was baking, sweet potatoes were added to the oven.  By deferring shipping on some amazon items, I've got $4.50 in digital credit, which will be used for either books or movies.  After a soap delivery, I went by Dollar Tree, and picked up parchment paper, scissors, wax paper, gift wrap, tissues, and a few more packets of seeds for my Garden sets.   I was happy I'd purchased scissors, as my kitchen & garden pair broke at the handle over the weekend. 

Are you aware of the difference in ingredients the major food corporations put in US foods vs the UK's?  Just another reason to grow as much of your food as possible, and cook from scratch.  I canned another round of tomato paste, ending up with another pint.  Though we've been having cantaloupe pretty much every day, and have shared some, we still weren't keeping up.  I researched, and tried dehydrating some, and made salted cantaloupe jam, which is actually pretty good.  We're not so sure about the dehydrated melon, or how we'd use it.  Our garlic, rosemary and homemade broth were used in soup.  As I can't have mayonnaise, (no eggs or vinegar), I needed to figure out how I could have a tomato sandwich.  Mashed avocado on one slice of GF bread works well, and some basil and salt added makes it yummy.

August has always felt like damage control around here, taking care of the produce that most needs attention on any given day.  Eggplant and squash needed using, so I tried a new recipe for cucuzza squash, which also used our tomatoes, onions, garlic and herbs, and made eggplant in plum sauce, using our garlic, herbs, and plum sauce made previously from our plums.  All laundry was dried on the line.  Just about every day, we're picking cow peas, and shelling them.  I cut our first honeydew, and it was sadly a long way from being ripe.  J found one cracked another day, which was ripe.  It's hard to find that happy medium.  I cut a watermelon that was found chewed off the vine, a lovely yellow one, which was thankfully nice and ripe.  

Dear friends invited us to their lake house, for some very needed down time on Sunday.  Once we got all the things done on the homestead, we headed in that direction to spend time with old friends, eat well, and soak up the sunshine.  Cucumber salad and cantaloupes were brought to share.  Now, we can get back to it, with a refreshed spirit.  We're having a rainy morning, which I'm delighting in, rare as they are these days.  Wishing you a most lovely week, friends.