the garden so far

The garden looks very green (weeds are green too) and, on close inspection, our spinach and carrots did germinate after all. They will, however, need a fair bit of hand weeding by the bendier members of the family. Right now the seedlings are competing with a lot of weeds – stinging nettles among them, as I discovered. Ouch. Even my numb fingers felt that.

I managed to pick myself a handful of swiss chard, some young shallots and a few leaves of basil to add into the rigatoni for dinner tonight. This will be our first meal this year with vegetables fresh from our garden. Maybe I’m easily pleased, but I find that exciting.

saturday and sunday

Another summer weekend over, and school that much closer. This weekend, the dad, my sister-in-law and my mother-in-law were in Winnipeg visiting a cousin, so the rest of us hung out together.

We cleaned, ate dinners at the farm, had a sleep-overs with mini-cousins, ate breakfast at the farm, had pony rides, 4-wheeler rides, lawn mower rides, picked from the garden and spent a hour or two down at the lake battling the waves. Oh, and I made more tomato sauce.

The tomatoes are really starting to get to be a problem. We picked a bucket and a box and could have picked many more. Two pans of sauce didn’t even get me a third of the way down my bucket. My tomatoes are going to take over the world. We’ve dubbed this batch of sauce “Triffid Sauce”.

this and that and some oil packed dried tomatoes

This is my last week of holidays for the summer. After this, it’s suck it up and get your head back at work time. I’ll officially be out of holiday bank. Though I really liked having 5 weeks off this year. That means I’ve officially worked at the same place for much too long, when they give you 5 weeks.

We’ve had a little bit of rain almost every day for a week. Not all day, just enough to make my garden and the lawn grow some more. We’ve picked tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and zucchini again this week. The lettuce is ready and the beans are flowering, so we will be getting some of both soon. We have kohlrabi too, though I have never before cooked it. The melons are all doing well and should ripen soon, along with some squash. And the little bit of rain has made the late potatoes that we planted take off and start growing like crazy.

So far this week the girls and I have visited with friends, we’ve prepared peaches for the freezer, made marinara sauce for the freezer and made some more oven-dried tomatoes. This time I took the suggestion of Diane at Westlake Musings (who resides in a neighbouring county) and packed them in olive oil. I made two jars, one just straight dried tomatoes in oil – they’ll be great on pizzas and the flavoured oil should make some great salad dressings. In the second jar I packed in some basil leaves and hot pepper flakes. That jar will be used for pastas. I have plans to use some of it tonight with a either cream cheese or ricotta mixed in and some cooked chicken. I’m not sure how shelf stable the oil packed tomatoes are, so I will use them up quickly and the keep the rest in the fridge. The olive oil will get a little cloudy and thick in the fridge, but all you have to do is allow it to come to room temperature again before use and it will be back to normal.

Linked to Frugally Sustainable, A Delightful Home, Foy Update – Eat, Make, Grow, Simple Lives Thursday, Gastronomical Sovereignty