Garden Bounty

 My In-Laws have such green thumbs.  They kept me supplied with fabulous produce all summer long!  We are very lucky that our local farmers market is just a couple blocks away where we bought some potted herbs, bagels, eggplants and cilantro this summer, but everything else has come from Dave's parents.

 It seems every time I turned around, Marianne was bringing me cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes, carrots and peppers.  When you have produce like that, you have to put it in something and we really enjoyed pork maifun this summer.  I thinly sliced pork chops and marinated them in Chinese sweet barbecue and Dave was in charge of grilling it.  Then you stir fry up your veggies and some fried egg with maifun noodles.

So good.  This stuff doesn't last long around here.  We get about 2 servings and 2 sack lunches out of this.

They had 10 tomato plants this year that were taller than me!  I would go and pick tomatoes by the sackful and Marianne picked them by the clothes basketful and for every beautiful red tomato you'd pick, there were 5 more green ones on the vine.  They could literally feed an army with their tomatoes.

My sister gave me a canner and tool set at my bridal shower and I finally got a chance to play with it.  I am hooked on canning!  My dear friend Brenda always talked about how she loved it because each batch was a separate concoction and you could try all different variations on a theme.  Now I know what she meant!  I canned 4 dozen pints of salsas, tomato puree and tomato sauce.  I am just sorry I didn't start earlier in the summer and now I can't wait until next year.  We are going to try a little gardening here next year too.  We are not self sufficient by any means but finally having your own home somehow makes you want to homestead your yard and garden.  I love the idea that we'll be eating and cooking our own tomatoes all through the winter.  I can't wait!