New mixed fruit tree blossoms

 

Also end of February.  Can't wait to see what the new fruit tree is like!

Apricot blossoms

 
From end of February  -- in the before times. 

Future plums

 
March 6, 2019

Tomatoes

 

Fresh from the garden, a whole mess of beautiful tomatoes.  I cut them up and sauteed with fresh basil, oregano, garlic, and a splash of balsamic.  It's the same salad I do cold but now I'm sauteing.  Nothing like fresh tomatoes! I made this earlier in the week and am making it again ('cause our tomatoes are prolific!) Good on bread or pasta. You can also take juice out as it's cooking for a very lazy version of tomato soup.  I didn't measure anything, but I am guessing a tablespoon or so of olive oil and 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar?  Maybe?

Lots of fresh basil -- 10-ish leaves? I have a very happy basil plant that needs to be cut back regularly.  If you don't cut it back, it goes to seed.

Garlic -- I used dried, maybe 1 teaspoon?

Oregano -- also dried and I used probably 1 tablespoon?  (I'm a big fan of oregano!)

I cooked it for an hour or two?  It cooked down a lot! 

 

 

I also made roasted zucchini and popped about 4 tomatoes in the oven.  I was curious about that versus pan cooking.

(I'm thinking about trying to make some sort of roasted zucchini and tomato sauce in the food processor for pasta... I'll let you know what happens.)

I also made watermelon (we grew it), basil, (also home grown) and lime (also grown at home with love) granita.  I love it.  The husband, and the younger two daughters don't like it. I think daughter #1 will.  I will let you know.

Super fun cooking day!

Lame blog post

Wow... it's been a while.  I do have new recipes, but no time to blog.

We made an awesome quiche this summer and LOVELY lemon zucchini bread.  A basil plant is giving us lots of pesto. We're getting beautiful tomatoes (and zucchini, but no pictures yet). 

 

I know we made other stuff, but I can't think now.  I just mostly came over to drop this link to a store with vegan leather.  We haven't bought from it yet so I can't tell you if we like it or not.  More soon.

Hopefully future apricots!

This little bee is going above and beyond — and upside down — to help make our apricots.

Someday, I'll get a post done.  

Watermelon!

 

little one

 

~29 hours later! 

 

A bigger one.

 

 A very little one.

So excited!

The garden in July

 

We have beans, artichokes, zucchinis, corn, tomatoes and sunflowers.  They are all very happy and tall. 

Zucchini

 

It's that time of year again!  

This year, I made a roasted zucchini hummus instead of a raw zucchini hummus.  All I did was slice the zucchini, brush it with olive oil, and then roast it for about 40 minutes.  When it cooled, I made the hummus with the recipe on the previous page with the slight exception of cutting back on the tahini.  

We've also made zucchini bread (3x I think) -- Nick's specialty, roasted zucchini with pasta sauce, and a raw hummus.  The zucchini hummus (roasted or raw) is a very good pasta sauce!  

I'm looking for more zucchini recipes.  I have 2 very large ones sitting on my calendar.  Maybe my friend wants one (or two).  

In sad news, our apricot tree isn't doing so well and we didn't get any apricots from it.  Well, I guess we got about 10, but that's pretty sad considering we were getting so many a couple of years ago. 

Garden

I am so bad at blogging this year; we had a broken foot (two metatarsals) and a big meeting at work. Wooooooosh went four months.  Now we have three dance shows (plus two other performances that already happened).  (Can you say a little crazy around here?)

We've made a couple new dinners and I need to get them blogged. Natalie made a basil and cilantro pesto, Kira made a new pasta dish, we've been making a lot of guacamole and taco bars, and our list is helping us make a better rotation in our dinners. 

In the meantime, enjoy the pictures of our spring garden.  It was planted about a month ago (and these pictures are a couple of weeks old (see BAD at blogging this year). 

 
Artichoke, Zucchini, bush beans.
 

 
Corn for the summer!

 

 
fava beans from the winter garden that are now harvested and frozen for use through the year.

Look at the green!

 
Taken a few weeks back.  Our winter garden is growing slowly.  We have decided that we'll plant in October rather than November from now on.  

Zucchini

 

Here is the zucchini roasting in the oven! It has a little olive oil on it and is with onions!  It was lovely with marinara sauce!  They were roasted until each piece was golden brown and wonderfully caramelized.  (I spent a lot of time pulling the "done" pieces off of trays and stirring zucchini! It was worth it!  It probably took about 1.5-2 hours to get it all roasted.)

Final Fall Harvest

 

We got these, plus four more eggplants, from our garden and then we pulled the plants to plant the winter garden.  It was end of October. We needed to plant the winter garden!

Last weekend I roasted a ton of zucchini and this weekend I did a ton of eggplant.  I'm getting ready to make Baingan Bharta, not just my Italian eggplant. 

Happy November

It's Nanoblopomo!  I'm not signing up to do a post a day, but I am going to try to do more this month... Considering the last few months, August was 3, September was 0, and October was 3, 4 would be a new high... Actually, in July I hit 6.  Okay, that's a stretch goal.

In actual substantive food thoughts, here's what I plan to make for dinner.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  I also have a plan to stream line things a bit.  When I was telling a new friend about my blog I explained how I tried to make really healthy food really fast!  I take short cuts all the time and use frozen veggies instead of fresh. When our garden is producing we eat very locally grown fresh veggies, but frozen does save me time because someone has already washed and cut them for me.  My own personal sous-chef...er, maybe not personal.

