Growing

Minnesota in the winter  gets to be a pretty bland place. Usually it's just white snow

this year however its just brown, brown, brown. hardly any snow

 It's times like this  that I'm especially thankful for the growing that's going on in my home.
African Violets~ this is the very first African violet that I've been able to keep alive let alone have it bloom for me and its done so several times   I picked this one up at Wal Mart 2 years ago and it's bloomed 5 or 6 times and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

 While Christmas shopping this year I picked up some paper whites,  they have been well  worth the 4.99 that I paid for them.  I put the bulbs in a tall vase with rocks at the bottom and just watered them making sure that the water did not get above the rock line.

 The first week of January I got these guys going, They are Hyacinthia's I picked them up at the grocery store clearance rack. they were 1.00 for a box of 10 bulbs so I picked up 2 boxes.  I looked around the house and found some old candle jars (that I can not bring myself to ever throw out )   and there you have it.  Every single bulb is blooming!

I didn't even put them in dirt I just used the sawdust stuff that they were packaged in to keep them in place and then watered the sawdust stuff .   yeah! now I have color and life in the "dead" of winter.
how about you do you need a little extra color and life in the winter months?

Canning Tomatoes

what to do with all those cherry tomatoes

there is no way that we can eat all the cherry tomatoes that we have in the garden .

then I remembered a recipe that I have for roasted tomato and basil soup .. perfect no blanching and pealing of the tomatoes  just stick them on a cookie sheet with onion and garlic salt pepper and olive oil and roast at 450 for 30-40 mins.

 then transfer  the whole wonderful smelling lot into 3 quarts of chicken stock that is simmering on the stove top  add fresh picked basil and blend with and immersion blender...   yum-O 

 now for the tricky bit I wanted to cann it so that I could have the soup this winter, so I treated it like salsa and canned according to my salsa recipe since it has alot of the same ingredient in it.  All the jars sealed perfectly.  These last for jars of soup have an addition of grated zucchini as I was grating some zucchini for freezing while I waited for the first batch of soup to process.  A good  addition to the soup, it tasted great and thickened up the soup too.  Yeah another way to use up all that zucchini.

In the Garden

 We have been busy in the garden.  since we live about 10 miles away from our garden its been a bit of a challenge getting there as often as we would like
 
 so things get away from us very quickly.   when we are there we have a great time chatting with chickens that provide us with eggs and

 harvesting all that we can get into the truck so that we can get it put up.
I've done quite abit of canning this year already and I haven't even started with the
Cucumbers and tomatoes

 these pictures were actually taken about a month ago.  The garden is quite a different place now.
I'm  always amazed at how quickly everything grows!

Looking forward to getting back there in a day or two.
How is your garden growing?

Summer!

A Busy summer finds us in the garden often weeding and havesting with help from littles JT loves to pull weeds with Grandpa!

we have lettice that is comming up great for us

I found a new canning book/magizene that I'm having a great time with. It has so many great and different recipes in it along with some great gift giving and packaging idea's

and a simple summer knit that I work on inbetween all the rest of the summer fun.

Have a great week!

Pumpkin

Pumpkin on the walls Pumpkin in the Kitchen

For the first time this year I did something other than carving my pumpkins. I learned how to cook them down to make my own pumpkin puree (I love my computer ) now I have a freezer full of pumpkin goodness!
have a great weekend

A Few Things Our Garden has Yielded

First and most obvious is Vegetables lots and lots and lots of veggies. This is a load that is going to the Cities with us as we have plenty to share with family and friends In Trade~ Smoked Salmon

In Trade~ Canning jars and homemade Pesto

In Trade~ More Canning jars

In Trade~ 2 big bags of Huge Shrimp and wild caught Salmon

Lots and lots and lots of Tomatoes

Farm Fresh Eggs~ The Farmer that owns the land that we have our garden on has Chickens and he always sends us home with Eggs!

Yes our garden yielded very well for us this year

A Good Red

I found this wine at my local Liquor store while they were having a little wine tasting and I love it its a blend of three different wines A Syrah a Zinfandel and a Merlot the perfect end to a day filled with... lots and lots of this

and This

and This

Have a great rest of the week

This Weekend

This weekend we were lucky enough to have beautiful weather so we were able to do some of our favorite things Work in the garden. This is the first year that we have had a garden in a long long time We have our garden on a friend's land as our property is too shady ... we are loving it!

Its a very big garden and we will be doing lots of canning this summer

Hubby is weeding... we have lots and lots of weeds to stay on top of

The other thing that we got a chance to do is Kayak we spent fathers day afternoon cruising around the lake, it was so much fun.

Have a great week