Garden Eatin'

That's what's been for meals here lately: garden eatin'.  It's that time of summer when meals are not planned on what is in the cupboard, but what is ripe in the garden.

So far this week we've had:
swiss chard
kale
cucumbers
tomatoes
hot peppers
sweet corn
zucchini
summer squash

Certainly no lack of vegetables in our diet, and when I look at the list above I can find just one item I ate as a child--the corn.  Growing my own veggies has opened my eyes and my palate to the endless vegetable options there are.  Fresh picked just tastes so much better that it has converted this formerly picky eater child to a veggie lover.  Still picky though; but now it's a picky of fresh homegrown versus from the store, and not an "I'll only eat corn, beans, and peas" kind of picky.

My kids have been lucky to have had homegrown veggies most of their lives.  As a result, they are all veggie lovers.  They think broccoli is delicious.  They go wild over asparagus.  The first tomato of the season is eaten warm from the sun, and before it ever leaves the garden.  Peas have been known to disappear right off the vine and into their mouths without even being cooked first.  A ripe watermelon, picked from their own garden, is cause for children to do a happy dance, and then dig in until their hands and faces drip with the sweet sticky juice.  (We ate our first watermelon of the season yesterday, I should have put that on the list!)

Garden eatin'.  There's nothing better.  A close second is when you open up a jar in the winter time of something you canned in the summer.  Like the hot peppers and the dill pickles I've been putting up this past week.  Or the tomatoes that are slated for the canner on Friday.

I'm hoping to get photos of the tomato canning process, for any readers who've never canned before.  They're really easy to do.  Time consuming (like most canning), but easy.  Check back this weekend; hopefully I'll have something posted by then.