No Foolin'!

Beautiful daffodils on April 1. Spring is finally here! (and no big snowstorm in March!)

Bowl of Sunshine

We still had a few winter squash up in the attic, so on Saturday, I baked all of them and made them into a delicious soup. Also included were frozen corn and edamame from last summer, and fresh red and orange peppers we purchased. The squash were the last of the "fresh" produce from last year--still a lot of canned and frozen stuff to eat before the garden starts producing in a few months.

August in a Bag

Tonight for dinner I thawed out some grilled vegetables from August. Onions, snow peas, broccoli, turnip, beets, carrots. It was amazing. It did take me back to summer on the deck. You can't get that grilled taste when you cook indoors. This will have to be a new summer staple. Grill all the vegetables and freeze the extras.

Final Harvest?

One more generous harvest of raspberries. And some potatoes that I didn't even know were out there!

Low Hanging

Yum!

More Yum!

Spicy green yum!

Healthy and spicy green yum!

One of the amazing things about gardening on the Lake Michigan shoreline is that we have a little micro-climate that supports growth long after things have frozen just a few miles west of us. Our everbearing raspberries are still bearing up a lot of fruit--about 2 full cups on Saturday, and we only have about a dozen plants. They are situated between our house and the fence of the house next door, a distance of about 6 feet. So not only has it only frozen twice this fall, they get heat radiated off the house to keep them growing.

Likewise, the arugula is still doing well. The sawhorses are covered by our white cold frame fabric when necessary (which has only been two nights so far). We hope to have it well into December, for a crisp green salad when our bodies need it most.

Bountiful Pantry

Here is our full pantry shelf. We (or rather, Tim) had time to can this fall.
The top shelf has dried cherry tomatoes in the white bin (a bumper crop!) and salsa to the right; just below that is dilly beans and pickles.
Here're all the canned stewed tomatoes. Not sure how we will manage to use all of these, since we also have a few gallons of pasta sauce in the freezer. And the vegetable delivery continues, bi-weekly, until Thanksgiving. Plus two cabbages and lots of arugula still out in the garden, and about 15 winter squash in the attic. We'll have plenty this winter!

Colorful Dinner

This is the vegetarian saute I made for dinner last night, and wrapped up in a tortilla with some corn salsa. Onions, red peppers, purple cabbage, and spinach, all from our CSA farm box from last week. I sauteed it in bacon fat. Is that so wrong? (the bacon was from the local Farmer's Market--maple cured with no nitrites. OK?)