vampires vanquished

 I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time cooking… oh, donˋt get me wrong cause Iˋm not complaining, far from it, but I do sometimes wonder how people manage to feed themselves with less effort. It must be a super-hero skill.

This morning I made: 2 batches of egg bites (feta; roasted red pepper cheddar); an onion dip; the filling for jalapeno poppers and mushrooms; and a whole whack of crostini using homemade bread. Carm helped with the crostini by cutting perfectly even slices of bread and then when toasted, rubbing each piece with a clove of garlic - the flavour is fantastic, a perfect way to showcase fresh from the garden garlic. Iˋm not especially efficient so was at it until 2pm. But itˋs not like I had people to see, places to go.

Last night I planned a simple supper… that ended up taking me well over an hour to make! First was the chicken (thaw, slice, marinate), then the zucchini (pick, slice, roast), and finally the garlic herb dip (scour internet for garlic recipes, make garlic compote, pick and chop herbs, squeeze lemon, look at recipes for ideas, stir with sour cream and mayo). Make that 2 hours for our simple supper!!!! 

If meals started appearing like magic I think Iˋd go into a depression 🤪

Yesterday we harvested the garlic - 100+ giant heads - enough for planting in the fall and if Iˋm careful, to get us to the next harvest. Itˋs our best crop so far with big bulbs and huge cloves. In all these years of having enough land to make a garden, I never realized how satisfying it is to glean food from the land. Weˋve been eating summer squash/zucchini like crazy and loving every bite.

One of the branches of the apple tree crashed to the ground yesterday - we had tears in our eyes as we collected a trugˋs worth of half ripe apples before dismembering the fruitful sentinel.

I ventured out of the house a few days ago to go into some actual shops. Iˋm shopping starved and wanted to buy everything. I didnˋt completely lose my mind but it was a few trips to unload the car 🤪😱 

Awesome!

“jumping in the pool right after getting up - before coffee even”

“catching sight of another infant squash”

“trying on a pair of shorts that I bought and finding they were way too big”

“Adia didnˋt grab the food that I accidently dropped in front of her - such a good dog and a far cry from her greedy ways of when we first got her”

"pulling a huge bulb of garlic from the earth"

"picking two big yellow summer squash"