Love at First Sight

FLASHBACK

October 2003, nearly 5 years ago, we took Doodle (age 19 months) to an annual pumpkin carving party at a friend's house for Halloween. This particular family raises a good size pumpkin patch every year just so they can have this party.

Doodle literally fell in love with one of the pumpkins they had. She would not leave without it. Once we got it home she carried that thing with her everywhere.

It weighed almost as much as she did.

She screamed if we tried to put her to bed without it. Once we put it in the crib with her she was happy and laid right down and went to sleep.

Way back when I only had one or two kids I used to label all the pictures I took so I could remember key information about certain events. Now that I have 4 monsters who has time for that nonsense?

I sure am glad I did it back then though, sometimes I just laugh at what goofy names I came up with for some of these ancient photos.

Want to know what I named this one?

"Doodle and her pumpkin she would not do anything without for about 3 weeks straight"

It's kind of a long name, but fitting, don't you think?

I might change it. How about

Cinderella After the Ball

She is such a cute little sleeping princess.

Fast forward 5 years

Our neighbor gave us this beautiful watermelon from his garden.

Once again it is love at first sight.

She ate, slept, played, went potty with that melon for days.

One day I very enthusiastically suggested we cut the beloved melon and see how yummy a fresh home grown melon would be. I figured if it was that much fun to play with it must be a delight to eat as well.

Boy, was I wrong.

Doodle wanted nothing to do with cutting open her beloved melon. She laid herself on it and sobbed. She insisted we eat the store bought one first, so she could continue her love affair with this scrumptious fruit.

Doesn't she remind you of Pocahontas laying herself over John Smith trying to save his life just before his melon would have been split open by a tomahawk?

Attack of the endless zucchini

This stuff is taking over my garden and my kitchen and my thoughts and my LIFE!

What on earth am I to do with so much of this stuff?!? When I was younger you would not catch me looking cross eyed at the stuff. If my mom made it for dinner I thought it was a fate worse than death. I HATED IT! But she made me eat it anyway. Then a few years ago I started to tolerate it. Now I really enjoy it. I enjoy it enough to plant it in my garden. The first year I planted it I planted 2 plants and I was over run with the stuff. I could not give it away fast enough. I could not make enough zucchini bread. From then on I vowed I'd never plant more than one zucchini a year. Well, this year I had helpers helping me start my little seeds in our yogurt cups in the house about 2 weeks before we were planning to transplant them outside. Our cute little plants sprouted very nicely in their cups. When the time was right and they all had their second set of leaves we made the move to the great outdoors. They took off. The only problem is the cup we had marked as yellow squash turned out to be a zucchini plant. Plus the one marked zucchini turned out to be zucchini too. So now I have zucchini coming out my ears, but no yellow squash. *cry* I have 7 sitting on my counter ready to be eaten and more that will be ready to be picked tomorrow and the next day and the next day and on and on. So I have been racking my brain with creative ways to eat the stuff. Here are a few of my ideas.

* Grate it with a cheese grater into your favorite spaghetti sauce just before you start to heat it up. the kids will never know it's there!

* Grate it into taco filling. We had this tonight with chicken tacos. It worked really well. Beef ones would work too. I sauteed garlic and onions then added the diced chicken. As the chicken was browning I grated the zucchini right into the pan. By the time the chicken was done so was the zucchini. I added 1/2 a taco seasoning packet. I rolled the filling up in tortillas with cheese, lettuce, sour cream and diced tomatoes (also from the garden). It was out of this world, crazy good.

* Top homemade pizza with thinly sliced zucchini, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions and olives for a healthy veggie pizza. Or add pepperoni too if you like!

* Slice into 1/4 inch circles and saute in a little olive oil with onions and garlic. When it is nearly done throw in a freshly diced tomato. Cook just until the tomato is warmed, not too long or the tomato will get mushy and gross. Season with salt and pepper. Top with Parmesan cheese for a yummy side dish. Don't over cook the zucchini or it will get really slimy.

* Zucchini boats. Cut a few in half length wise and scoop out the innards. Mash the innards (is that a word) in a bowl with a clove of fresh crushed garlic and salt and pepper and Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs (I make my own bread crumbs from the heals of our bread loaves. I put them in the blender until they are crumbs). Scoop this mixture back into the hollowed out zucchinis (like deviled eggs). Bake at 350 until tender. Or you can through them on the grill to cook with your burgers for a great BBQ side.

* Slice thinly and add them to your omelet with other fresh veggies and cheese.

