Harvest

I love late summer/early fall when our garden is this huge treasure trove of lovely things to eat.  I'm not the most creative person in the world - but something in me needs to create sometimes and cooking seems to fill that need in me.  The colors and smells and textures and tastes are all so mesmerizing to me.  I love all of it.  A pan on the stove with fresh veggies and garlic and herbs creates my favorite smell in the whole world.  I love going out on warm, dewy mornings and picking bowls full of beautiful fresh food.  Even if it means I'm going to have to find some more people to eat my cucumbers.  For the past couple of years, Byron has gotten us the most beautiful heirloom tomato plants from up at the college.  This last year we had 18 plants - and wow they were amazing.  Pink and purple and green and striped and man did they taste so good.  I could eat tomato sandwiches about every day of my life.  The yield isn't as good as regular varieties, but when you have 18 plants, thats okay, and the taste is worth it.  

How beautiful is that!!!!

My not so favorite thing about the garden this fall was the snakes - guh.  I'm not a snake hater, or I used to not be but after the crazy number that we had this fall I could definitely do without them.  Clara and Gray would help my pick produce and pull weeds for a while, but then they would usually start snake hunting.  Most mornings I would try to sneak out before they did so I could throw their bucket of snakes out into the field.  One Sunday morning I went out to find their bucket on the porch full of 7 snakes - and two of them were pretty big ones!  That whole bucket got taken down the street a ways and dumped before anyone could object!  

We planted two little armenian cucumber starts this year and they went crazy,  We had cucumbers coming out our ears.  Our whole street got bag after bag of cucumbers, and I did about everything with them I could.  I think my favorite find was that recipes that call for zucchini work just as well with cucumbers.  We had lots of cucumber bread and cucumber muffins.  One morning after having ignored our little plant for a few days this was what we found....

Graham could be found most days carrying around a gnawed on cucumber - the perfect season for a teething baby!  I'd pop them in the fridge for an hour or so and hand them back to him and he was content as could be.  That big thing in front of Clara was a random hybrid plant we had show up next to the compost pile - half spaghetti squash half zucchini.  We got several of them, but unfortunately they weren't any good.

Graham's 1st

In October Baby Graham turned 1 year old.  For his birthday dinner we had fresh baked bread, bananas, green smoothies and cheese.  All his favorite foods.  After we went to Black Island farms for the halloween festival.  Some one year stats for my little man;
- He is chubby.  Sooo chubby.  When he stands up in the tub his little legs and bum are one roll after the other. Was 24 lbs at 15 months.
- He loves to eat (obviously) and up until pretty recently has been pretty willing to eat just about anything I put in his mouth, but these days he's being more picky.
- He loves to cuddle and give hugs and kisses - the open mouth, super slobbery kind.
- He is now an awesome sleeper - 7:30 - 7:30 most nights.  At his birthday he wast still waking up once in the morning around 5 or 6, but he would nurse and go right back to sleep.
- He is so busy!  I've never had a child that was so into everything!  He loves the kitchen (and the little play kitchen upstairs) and could spend all day playing in the drawer with the measuring cups and the cupboard with the tupperware.  He loves to get out bowls and a whisk and stir stir stir.  He's my little chef in training.  Lately his favorite toy is the bowl for my bosch and all the attachments for it.
- He could be held all day and would let me if only I was willing.
- He is sweet.  You can just feel it about him.  Something about him just exudes sweetness and he's got us all pretty smitten - especially Clara.  She loves him sooo much. She always wants to be in the same place as him and is genuinely disappointed when he goes down for his naps.
                                                         Happy Birthday my little Goose.

 Look how handsome my little brown eyed boy is...

 Right before going down the enormous grain chute slide - I think I was more nervous than they were!

 A few nights later B made all of us pizza in our awesome new pizza oven outside and we had dessert with my Mom and Dad and Joanna's family to celebrate.  Clara and Grady decorated his cake with all of his favorite toys (his favorites according to them anyway...).  I had forgotten to practice the whole blowing out the candles thing with him, so that was kind of a bust, but after all of the candles at Christmas, he's got it down!

I made up this tasty new dessert that we had a few times lasts fall.  For the crust I mixed equal parts oats, almonds and granola in the blender and mixed that with a couple tablespoons of melted butter, some vanilla, a pinch of salt and nutmeg and pressed it into the pan for the crust and cooked for 15 minutes or so.  Then I topped it with a combo of greek yogurt, neaufchatel cheese, and whipping cream sweetened with maple syrup and honey and topped that with either berries or fresh peaches.  It was so good!  Graham loves berries, so even though the fresh peaches were my topping of choice, this was perfect for his first birthday cake.