Pepper jam, tomatoes, butternut squash, and beans!

Pepper Jam, Baby!

We've started to get a small ton of tomatoes!

Ugly Tomatoes!

The first batch of tomato sauce!

I baked our butternut squash in the oven and whirred it
around in the food processor.

So many beans, with so many more to come.



Jasper begged for a bean, but wasn't digging it once he got it.



Kidney beans, black beans, favas, soldier beans,
yard-longs, and black-eyed peas.



We just haven't figured out how to get around this part yet.... 

Prepped for drying....

Watermelon Jelly (Part 2) and Other Stories....

The water bath is heating up and the lids are sterilizing
in a sauce pan. I'm stirring watermelon juice, vinegar,
sugar, grated ginger, and pectin.

First, some storytelling: "The Unnatural History of Brown's Island" was the featured story at Fiction365.com on Saturday. I hesistate to call my Brown's Island story 'new', since I wrote it in January 2010 and have been sitting on it, like it's an egg, ever since. The story itself, although fictional, is based largely on local legend and some fact, since there was indeed a deadly explosion there just before Christmas in 1972.

In other news, food preservation continues! I started watermelon jelly on Monday and finished it on Tuesday afternoon. In fact, I was

washing dishes just as Michael came home from work, and that left our evening free to attack the other things that needed to be taken care of, namely, carrots. Michael got a fannyload of them on Sunday by digging them up with the potato fork. Last night, we washed, trimmed, scraped and re-washed the carrots before raw packing them and getting them into the pressure canner....pictures of the productivity follow, just below: 

Just out of the canner! Watermelon-ginger jelly.



Rainbow carrots, being peeled and chopped.



The smaller carrots got their own jar.

We chopped the larger ones.



Fresh out of the pressure canner!



A long view of Tuesday's productivity...is that a
ghost in the image, or is our jar just steaming?

Watermelon jelly (part 1), brioche, and Jasper at the 'dentist'

Savannah started making watermelon jelly on
Monday afternoon. The watermelon  here is in the
food mill, getting a good wringing!

The resulting juice, but...I'm not able to make jelly
just yet. We have to pick up our little patient Jasper....

Fred's was a little glum. Jasper was getting a tooth
extracted and was at the vet all day. Fred missed him and
hid most of the day beneath the coffee table tablecloth.

Savannah also made brioche, and as you can see above,
 it grew like the blob, touching the window on the
machine lid.

Michael says our brioche looks like it has a beret.

Finally, Jasper came home, slightly drunk from
the anesthesia. Michael re-applied a bandage to
his IV boo-boo.

Woo! They shaved it so close it feels like suede.

And on Tuesday and Wednesday nights....

Recall that watermelon that wasn't ripe back in
mid-July? Well, this baby was gone in ten minutes.

Good Lord, I have a big mouth. Er wait, is that Steven Tyler?

The bees are cooling themselves outside the top bar.

Bees, enjoying our sunflowers.

Look at those full pollen baskets.

Black beans, filling out their pods.

Look! It's our yard-long beans, and my dirty shoe.
Yes, my shoe has a muff. Sometimes it scares me, too.

Believe it...it's really a yard long.

Our seats, next to the little sunflowers.

Nope, this isn't a horror film still.
Some little boy just has strawberry fingers.

Peppers, onions, cukes, cantalope, and that lovely
watermelon.

Remember that beet pesto I made? Here it is, making
the pasta purple.

Mmmm....more bread for tomato sandwiches.

We ended Tuesday night playing Scrabble and
watching the Pirates! Um...oops. Maybe "viney"
isn't really a word.

And on Sunday and Monday....

 On Sunday, while Michael checked the bees, I picked a mound of beans. We also several healthy piles of purple and candy-striped beets, tobascos, jalapenos, and hot banana peppers. Tomatoes are just starting to come into season, too....and I'm excited to see that my zucchini plant is back after the searing heat has abated. It was sprouting nothing but orange-colored dwarf squash, but it's back to making zuchs again.

And on Monday night (that is, tonight!), we used our Food Saver to pack away some beans for the freezer. And while we ate dinner, I made some quick bread from a very overripe banana and 2 cups of shredded zucchini. I also used some super-dark brown sugar (not the light business they sell you in the grocery store, but the good stuff, with extra residual molasses). Yum.

Beans, blanching.



Zucchini-Banana Bread, with extra dark brown sugar



What's happening today?

It's full-tilt here on Kings Creek, even though it's Michael's day off. Upstairs, I've been making habanero-orange marmalade and zucchini-honey cake (pics, of course, below). Also, I made some zuch-and-cuke soup, but in terms of photos, that's somewhat less exciting than jam and baked things. Michael's been in the fruit cellar, getting things ready for canning season. Look, it's so orderly again!

Downstairs, Michael's been cleaning up the fruit cellar
to prepare for this season's batch of new canned goodies.
It looks fantastic.

Upstairs, I've been making habanero-orange marmalade...

Five pints of habanero-orange marmalade! I know, it's
dark, isn't it? But it tastes fantastic and spicy.
I think even Paddington Bear would appreciate  it.



Honey-zucchini cake



This week with the Guzes



Cobbler from some super ripe and fantastic little peaches.



The heat has been vicious here, so we've been performing a lot of indoor activies....first cooking and then preserving; after that, a few garden images....

Banana chocolate chip bread, packaged for Michael's lunch.

Green beans with onions, white sauce, and curry powder

Although we canned one batch of beans, we're
using the Food Saver Mom and Dad got us for
Christmas for this batch.

Michael rocks the Foodsaver

This cute birdhouse was made by an elderly man who
sells them at the Harmony Christmas Market. If we look
a little closer, you'll see it's occupied....

...avian triplets. Michael got this one. They were
camera-shy and hid their heads every time I came close with
the camera.



Lovely lemon-yellow sunflowers, near the top bar.



The bee garden flowers along our back fence.

And a close-up of those pretties...

Another shot of the garden...all sorts of lovelies

Our butterfly bush came back. I was so worried when
its limbs took so long to green this spring.

 

Our stargazer lilies are in full bloom.