* The classic zucchini bread, of course.

* Grate one up into most any baked item. Brownies, corn bread, just try what you like. If the kids ask what the funny green things are lie, lie like there is no tomorrow. Tell them you have no clue how those mysterious green bits got in there. Assure them it still tastes good. And it will. You can not even taste them, unless you go over board, of course.

* Add to soups like beef stew, chicken noodle. But who really eats soup in this heat? Not me!

* Who can forget fried zucchini?

* Dice and freeze for later use.

* If all else fails give them away.

* If you neighbors will not take them any more take them to church with you and sneak them into the cars whose windows are down. Tie a cute note to it and pretend it came from someone else.

What do you do with your zucchini? What is your favorite way to eat it? Do you eat it? Or do you gag at the mere thought of the stuff. Help me come up with other awesome ways to eat this overly excited vegetable.

Home Grown Goodness

Aren't those tiny seeds so cute in those tiny dirty hands?

Here is a little bit about what I have been dreaming about lately.

Home Grown Produce
And lots of it.

I want a vegetable garden with lots of tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, yellow squash, corn, bell peppers and carrots.

We got our garden spot all tilled and ready to plant. We bought our seeds and then we put those tiny seeds in the ground. We watered. I always buy my tomatoes in plant form and not seed form. I have not had much luck starting them from seeds. One of the ones I got this year already had blossoms on it. by the time we planted it in the ground it had a tiny tomato. Cute, huh?

Now all of our seeds have come up except the carrots. For some reason we can never get carrots to grow. Sad, I know.

I guess we will be eating baby carrots pre-washed and packaged for another year until we try again.

This is our dirt before we planted anything. It's pretty, huh? I just has to take a picture of the pretty dirt.

We also have a strawberry patch. It needs to be much bigger though. They are doing so well this year. We had tons of blossoms and now we have tons of teeny tiny berries. We have 2 grape vines, but I want more. I want to add raspberries but I need to find a good spot for them. That may have to wait until next year. This year my dream is an orchard.
I Want Fruit Trees
And lots of them

We have a large front lawn and it takes entirely too much time mowing and keeping up with it. It has always been my dream to have lots of fruit trees. Then one day I had a vision, if you will, of my little orchard.

I am going to turn my front yard into an orchard! I figure what is the point of that huge front yard that we just have to mow all the time and the kids can't really play there because it is too close to the road. Plus it will hide our house from the cars driving past. So we are going to get rid of the walnut trees that are there since we are allergic and all the nuts always go to waste. We will plant one row of trees each year. Under the row of trees we will put down that black stuff to keep weeds out and wood chips on top, then curbing along the edges. So by the time we are done we will have strips of lawn to mow and we will not have to go around every tree with the mower. I want cherry trees, apricot, peach, apple, and pears...and plums.

The kids will be able to go outside and just have snacks when all the different fruit is ripe.

Hopefully we will have enough left over to can in the fall. I want to be busy in the kitchen with my kids peeling, slicing, canning all that glorious fruit right beside me.

For now it is just a dream, although we are planning to plant the first row on Saturday. Now to decide what to plant first. How will I ever chose? It will be at least a year until they start producing fruit. I figure as our kids grow so will our little orchard. By the time they are teenagers we will have lots of help with all the trimming, spraying, harvesting, and canning. Not to mention the eating! Oh, yum! I can't wait for this dream to come true!

Busy Days

I LOVE busy days. You know, the ones when you kook at the clock and you go, "Wow, it's almost noon already!"

The ones when every one is having fun together and every one is happy and you don't want to stop what you're doing to make lunch. That is us today. We have all been working in the yard all morning and just enjoying being together. Even Baby Cakes.

There is a lot of playing going on too.

So, I'm still trying to get this blog thing figured out. I need to figure out how to post pictures in the top of my page. I know how to post them in a post but not up at the top. Still trying to work out the bugs, but it is fun.

Dubs is doing so much better with pooping in the potty. He wanted a tiny bottle of water that a friends of my Darling husband brought over. I told him he could only have it after he pooped

IN THE TOILET

(I knew it was coming any moment, funny how you just know those things about your kids).

And it worked! YIPPEE!

I also gave him a Hot Wheel and he got so excited. He did it 2 more times that day and has been doing it every since. Cross your fingers that it continues to work. We also rejoiced in the fact that his poop got to go live with all it's other poopy friends way down in the toilet. He likes his poop to be happy and not all sad squished in his unders.

I like it much better too.