This may not be the most exciting post, but I let myself get so far behind, that I feel like I really need to just do a recap of the last few days, just so I'm caught up!
Starting off with last Wednesday - I had to post this picture of the Side-by-Side Quiche that we made. It looks so yummy! We made half of it with just bacon, for Nathan, and the other half was bacon, broccoli and baby bella mushrooms, for us!
Served up with some watermelon and sauteed zucchini sticks...YUM!
The next couple of days were boring food days. We had Subway on the beach Thursday night, and Friday night was an AWFUL tuna casserole. You don't want to see that....
Saturday we went grocery shopping, and for once, only went to one store! I had my rain check for berries (5 packages for 5 bucks!!) for Lowes Foods, so that's where we headed. We had to buy a loaf of french bread, to make the pizzas we planned for Saturday. I've always wanted to have a big loaf of bread sticking out of my paper bag. Doesn't it seem like in movies that EVERY time someone goes grocery shopping, they have french bread sticking out of the bag?? So here it is - french bread, wine and some leafy greens - just like the movies! (I'm adding this after the original post...apparently I'm not the only one who likes the look of this, though I should have taken it out of the plastic bag. Here's a related funny little
story!)
Saturday afternoon we headed to
Freestyle Music Park with the kids. SO MUCH FUN - and plenty of stuff for a separate post! We got home pretty late, but didn't eat at the park, so I got to work on the french bread pizzas.
Chuck was just waiting for me to drop something!!
I totally meant to take a picture when they came out of the oven, but there were only about two bites left of my pizza when I realized I hadn't done it! We were HUNGRY!
The next morning I woke up early and decided to invite my whole family over for breakfast. I had bought a quart of buttermilk last week to make Lucas's birthday cake. I had more than 3/4 of it left, so I had to find things to make with it! I started out with a big batch of buttermilk pancakes. My sister was the only one to come over from my mom's, since she had to work, and everyone else was still in bed. More for us!! We topped the pancakes with some of my Lowes blackberries and raspberries, leftover blueberries and mashed bananas. YUM YUM YUM!
I spent all morning in the kitchen, and did a spring (late summer) cleaning. I scrubbed every single surface! Then I messed it all up again! I made a buttermilk pie to send back to mom's. I'm not sure how it turned out and didn't take a picture. No one has called to say it's wonderful, so I may have been a big FAIL, but who knows...at least the buttermilk got used! I have about 1/2 a cup left, just enough to make some buttermilk biscuits to bake and freeze tomorrow night.
Before breakfast I had gone out to the garden and done a mini-harvest. We had grown some garlic chives, but gave up on finding them early on. I went two weeks without weeding, and once I went out, I couldn't tell which were the chives and which were the weeds. Sunday morning I went out and grabbed a handful and could easily tell which were the chives. The smell was SO strong! I decided to bring them in, chop them up, and dry them in the dehydrator. Nathan has already eaten them on his potatoes twice, so that was a success!
A little more of the recent harvest - tomatoes, jalapenos, banana peppers
Lunch was a salad of boiled eggs, mixed greens, blackberries, feta and Full Circle Organic Tuscan Italian dressing. YUM!
We had some company while cooking dinner on the grill. This little guy hung out on the cooler for a bit.
Dinner was completely done by Lucas - grilled salmon with dill, griled potatoe with monterey jack and chives, and grilled mixed veggies....sooo good!
That brings us to tonight, when I tried to make some chicken empanadas. Lots of work, and I wasn't impressed. Chicken, cheese, peppers, spices inside little pockets of pie crust, baked. The stuffing was good, the crust I could do without. Lucas liked it though, so it was still a success!!
That catches us up on the food front! Off to bed!! Good night!
And we didn't pick them already pickled, of course. But every one of these guys ended up in a nice vinegar, salt and garlic bath. 
Applesauce is super easy to make! I peeled, cored and chopped about 8 apples, added 1 cup of water, 1/2 cup of honey, 1 tsp cinnamon, a dash of nutmeg and a splash of lemon juice. Cook it all together until the apples are soft. Let the apples cool and mash it up. I used a hand mixer. It came out just a little chunky, like I like it!
I think I've now preserved everything we had to preserve for the week. I may go buy a bunch more of those cucumbers and look for a bushel of apples, because I'd like to have a cupboard full of this stuff!!
