Garden update

I went out of town for a week and my garden went CRAZY! My pumpkin plant has probably eight little pumpkins, this one is the biggest.

I have four or five little tiny watermelons.

Three deformed peppers, all on one plant.

Three of my sunflowers blossomed overnight. I will get better pics later.

My potatoes grew enough that it is time to add another box to the top. I couldn't get any closer because the bees get pretty pissed off when we mess with anything in the vicinity of their hive.

And I saved the best for last. This is my crazy, fast growing, gigantic tomato plant. All of my tomato plants have several green tomatoes on them but this particular plant just exploded. It is the same type of tomato, it gets the same amount of sun and water, but for some reason it is over twice the size of the other plants.

My corn is doing well but the wind keeps knocking the stalks down. I am going to build up the rows with more dirt tomorrow.

One of my chickens got out of the pen and made a dust bed in my new radishes and ate quite a bit of my lettuce and swiss chard. She's lucky she's one of my best layers or she might have ended up as soup. If she doesn't stay in the chicken pen, she will have to live in the empty dog run until after the harvest. My peas and beans doubled in size while I was gone and my onions are starting to blossom. (Do they need to be harvested before they do that?)

My carrots are almost big enough to start eating and my Jerusalem artichoke is getting a little bit taller.

Cooking, family, and one busy blogger

My family began to descend this week for my sister's wedding. My favorite uncle in the whole world currently resides in Australia and hasn't been home in over two years. He's a blast, and has pampered my sister and I since we were teeny (he never had any kids himself). The last time he saw the Boy he was barely walking so I'm very happy Jack and I get to spend so much time with him. He also has a homemade smoker (and by homemade, I mean rigged from a 50-gallon drum) that has been languishing at my dad's place and he intends to clean up and show me how to use so I can take it to my house.

I haven't done much cooking since the fourth to be honest. I knew I was going to be busy, so I've made several large batches of things that store and re-heat well. Yesterday we had a sort of family pow-wow and I made a large pot of my Taco Soup. All you require is beans (I used canned chili, pinto, black and kidney in equal portions, liquid included) corn, ground beef and taco seasoning. You cook the meat according to the spice directions, throw all the beans (and corn) and juices on top and simmer for a while. I let it stew at least on hour, but it's fine to let it go most the day and people can dip out of it when they want.

I also finally got around to making tortilla chips. I used flour tortillas because I had them around, but boy do they whip up quick and tasty! I did plain salted and cinnamon and sugar, both. I did have an unfortunate incident where I dropped my very very expensive cell phone into the frying oil, but by some fluke accident it seems to be none the worse for wear.

Tomorrow I've roped a couple of cousins into helping me make and can pie filling (muwahahaha) so hopefully I will have some pictures and fun things to update tomorrow.