WEEKLY UPDATE

Sunday was a productive day for us.  Matt was able to work on his truck and repair some issues with it.  We did a Home Depot run and picked up some more caulking for the exterior of the house to prepare it for painting later this summer.  I also picked up some tomato cages and some plant supports (for my mums) as well as a couple packets of lettuce seed.  I installed the tomato cages and mum supports and even managed to get the living room cleaned, swept, and mopped.  Considering how fatigued I've been from the bronchitis, this was a major victory for me.

My poppies have continued to burst into bloom and are beautiful.  I would love to have a huge section of them just like my grandmother did.  Our clematis has also burst into bloom.  Matt's sisters got this clematis for him several years ago and we thought it had pretty well died when I moved in but it has come around nicely with fertilizing and regular watering.  It's strange that the clematis for the past two years has bloomed in September or October, fairly late in the season we thought, and this year it bloomed in June.  I've had to cut back my chives, oregano, and thyme already. 

Last night Matt was in a pasta and cheese mood so I made my cheeseburger mac and green beans for supper.  It was extremely tasty and hit the spot for both of us.  If you don't have tomato soup on hand you could use tomato sauce or spaghetti sauce for this too.  If you don't have stewed tomatoes they can be omitted.  This is a pretty versatile recipe.  Leave the cheese out and you have beef-a-roni.  Use chili powder instead of Italian seasoning and you get chili mac.  This recipe is GREAT with garlic bread to sop up any sauce.

CHEESEBURGER MACARONI

1# hamburger
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
8 oz macaroni, cooked
2 cans tomato soup
1-2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 can stewed tomatoes
2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 -3 tsp Italian seasoning
salt
pepper


Put water on to cook macaroni.  Fry hamburger with onion until almost done and add garlic.  Add Worcestershire sauce, stewed tomatoes, tomato soup, Worcestershire sauce and seasonings.  Reduce to low and let simmer while macaroni cooks.  Break up stewed tomatoes as it simmers.  Drain macaroni and add to hamburger mixture.  Add cheese and stir.  Simmer until cheese melts.

GARDEN HARVESTING

Yesterday I went to the Farmer's Market in Warren to pick up some fruits and veggies. I picked up a 1/2 bushel of peaches to process and eat. They still aren't totally ripe so I'll give them a day or so to ripen up a bit.

I was able to make 4 pints of salsa for consumption yesterday. I'm thinking at least one Tex-Mex theme night dinner this week. I'm sure my daughters will each be over for a container as soon as word makes it to them that its in the fridge. With so many peaches I decided to chop up one and add it to half of the batch and try for a peach salsa. It wasn't bad but I'll have to work on it a bit.

I went out to the garden to cut some cabbages to make into freezer slaw yesterday afternoon. While cutting them, the wind picked up and snapped some more of the bamboo poles with tomatoes and green beans attached to them. I rushed in and got Matt to help me try to salvage as many tomatoes as possible before the storm hit. I was worried about the storm possibly ruining the tomatoes. We ended up with 2 - 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes. It was just too hot in the house yesterday to process them so now that the weather has cooled a bit hopefully we can get those knocked out and into the freezer.

HOW THE GARDEN DOES GROW

I cannot believe how much our garden has grown this summer. In this picture you see the 6+ foot tall pole beans, red cabbages, oregano in the front left corner of the picture and the tomatoes in the back. The white pvc structure is something we built 2 weeks ago after the storms broke and bent the bamboo poles we had used to stake the tomato plants. The heavy vines were just laying across the ground they were so heavy with tomatoes. It was a sorry site to say the least. The vines were so heavy Matt was having problems lifting them all up so I could get the poles in underneath to support them. It wasn't a perfect solution but it appears to have worked and it is supporting the plants and keeping them upright. The huge plant you see on the right bed is the tomatillos. The fruit is really uniquely intriguing, they look like miniature paper Chinese lanterns. The fruit grows inside and fills up the paper like cover. The parsley is in front of the tomatillos, growing over the edge of the bed.

Here's another picture showing the other bed with Roma tomatoes in it. We harvested those sweet red tomatoes after I took the picture. The broccoli plants are next to it and we're waiting the next batch of broccoli after the wonderful first cutting. There are actually jalapeno peppers between the tomato plants and broccoli, but they're hard to see.

Tonight's supper:

Brisket in the crockpot

with fresh cabbage from the garden

quartered red potatoes

and quartered onions

I'm a bit behind on the cleaning chores but not horribly so since I lost a day yesterday due to judging at the St. Clair County 4H Fair. I judge 4H dog agility. Its extremely enjoyable to work with the kids; although, sometimes frustrating. Yesterday was one of those days were it was very frustrating as they kids and dogs were just not ready and I only had 2 that had qualifying scores. The rest I had to disqualify for a variety of reasons; i.e. fouling in the ring, not completing the course, refusing to do obstacles, etc... I have never had to disqualify that many kids since I started judging and it really bothers me. We were able to have a good laugh as a dog jumped on top of the tunnel and tried to walk down the top of the tunnel instead of going through it. I've seen dogs jump on top and then off the tunnel or jump over the tunnel but never walk it - it was a good laugh that we were able to have in the sheer joy the dog was having despite being disqualified.

Chores completed today:

4 loads of laundry (so far)

living room: decluttered, dusted, swept, mopped and de-furred

bedroom: decluttered, dusted, swept, and mopped