Kira plans to make home made pesto with fusilli pasta.  Maybe two posts out of tonight's dinner?  And tomorrow I will be roasting the final zucchini and eggplant from our garden.... The zucchini and eggplant plants are now out of the garden and we have bok choy and broccoli planted for winter!  They are cute and little, but soon we'll have winter greens--pictures below!
 
  

Veggies

I am totally out of the blog habit here! Maybe I can make it a goal, for November, to blog once a week. I know Nanoblopomo is supposed to be every day, but that seems a little crazy right now.

For the last few months, our garden was going insane... I've been dealing with tons of eggplants, tomatoes (making soup with them), and now we have zucchini.  Did I tell you about our zucchini? Back in June, we had two plants that were going gangbusters... and then a rabbit ate them.  It was a very sad day.

I had gotten about 4 or 5 zucchini, but it was barely July and I wanted more zucchini.  Nick cut the plants way back and he thought they might make a come back.  I was dubious.  My friend Patti gave me a little zucchini plant from her garden.  It wasn't getting enough sun and she thought it might do better at our house.

We transplanted the zucchini and then we had a heat wave.  We thought her poor little plant might not make it.  Miraculously it did and lo and behold, our two plants came back, too.  All 3 started producing again in September.

Her plant turned out to be a crooked neck summer squash.

Because our garden is very prolific, I now have zucchini in the new deep freeze so I can stick it in soups and make bread with it this winter!  I have lots of summer squash, too.  (Note, it's near the end of October.  Note our summer garden is till out there and we don't have the winter one in yet.  No worries, our winter one went in during November last year.)


Today, I finally made something other than veggie soup with a tomato base.  Today I roasted zucchini, summer squash, and onions with olive oil and a little garlic.  I made angel hair pasta and figured we'd eat the veggies with marinara sauce. My vegan who loves veggies did that.

I also made zucchini hummus (using almond butter instead of cashews), but it turned out runny.  I decided it would make a lovely sauce on top of the pasta with roasted veggies.  Indeed, it did.  Nick and I loved it!  It was so tasty I forgot to get a picture of it.  Maybe tomorrow we can get one with the left overs (most likely not!).

  I have more zucchini and onions to roast in the oven!  (And more to freeze!)

Tomatoes!

When your garden goes a little crazy and gives you a lot of tomatoes you take a bunch, cut them up, throw them in a pan with a little olive oil, a little balsamic, dried basil, oregano, and garlic. Toss them over some noodles. Yum.

 

Deep freeze

Our garden, and fruit trees, produce so much that I decided we needed a deep freeze. Now I have to fill it. Fortunately, I have very prolific tomatoes, and a full Fuji apple tree to help. Egg plants are still ripening, too! Anyone want to come over and help me pick and process from the garden? It's a wonderful problem, but I'm feeling a little overwhelmed!

Eggplant! Homegrown!

Nick grew these. I cooked them. Good team work!  It felt like Christmas in August!

Corn and tomatoes

Today's harvest!

 

 

It might be summer!

so many things to blog...

I need to blog about our plum tree and how many plums it gave us.  I need to blog about how I finally learned how to do something with the plums!



Back in 2013, we made a plum crisp... http://veryveryverygreen.blogspot.com/2013/07/from-trees.html I called it tart, and initially I thought I just needed more sugar, but as I thought about it, I realized it was BITTER.  I also realized that no matter how much sugar I added, it wouldn't solve the problem.

I don't remember if we had many plums in 2014, but in 2015, we barely had any so I didn't think about how to use them.  However, this year, we had a bumper crop and I needed to do something with them. Even if one likes plums, you can only eat so many a day!

One friend (with four kids) took about 50 of them (in two batches). I gave another 30-40 or so away at work.  I think I lost about 20-30 letting them go bad on the counter... And that just left me about another 200-250.

Sigh.

We let a lot fall off the tree 'cause we didn't pick them fast enough ('cause I didn't know what to do with all the plums).  (You have to pick our plums when they are still sort of red.  They turn deep purple when ripe, but too many fall off the tree when you let them ripen all the way so you have to pick them a day or two early.)
I finally turned to my friend google and googled bitter plums...

I learned that it was most likely the skins that were causing the problems.  I learned a good trick to getting the skins off.  Roast 'em!

Rinse plums, remove any stems that might still be on them, and place plums on a baking tray (with sides 'cause the juice will run off if you don't and will make a mess if you don't have sides).

Stick in the oven at 350 for 20-30 minutes.

Let 'em cool until you can handle them and peel the skins and pit them.  The skins will totally slip off.  You do have to do some work to get the pit out.  I was covered in plum juice (very red!) and I won't talk about how I accidentally went to the store with plum juice splattered on my face.  (And yes, I did have some dribbled down by my mouth 'cause I was eating some of those roasted plums -- you know, for quality control!)

Some one suggested a food mill and someone else suggested a poor man's food mill which is a colander and a spatula.  (Note, I might invest in a food mill someday... Any suggestions or favorite brands, let me know.)

I am happy to report that google (and all the people who posted about their experiences with bitter plums) was right.  Skinning the plums made a difference and now our plum crisps are awesome.  They are a little tart, but they aren't bitter.  I even made sour plum (but not bitter) jam!  Fun!

I plan to use this roasting trick on our tomatoes -- they are just about getting ready to burst forth!  (I think the roasting trick will work better than the boiling a peeling method I did last year.)
 
Okay, I can cross off my need to blog about plums, but I still need to blog about many other things:

I need to blog about my workout and twice a week at Body Pump!

I need to blog about getting ready for the fourth of July!

I need to blog about our awesome new granola!

I need to blog about vegan friendly treats at Baskin Robbins!

I need to blog about getting a deep freeze for all the wonderful foods from our garden and trees! (We're still looking!)