Melissa picked a peck of pickled peppers

But first she had breakfast. Pumpkin part 3! I had some very, very yummy pumpkin pie yogurt, topped with this Kashi Apple Orchard granola. It has raisins and apples and some kind of nuts and oats....sooo good!!

I had half a bottle of this apple juice with it, along with my water mixed with pomegranate blueberry that I drink all day long at work. Nice fall-type breakfast!


Lunch was some celery and peanut butter and a chicken sandwich. Not exciting and the picture is even less exciting. I must work on food staging...another day.


So, I didn't pick a peck of pickled peppers. I don't know how much a peck is. But we did have quite a few that needed to be dealt with. We've been harvesting peppers for about a month and just piling them up. Not a peck, probably, but we did have THIS many:

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.


I wish that I had taken a picture of the full jars, but I did not. You get the idea though.

I also put together another jar of dill pickles. These aren't from our garden, but I bought a pile of pickling cucumbers at Lowes Foods on Sunday (it cost me less than $2.00!). I can't wait for these babies to be ready!!



Tonight I decided to use up the apples in the fridge that were going soft. I made some homemade applesauce!!

Yummy apples and cinnamon on the stove:
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!!

My how the week flies by!!

I have (thankfully!) been SO busy at work this week, that writing a blog and paying attention to the food we've been eating really has been one of the last things on my mind! I keep thinking to myself "well, this would be a good picture" or "I could write about this" and then don't snap the shot, or make a note, and then it's out of my mind. I'm really glad to be busy at work, but I miss the days where I have at least a few minutes to think about non-work things while sitting at my desk! So, I'll hit the highlights and the things I DID think about!

Monday night we had our first squash of the (almost) fall. We'd had some summer squash here and there, but that's not the same. It doesn't have that cozy feeling that some of the winter squash has. Lucas had never eaten acorn squash before, so I bought some for him to try. Simply cut it in half, place it face down in a dish with a little bit of water and steam in the microwave for 10-15 minutes, until a fork slides in when you poke it. I like mine with lots of melted butter and some brown sugar, and eat it right out of the shell. We had the squash with some boiled red potatoes and bbq (from scratch!) pork chops. Good dinner!


Sugary, buttery yum!


A while back I ordered from free samples via a blog I read: Hangry Pants. She referred me to the site the samples actually came from - here. I got this package of chia seeds and another package of something that I haven't broken into yet...saving that for another post!




Anyway, I dropped some of the chia seeds in my yogurt for breakfast Tuesday. I didn't add much, since I didn't know what to expect, so I'm not sure what effect it had. Guess I'll read up on it a little more, then finish off the pack. If anyone knows the benefits of chia seeds, fill me in!


That leads us to tonight. Our friend Tara came over for dinner, and we decided to try out a new recipe. Cuban Chicken with Black Beans. The only thing I would change in the recipe would be to use boneless, skinless breast. Boneless because I'm not a fan of bone-in chicken, skinless because the skin got kind of soggy after cooking in all the liquid and beans. Other than that, the meal was delicious!! We had to use green pepper rather than red, and we used brown rice. YUM!!


Tara brought dessert. She remembered that Lucas can't eat sugar, and brought him a sugar free chocolate ice cream. He had some of that after dinner with some banana jam and peanut butter. We girls (and Nathan) shared some of this cake. I ate it without reading the ingredients, knowing that it was probably full of things that "aren't allowed". It was really good - light and fluffy and CHOCOLATEY!! Sure enough though, after we ate it, I read the label and it's loaded with high fructose corn syrup, among other things. Oh well! Too late! It was already in my belly!!

So know we're caught up! Final note for tonight...we're watching the finale for America's Got Talent, and the most original perfomers on the show, and the ones who should have one, in my opinion, just got voted off!!! Check them out!! (the performance starts at about 2:14)



Good night!!

Lotsa veggies

I wasn't going to post tonight, mostly because I'm lazy, but tonight's dinner was so good I had to write about it! It was a completely vegetarian meal (would have been vegan if I hadn't added milk to the mashed potatoes!) I stole this recipe for Skillet Gardener's Pie from here.

It's basically a huge pile of veggies, with a vegetable stock/cornstarch gravy and mashed taters piled on top. I changed the veggie list a bit - no celery in the fridge, and I added some zucchini and the rest of the corn we've been trying to eat up.


We served ours with some grilled zucchini and the last of the grilled leeks. The three leeks we bought seemed expensive at $4 for three of them, but we've gotten at least 4 meals out of them...not too shabby!





That's it! I assure you it tastes 100 times better than it looks. If I'm going to continue this blog thing, I really need to take a class in food staging and food photography - if there is such a thing!

Oh, I also want to mention my delicious breakfast today. I left the camera at home, so no pics, but it was Stonyfield Organic Yogurt - Vanilla with Chocolate on the bottom, mixed with Kashi GoLean Crunch. Try it out - it's wonderful, and surprisingly filling! I'm trying it again tomorrow with the blueberry flavor of the yogurt...my last one :(

Ok, that's all I've got for tonight! Looking forward to HOPEFULLY a half day of work tomorrow and then another three days off!

Good night!