This is the 6th person at my kitchen table right now! More like the 5th and 6th person since it’s taking up more space. Family meals have moved to the dining room full time.
Does my kitchen look cluttered, messy, disorganized? Perhaps to the naked eye, not to me though. I see baby seedlings ready to grow into full size plants soon and then bear fruits and vegetables all summer long. I can’t wait!
Once again it is the beginning of the month and time for another IMK post. Where does all the time go?? Days in the summer drag on since the boys are with me ALL THE TIME, yet in general the summer is whizzing by quickly. Thanks to Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial for hosting this wonderful event.
It has been another busy month in our house. We continue to dine twice a week at swim meets and I am so out of ideas. It is an adventure getting the kids packed up to swim, let alone fixing and packing dinner for everyone! Luckily we only have two evening meets left, I’m counting down until our dinner schedule is back to normal. Better yet, when my sourdough schedule isn’t interrupted. Between the late afternoon practice twice a week and evening meets twice a week I am having to squeeze in my bread whenever I can.
So here is what else is happening in our kitchen this month. Tomatoes, lots of cherry tomatatoes. The cherry tomatoes are the first to come in and they are growing like crazy. I pick them every couple days. Sean and Ewan will eat a couple but otherwise it’s just me. As a result I make roasted sauce with them, I can only eat so many tomatoes (don’t want to repeat my tongue problems from last year eating too many tomatoes)! The orange cherry tomatoes were made into four jars of smoked paprika tomato jam. It’s quite tasty with a kick, thanks to red pepper flakes and cayene pepper. The full size varieties are also starting to ripen. The first BLT of the season was fantastic.
I recently discovered Eventbrite and decided to join their Summer Food Bucket List project. It was a bit serendipitious as I just discovered a food swapping group here in my area that does their event planning using Eventbrite. Try checking out Eventbrite event management tools or sell tickets on their site. It’s free and easy. I’ll be looking into that food swapping event this summer.
I have used Eventbrite before, both to host parties (Thanksgiving, birthdays, baby showers etc) and to RSVP for other parties I’ve been invited to and for school events. But what really caught my interest was when I found (and I really don’t remember how I came upon this) a food group here. Midlands Food Swappers is a group that hosts food swaps, kinds obvioius isn’t it. They have a monthly meeting where people can bring in their homemade and/or homegrown food items and swap. What a thought, why hadn’t I heard of this group before. I could take some of my tomatoes, we certainly have enough for an army, and trade them for fresh eggs. Or how about some of homemade jams for meat? The possibilities are endless. So this goes onto my summer food bucket list, try to attend one of these swaps.
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Here is how I have spent my holiday thus far…blackberry picking with the boys while Josh had to work. Pickings were slim so I wasn’t able to do as much as I wanted. The boys were very disappointed there wasn’t enough to make cobbler!
We came home and I worked in the garden. I had to hunt things down for my harvest. We had another heavy rain yesterday so many plants were hanging over. The cucumber plants are hanging all over the pepper plants. The melons are all over.
Here is what I managed to pick this morning…
Today’s harvest includes tomatoes (golden nuggets, grape, yellow pear, zebra cherry, full size zebra), a MASSIVE zucchini, a cantaloupe, blackberries, cucumbers, tomatillos and a pepper.
What to do with it all? I canned two and a half jars of cantaloupe jam with vanilla (a first time and I must say it is SUPERB) and two jars of spiced blackberry jam.
I also made a pot of cherry tomato sauce. We had some earlier in the week with pasta and it was wonderful. It is cooling and waiting to be bagged and frozen.
Then after all that I was able to put the yellow pear tomatoes and cucumbers in bowls. Have you seen these before…they are Mexican Sour Gherkins. They are the best cucumbers ever!! They look like dollhouse sized watermelons but are really a bite sized cucumber. We MUST plant these every year now! I will pickle them at a later date, I’m exhausted!
If you want to know what boys do while their mom is harvesting in the garden, here is a clue….
Should you care to see more pics of these muddy boys swing on over to Dalrymple Clan Adventures.
I can almost taste the tomatoes! We tied the plants up a couple weekends ago and it is smelling like tomato plants. They have such a distinct smell, I just love it! There are plenty of blossoms and even some baby tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes seem to be the first to grow. Continue reading
Feeding My 3 Sons 