Monday Garden Club: End Of The Season Giveaway

Once again, long time no blog for me. I have been taking photos though, so this is a summary of the last few weeks of garden growth and harvest.

It rained like crazy most of yesterday and all this morning.  So hard that I felt a little bit bad sending the girls out to the bus this morning.  Not bad enough to keep them home, however. That would be NUTS!  The rain has now stopped and the sun is actually trying to make an appearance. 

Now for the garden update.  The garden is about done for the year.  There are still a bunch of green tomatoes on the vine, but almost everything else has about reached its life span.  I still need to pick the winter squash once the vines die off completely and there are a few melons out there yet.  The beans are finally done, netting us 3 gallon sized bags full in our freezer for meals later this winter.  I also made around a dozen containers of roasted veggie pasta sauce which is also in the freezer.

  I pulled the rest of the onions last week and have them stored in a paper bag, to hopefully last the winter.  I planted a 60 foot row of onion sets this year and they turned out better than ever before.  I will definitely be doing onions this way again next year. Forget those tiny little plants you can buy from the garden center (or start in the basement) that take forever to separate and plant and yield only small onions.

Binny was thrilled when I finally gave her the go ahead to pull one of these big watermelons from the garden.  She was less thrilled when she learned it was NOT a seedless watermelon.  It was delicious though and there are 2 more out there ripening.  The same day we picked this melon, the girls and I went out and I told them they were not allowed to go back in the house (to no doubt watch tv) until they picked an ice cream bucket full of tomatoes.  Believe it or not, they didn't fight me too much, but did get a little bored after a while.  It takes quite a few cherry, pear and grape tomatoes to fill a bucket.

Now on with the fruit trees!  Our neighbors had so many apples hanging on their trees that they ended up picking 3 extra paper grocery bags full and gave them to us.  I made juice out of two of the bags and I still have one sitting on the porch that I hope to turn into either juice or apple sauce later this week.

 

 

My father-in-law's peach trees ripened as well and he again had way too many to use up on his own, so we went over and picked twice.

The first time was when Grandma Dee was here and she acted as peach tester.

She didn't give up on that pit until every last bit was gone and the juice was running off of her elbows.

We picked this box full the first time around.

The second round of picking was just last weekend and I came home with 3 boxes.  I still have a few left but most have either been eaten raw, made into a delicious peach pie (in lieu of birthday cake for Mae's B-day last week), canned or given away to friends and family.

And we still have about 40 peaches on our own tree that are not quite ripe yet.  Peaches, peaches, peaches!

I only have about 6 empty jars left which probably won't get me very far if I plan to do any applesauce or straight up tomato sauce with the remaining tomatoes.  The final canning count is 21 quarts of peaches, 4 pints of peaches, 6 quarts of apple juice and 6 pints of  peach jam.

I feel sad that the gardening season is coming to an end but also relieved that all of the work washing, chopping, cooking, freezing, canning, and all of the clean-up will soon be over.  Mostly the clean-up.  Juicing apples makes one giant, sticky mess.

With that, I want to continue my tradition of giving away a jar of my home canned peaches as an end of the season Monday Garden Club wrap-up.  So if you live in the US (sorry, Joey) and are interested in tasting some home grown Wisconsin peaches, leave a comment on this post and I will announce the random winner here next Monday. If you participated in my Monday Garden Club this season by posting a Monday Garden entry on your blog, leave a second comment. The giveaway will be open through Sunday night. And once again, I have no license to distribute my canned goods, but I can assure I made them following safe canning practices.  By entering this giveaway you are accepting all risk.  I feed them to my children, so I wouldn't worry too much if I were you.

Good Luck and Happy Gardening!

Wardrobe Wednesday

 So part of why I've been so absent from blogging is because we've had a house guest fot the last week and a half.  I took Grandma Dee to the airport yesterday (where TSA not only sent both of us through the body scanners {I needed to go through security to walk Grandma to her gate} but they also did a full body pat down on my 82 year old grandmother even after she offered to show them her pacemaker card to prove the device in her chest is to keep her alive and not a bomb she plans to detonate on an airplane.  Hey TSA, stop screwing with old ladies!), but before she left, we took a photo together.

Which is a perfect example of why I belong BEHIND the camera and not in front of it.  I'm not even sure how I made some of these faces.

"That's enough, I'm done!"

First Day Of School. Nevermind That I'm A Week Late.

The girls really were excited to go back to school, I'm not just making it up to cover up my own excitement for another school year. They were both happy with this year's teachers and couldn't wait to try out their new backpacks and new flashy headbands.  

Oh, and it was crazy foggy on the first day of school which made watching for the school bus a little difficult.

Mae: 3rd grade

Binny: 2nd grade

Roasted Veggie Pasta Sauce

So what do you do when it seems like you have unending amount of this stuff?

You cut it all up, drizzle it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and give it a good sprinkling of salt and pepper.

2 pans worth, because when you're washing and chopping lots of veggies anyway, you might as well make as much as you can in one shot.

    Put the pans on a hot grill, cover and and cook until it looks like this:

It usually takes about 45 minutes for me.  The goal is for the veggies to be soft and juicy.

Puree with a stick blender, or regular blender or food processor, then freeze into single meal portions.

I would love to claim this recipe as my own creation, but I can't.  I found it HERE last year and fell in love. I tweaked it slightly to fit my cooking style, but it's pretty much the same delicious recipe.

Roast Veggie Pasta Sauce

Tomatoes, summer squash (any kind, I used patty pan, zucchini and summer squash) and onions, cut into chunks.

1/2 head of garlic, peeled and large cloves cut in half

Fresh basil, torn

A good drizzling each of Olive oil and Balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

Roast in the oven at 400 deg. or on the grill for 40 min. to an hour.

Puree, freeze and eat on pasta all winter.