Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Summer Surprises: Snakes and Shakes!

Surprise!


Pa can still dive, he's seventy five! Go Pa!



What's that in the tree?

Surprise! It's Shady the Scare Snake protecting our figs from birds (it worked, at least for a while!).


Surprise! Our CSA farm was open for picking on Labor Day! Oh yes!

Those beans were delish! Aren't the purple ones pretty?

Hey, ever think those blog giveaways are rigged? I used to, until...


 Surprise! I won TWO giveaways this summer!  Nava's new book AND Dreena's new book, YES.

It was too hot to cook anything from the books, so...
 Spinach Mango Blend, inspired by Nava.  

 Strawberry Hemp Blend, inspired by Dreena! 
I learned that hemp seeds are great in blended drinks, they aren't "seedy" at all.

I'll get to some cookin' from those awesome books in the fall! Thanks, ladies for the wonderful giveaways!!

 CSA Week #13 (8/22/12): Three lovely eggplants, including a beautiful ghost eggplant! hmmm...

Surprise!

I love eggplant (I never really LOVED it before the CSA eggplant, it was AMAZING).  And, surprise! I didn't have to skin it, salt it or drain it, it was so sweet and yummy just sauteed right up in lemon, garlic, olive oil and salt.  SO GOOD.

Surprise!
 You thought I forgot to post these, right? Nope, here they are.  
CSA Week #14 (8/29/12): Lots of tomatoes!  


 CSA Week #15 (9/5/12):  Lots of greens, including kale (my favorite!), and all the tomatoes pictured below!


Lots of beautiful tomatoes two weeks in a row meant only one thing.  We had to learn to can!


 Surprise! My first canned tomatoes.  

And homemade raspberry jam (from local, organic raspberries!)

 Summer's almost over!!  Learn to put em' up, folks!  Don't forget to dry those herbs and freeze that pesto!  There's LOTS more awesome produce to be had for these last few days of summer and first crisp days of autumn.

Have you all had any surprises this summer?


6 comments:

  1. What a fun post! I have enjoyed your photos of the CSA veggies - incredible amount of food!! Good for you for learning to can! Totally satisfying, isn't it?

    So,I am not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but I have learned so much about that style of eating in the last year or so. I hope you don't mind that I shared my most recent blog post with you here. (I know it's obnoxious to link back to your own blog on someone else's blog.... feel free to edit this part out of my comment!!)

    http://mylivingcookbook.blogspot.com/2012/09/vegan-potato-tacos-with-roasted.html

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    1. So glad you are enjoying the CSA series! Canning is very exciting, I can't wait to have it on autopilot so I can crank out a batch of jars while I am doing the laundry and making dinner :-))

      No problem to link to your blog here, Tracy, you are a long time reader and I think it's great you are doing some vegan recipes on your blog. Thanks for sharing!

      XOXO!

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  2. What fantastic hauls! I'm so impressed by your canned tomatoes and jam! Also, I can't help but to chuckle at that garlic stem.

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    1. Thanks, Abby! And it's funny, I didn't notice the garlic in that picture until you mentioned it, hilarious!


      XOXO

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  3. Dawn, you've thrown down the vegan gauntlet.... I am going to be brave, step out of my comfort zone and TRY the VeganMoFo.... but I'm not sure about posting 20 times!! And the garlic, btw, I couldn't take my eyes off it!! Shocking!!

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    1. Yeay!! I'm SO psyched you are going to register for MoFo, you will LOVE it. Don't worry about the 20 posts thing, it's just fun to see how/if you can make it, and it's really fun to have a theme or some kind of idea of how you want to proceed.

      Can't wait to read your MoFo posts, I'm gearing up myself since I've had a very slow August and September :-) I'm refining my theme as we speak...

      XOXO!!

      P.S. The garlic...I know, right? ;-))

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