Birthday.

On Saturday my little sweet girl turned 16 years old. It's unbelievable how fast time flies by. It feels like just yesterday I was pregnant and here she is almost done high school thinking about which university to go to and when I think about it in few years she will be moving out and entering the world all by her self. 

Yesterday we had family over, and I made few thing like hummus, veggies with dip, home made salsa with chips, layer tuna salad (recipe coming soon) and of course cake. 

 

Loafs.

Yesterday I had a baking day, some days I feel like baking all day long, so I made few loafs; banana loaf, blueberry loaf and mini yogurt loafs.

 

Drying herbs.

I don't remember when was the last I bought dry herbs, I always make sure that I plant enough to dry until next season. This year my husband made for me few trays that fit nicely one on top of the other, for drying loose leaves. So beside hanging herbs to dry I have extra space when there is a lot of them, a specially on the end of season when I need to cut down everything in the garden.

 

In my kitchen.

I love cooking and baking  and I try new things all the time but sometimes the simplest things are the most delicious, like eggs for breakfast,

and blueberry perogies for dinner,

and two colour jello for dessert.

 

 

Tomatoes.2.

Yesterday I finished canning  the last tomatoes, I made 25 250ml jars of salsa and another 19 500ml jars of sauce. 

 

Tomatoes.

I spend this weekend in the kitchen playing with tomatoes. I found a great deal on local tomatoes ($6.88 for 25lb case) so I got 6 cases and of I went. I made 24 1L jars of sauce, 24 500ml jars of canned tomatoes ( this is a new recipe, I will use them in soups), 5 500ml jars of dry tomatoes in oil and there is still salsa to come.

 

From my Garden.

Last week when I was watering the community garden I brought few tomatoes, peppers, basil and last radish. Everything is growing great, there is still plenty of tomatoes and basil and dill and few more peppers. 

And this morning I cut more herbs on my balcony. I also pulled out the sweet potatoes, few bigger ones but most of them are small. It's a big improvement from last year, I didn't get any just lots of leaves.

 

Peaches.

This weekend I made some peach jams, two ways. One was from a recipe from a book that called for 5 cups of sugar, which I think is way to much so I reduced it to 3 cups and the jam tastes much better, (I don't like anything really sweet). The second one I made my own way, like I do all my jams using special pectin that calls for 1kg of fruit and 350g of sugar. It is less sugar and you actually taste the fruit, but problem with this one is that it works well only with dark fruit and with light ones, after while, the jam turns brownish colour. So to prevent that I processed the jams in boiling water, which I never do with the dark fruits, I just put really hot jam into really hot jars and turn it up side down. You can see the difference in the colour of the jam, the one with more sugar is brighter.   

 

In my Garden.

It's unbelievable how fast time flies, summer is coming to the end and I can see that in my garden. Its getting empty in here, today I will pull out the cucumbers and plant more basil in its place. Soon I will also dig out the sweet potato and after that I will only have herbs left, and the strawberries which are still producing some fruit.