summer snippets

1 // the pears are in at my mom's house!

 2 // a very colorful week at muth family farm's organic csa.

 3 // matthew kenney's purslane salad with baked beans and tomato. kenney says that purslane is the only plant source of b12! (my mom heard that broccoli sprouts also contain b12). purslane (aka pigweed) is a wild edible that grows like crazy around here.

 4 // a delicious lunch with chickpea patty pita and squishy sweet figs from a local lady selling her figs via craigslist. we had a nice amount of smaller figs this year from our young tree. 

5 // pretty flowers seen in the sky while walking with bub and ev.

6 // my friend missy's sweet baby abbey. we spent some fun summer days swimming at beautiful lake kandle.

7 // a small harvest from the community garden.

8 // quinoa with veggies

9 // sunflower

10 // spicy garden salsa

11 // savory summer squash pancakes (made these two nights in a row!)

12 // moth sipping on some zinnia

13 // one of our summer favorites - grilled zucchini, eggplant and bell pepper over bush's vegetarian baked beans. so yummy and hearty, and pretty easy to make. just grill veggies/heat beans.

14 // vanilla sunflower

15 // kati on the deck rail. she goes outside sans harness now. there's no stopping her.

16 // garden green beans and edamame. most of my edamame plants didn't grow this year, but i found a few survived in the shade of some sunflower and tomato plants.  

my dad's birthday was yesterday. happy birthday papa bear!

have a great weekend everyone. savor the summer goodness!=)

august community garden

the garden is so pretty just before sunset. that's when i like to harvest our plum tomatoes and yellow squash. soon beans should be coming in, and i've started planting greens for the fall.

the autumn palette amaranth are putting on some display! they're about 7 feet tall, and i'm glad i didn't thin them because they grew quite nicely in clumps. we planted some at home that didn't grow half as large. plants really seem to thrive in that mushroom compost soil!

august food swap

tuesday night i attended the third south jersey food swap. there weren't as many swappers as last time, but there were still lots of goodies up for grabs.

connie brought a lot of great things to share and set-up a nice display with watermelon slush for everyone to enjoy. her goods are made with produce from her very own farm. 

other items up for swap were garden vegetables, herbs, farm-fresh eggs, delicious chocolate chia pudding, homemade lara bars, baked sweets, thai chili sauce, souper stock, salsa, and more.

this swap crept up on me and i was hardly prepared. i went with a last-minute tomato theme and did the best i could with the few hours of prep i left myself.

felt tomato magnets, tomato basil flax snacks, garden grown and dehydrator-dried plum tomatoes, quinoa with "sun"-dried tomatoes, and a hummus for sampling the crackers.

i'll be sure not to procrastinate for next time!

pressed flower jar labels

for the june food swap, i wanted to make nice labels to go on my jars. i love the organic feel of pressed flowers, so i glued them to some old recycled stock paper that was first cut into circles.
 

the flower above was from a weed in my garden. they seem to only bloom at night! i think they're really pretty pressed. some of the other flowers were weeds (like clover), pansies and cilantro.

oh, i must mention the lavender sugar! it tastes so nice in mint tea! to make lavender sugar i followed an easy recipe online - 2 cups cane sugar blended with 2 tablespoons dried lavender.

lavender has calming effects, as does chamomile tea. next time i'm feeling stressed or anxious, methinks i'll throw a little lavender sugar in my chamomile tea!=)

pressed lavender