My garden finally woke up and we have started harvesting tomatoes!
The small ones are little Roma tomatoes that I am washing and freezing for sauce and recipes later this winter. The big slicer is destined for BLTs this week! We may get precious little before fall freeze so I am going to watch carefully!
Happy Monday!
I got a wild hair this weekend to make some homemade jam. I had 8 cups of cherries in the freezer from my family tree and some frozen ripe strawberries from the local U-Pick farm outside of town.
The kids and I worked for an entire morning to make three batches of jam, two cherry and one strawberry. The strawberry just came out so vibrant and well incorporated throughout. I find it mesmerizing! And they both taste really wonderful too!
I did use my food processor to breakup and crush the fruit fairly finely. I like jam with the whole fruit in it but I don’t like huge chunks as I spread on my carbohydrate platform. The kiddos have already consumed an ENTIRE jar of strawberry and can’t wait to pick more strawberries next year!
Happy Canning!!
My family’s cherry tree did SUPER well this year. The cousins had their fill of eating off the tree, my dad got two full pies and I ended up with a gallon of fresh ripe fruit. They are just soooo pretty!
I don’t really have the time to make pie or jam right this minute so I decided to wash, pit and measure out the fruit so that I can deposit all this into the freezer for another day.
Each bag contains 4 cups (and a little) of pitted fruit. I may make one pie and one batch of jam? For now these can cool their heels in the freezer until I have the time and brain space to deal with this.
Happy Summer!!
Our garden has been a little slow this year with unseasonably cool spring that immediately shifted to boiling hot summer. Everything is plodding along but we picked our first produce, a very health zucchini!
I should have a second squash in a week or so. Our yellow squash plant is not far behind but it has more blooms that is spreading out the resources of the plant. Our tomatoes are LONG way from producing. I guess we will have to be patient, lol.
Happy Gardening!!
The summer garden season is upon us and I needed to clean out my freezer from last year’s tomatoes. I had four bags that were a mix of roma and summer slicers. I got the skins off and thawed out into pots. By 10 am, I had one pot of bubbling tomato water.
By the end of the day, I had half a pot of luscious tomato sauce. I used my immersion blender to smooth out the sauce. I didn’t screen out the seed so there are still some spots. But I mixed in some garlic, onion, salt and pepper to season my red sauce.
The family enjoyed half of this made into tomato soup for grilled cheese sandwiches and the second half is slated for spaghetti sauce. I CAN’T wait!
Happy Summer!!
My spinning mojo has really caught fire. After starting some singles out of 100% Romney last week, I spent all day Saturday playing outside with the kids and finishing the singles. I let them rest overnight and played the “mother’s day card” so I could drink wine and ply my yarn.
I really enjoy using my tensioned Kate. It helps prevent overspinning and having the singles fold back on themselves. The wine doesn’t hurt either!
Happy Spinning!!
The chaos continues and I decided to take some time out for me this past weekend. My kids were visiting family and I had the TV to myself. It was glorious!
This self care session was brought to you by a class of red blend wine, some lavender scented candles and my Paintbox Socks, Take Two. The tubes are all done except for the afterthought heels. I did pause for a second to think “should I really be cutting my knitting while drinking wine” and then did it anyway!.
Happy Knitting!!
The hubs and I have been completely ignoring the garden assuming it was done for the summer. And we happened to poke around the foliage and found some surprise tomatoes!
We did know our pepper plants were doing well. We are still harvesting occasional poblanos, lots of jalapenos and some super hot habaneros.
I really really love all the different shades of color we are getting. I think I’m going to let these babies go until first frost, fingers crossed!
My garden is on its last legs but we are still getting some decent veggies. Last night’s picking included some tomatoes, poblanos and jalapenos.
My tomatoes are HUGE and none are smaller than my fist, lol.
Right now we are just cooking what we need for recipes and freezing the rest. I think Jellybean wants to try to make ketchup at some point. But that can be a good mid-winter boredom project.
Happy Gardening!!
The apple harvest continues! This time Jellybean and the husband talked me into apple pie. I must really love them because I spent SO MUCH time cutting and pealing apples.
I haven’t made a fruit pie since I was in high school so I was a little rusty. But what it lacked in beauty it made up for in flavor. At least according to my family. I don’t like fruit pies myself.
Next up Jellybean has requested we make apple butter. So the apple adventures look to be continuing, lol.
Happy Baking!!
Michele plays with yarn, food, and music in Portland
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