Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

I'm not sure if we should be concerned about the giant pod we found in the garden, and call Dr. Bennell, or just check the neighborhood for an unlocked car door to share the wealth. This giant zucchini weighs in at 6.7 pounds, is 17 inches long, and at its base the circumference is 14.5 inches. Good thing we found Whole Foods recipe for chocolate zucchini muffins.

Dude, Where's My Peppers

Ding! Ding! School is session folks.

Okay, it has been about four months since we planted the seeds for our Poblano plants. In that time we have watched the plant grow, flower, and produced fruit. All seemed right. The rounded, berry-like fruit, changing from bright green to yellow, to orange. Unfortunately though, for the past few weeks now, we've watched as the peppers growth has stalled, remaining olive in size and orange. Up again against the wall of my understanding, I checked the back of the seed packet for the estimated time to harvest, 80 days. Well we blown right past period!

What is going on with these peppers? Have I been watering them to much? Is it a lack of nutrients in the soil? These questions have been lodged in the back of my brain for weeks now. Thinking that the solution might be linked to the need to pinch off the orange peppers, triggering the plant to develop larger, traditional looking Poblano peppers, I took to the garden this morning.

Kneeling down next to the plant, I picked off the first pepper. Pinching it between my fingers, I watched as the skin broken exposing the juice and seeds. Knowing that my next action my be a regret, I put the pepper to my tongue and waited for the heat from capsaicin to spread throughout my mouth. But, I hadn't expected it to taste sweet. Tempting fate, I popped the whole pepper in my mouth and bit down..still sweet, very much like a tomato! Trying a few more, I conclude that the joke was on us. Apparently, the folks at Ferris Morse accidently put orange pear tomatoes seeds in the wrong packet.

We laughed at ourselves, and agreed to try different seeds next year.

Crazy August Maize

In celebration of my beautiful wife's birthday, I

harvested ourentire crop of corn. All told we ended up with about two dozen ears. The funny part of it all is that the majority of the ears average about four-inches long, or if longer would only have a dozen kernels on the cob. My wife thought they looked like toothless old men.

Albeit slightly freaky looking, they tasted great. Nothing like fresh sweet corn on a summer afternoon. As you can see, our little girl was not being shy about how much she liked them.

Chomp, Chomp, Goes The Preservation Bug

Still bit by the preservation we decided to harvest the majority of our basil. As we removed the stems, the intensity of the aromatics filling the house was amazing, and for some reason we developed the strongest craving for a plate of Thai Basil Fried Rice. Going a little old-school with our drying method, our leaves spent the next couple days on a couple of cookie sheets, drying in the sun.

As we learned with our black beans, what appeared to be vast cache, has dwindled throughout the day into a nice tindy amount. After crushing the leaves by hand, we ended up with about a cup and a half, which we placed into an air-tight jar. Now, I can't wait to make some marinara sauce.

Ay Ya Ya!

Well folks, I think the canning bug may have bit us. Aside from running through our normal morning routine, I found myself out in the garden picking our first (looks like more to come) wave of beautiful fire engine red tomatoes. I would estimate our garden has provided us with about twenty to thirty cherry and beefsteak tomatoes, of which the largest was comparable to a large fig. All the same, they are all delicious. After treating myself to one while picking the rest, enjoying the refreshing burst of flavor a sweetness, I snuck just one more. Yum.

Into the kitchen, washing our cache of garden delights, we began making our own salsa. An idea, my wife had after visiting our dear friends in Minnesota (congratulations by the way). So, into a blend went all of our tomatoes, plus a few full size beefsteaks, plus...ready for this..

- three jalapenos, plus half the seeds of one;

- eight cloves of garlic;

- one lime and half a lemon, freshly squeezed;

- about half a cup of fresh cilantro;

- about one to two tablespoons of red pepper

flakes;

- about half as much cumin;

- one yellow onion; and

- half of a red onion.

Unlike last time, we are slightly more prepared. This time we bought a canning kit which included a magnetic lid retriever (cool!), and large mouth funnel (even cooler!), and a pair of jar tongs (the coolest bomb diggity tool ever!). Now I will never have to don that blue silicon glove, moving the jars in and out of that scalding water. Oh sure it's rated to five-hundred degrees, but the real questions is, for how long can it be at that temperature before people start calling you lefty? Answer... not as long as you think. So, with our jars filled, ten of them to be exact, we sent them all off for a day at the spa. Forty-five minutes later, ding, everybody out of the pool. Then we waited...pop!, waited some more followed by seven more pop! I regret to inform you that three of our little spicy salsa soldiers didn't pop!, never fear, into the chill chest to be gobbled up later, yum-yum.

Today also marked a major change in our garden. We have decided that due to the continued drop in production, it is time to say goodbye to our pea and cucumber plants. I spent a short time in the garden this evening, cutting out those plants, as well as some of the other leaves and dead growths. I was also able to utilize some of the trellises from the cucumbers to shore up one of our tomato plants, which turned out to be a late bloomer; some of our corn stalks; and our pepper plants. The weather was pleasant, and the mosquito's stayed away, so it made a nice end to our day.