Height of Food Preservation

Well, the 4th of July weekend ended up with myself and two sister-in-laws ill with a non-COVID virus (at least I tested negative). Knocked us all out for over a solid week. Thankfully, I'm on the mend and hoping to stay well for the rest of the year!

The weekend I was most ill, the Farmer took on much of the food preservation work and canned us some delicious tomato sauce and some improvised bread and butter pickles for himself.

Feeling much improved this weekend, we canned 8 pints of salsa verde, 2.5 pints of jalapeños, and 7 quarts of dill pickles. We also froze 6 quarts of diced tomatoes, 3 quarts of green beans, and some leftover tomatillos and okra. As I type, the dehydrator is running with some thyme, oregano, garlic, and leftover tomatoes. Plenty of goodies from the winter pantry. Also...accidentally pickled a fly too...

Not all of our garden veggies go straight into storage. We had a delicious vegetarian gumbo for lunch last week with our fresh okra and purple beans.

The Farmer's watermelon kombucha turned out to be crazy fizzy and exploded in the closet while I was resting one day! Made Daisy and I run around looking for the source of shattered glass. That was one sticky mess to clean up!

After a week cooped up inside, I was super excited to check out our garden again. We brought in a huge harvest and this coming week will be just catching up on the pruning that didn't happen while I was ill. Had to crawl between the tomatoes and beans as they haven't been tamed in 2 weeks!

Convalescing a home, I picked up my neglected knitting and finished off the Farmer's new scarf. Also started on a hat for myself...we'll see if I actually manage to finish knitting it by the winter! My Farmer also surprised me with a funky get well cactus.

With the intense heat lately, we've been playing board games and putting together more puzzles.

Daisy has been extra snuggly since we're both back to working full-time out of the house. She picks her human and then goes in to get her snuggle quota met. She's especially fond of throwing herself at the Farmer in the evenings.

That's all from these here parts! Stay well everyone!