Kitchen Stuff

This is kind of mish mash post. We've been really busy in the kitchen of late. Then I picked up Salmonella from something (still not sure what exactly... but something outside..) and that took me out of commission for some time. Let me tell you , Salmonella is NO fun. I wanted to die. And I think I had a pretty mild case actually with none of the usual symptoms except possible hurling my guts out. ANYway, moving on, I am better, several pounds lighter and willing to look at food again. I've had enough energy to do things for a few days then I overdue it and have to crash for a few days. But it is so good to be able to DO something when I can that maybe I get carried away. Anyway, I'm thankful for whatever I get.

Isn't this weird? I thought the leaf coming out of one was weird but this is definitely weirder... is that a word?

I'm not sure what variety these are because they don't look like anything I planted. Except for the one on the right which is a Poona Kheera.

Blueberry ice cream. It looked very strange. But it tasted very good. Now we have no more blueberries because I used them all up.

A Hillbilly. A fat one. I was very proud.

TWO Fat Hillbillies.

They are going to bury us soon ...

But we are fighting back by sucking the life out of them in the dehydrator .

Fermenting apple juice .

This tastes better..

Well look what we have here.

I was just leaving....

Pardon me...

I love red. Well, when it is on tomatoes and stuff.... I can't wear it.

More squash.... Elly May chops it up for pickles. I think we canned 19 pints of stuff that day.... I didn't get a picture because it got put away before that happened. And by then I was too sick to care about anything.

Still not enough for ketchup though...

But we did make tomato soup.

Then I made Minnesota Chili Sauce which is some old tomato relish type recipe I got a long time ago. It is really good on meat . First you have to scald and peel tomatoes though. Not my favorite job. So Elly May did it. ;-)

And I chopped.

Pretty.....

On to the beans. We've been saving them up for days til we had enough to do to make it worthwhile to heat the kitchen up with the canner.

I wish the purple ones staid purple after they got cooked... It would look so much nicer...

One batch down...

For the next batch we actually had flowering dill heads .. FINally....

And I put some of our yellow peppers in.. just because they looked cute.

Voila.... Phew! I feel very accomplished. And tired. There are still more tomatoes... More squash... but they can wait. Especially since we have a major heat wave hitting us now with some triple digits. The pool is very nice about now.