Sunday, June 14, 2015

Harvests!

I have been really seeing some of our gardening efforts playing out.  The blackberry bushes are almost done, and I had gotten 7 pies in the freezer before we went on the cruise (gave one to the neighbor who ran the tractor mower across our yard) and they are DELICIOUS!  (I baked the 8th one for us!)

Since I'm still recovering from my unfortunate run in with a new (to me) allergen, I stayed inside most of the day today, but here is some of what I accomplished!

The four ducks we have are laying regularly now, and we usually get 3 eggs, sometimes 4 a day!  They are SO beautiful!
The colors of the eggs are really lovely!  

A double yolker next to a normal sized duck egg.  Pretty fun!  Poor ducky butt!

We had 3 dozen eggs on the counter, and I decided to use up a bunch of them, so I made FOUR quiches this afternoon.  Some ham, some sausage, each one with a little different add-in list.  We even added some of our zucchini to one of them!

All four out of the oven!

After letting them cool (and tasting a couple pieces from one of them,) I cut them all up and wrapped them to put in the freezer.  

I'll let them stay in the freezer overnight until they are firm, then I'll gather them into some larger freezer bags so we can snag out one piece at a time as we want them.

While those were cooking and cooling, I grabbed a bunch of the zucchini and ran some through the shredder in the food processor, and got 9 bags of generous 2Cup portions to put in the freezer for zucchini breads later. (I'm going to have to get my sun oven out there... it's too hot to put it into the house!)  I figured I had enough shredded for now, and so sliced several more and put them into the dehydrator. 
I don't usually use all 9 racks at the same time, but I am this time!
I'll have them available as chips, or to toss into soups this Fall.  
I took a half dozen beautiful tomatoes off my vines and took them to the elderly neighbor to the SW of us since he told me most of his tomato plants failed this year.  He was really glad to get them, and they sent me home with about 25 yellow crooknecked squash!!  (Insert eye roll here!!)  I'll have to figure out what to do with them pretty darn quick!  I cruised through Pinterest for some ideas, and maybe I'll try some of them!  

I had a pretty productive day!
Thanks for reading!


4 comments:

  1. So, how do you like your Excaliber? That's on my wish list for when we get to our new place. No point buying it now - don't need it yet and don't want one more thing to pack and move. :)

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  2. I love my Excaliber! I also have the Nestco GardenMaster, and the Excaliber is my favorite of the two. I have a big load of tomatoes and peaches in there right now!

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  3. Wow! Look at those eggs! So pretty! Ok, before I got to the end I wondered what the heck you'd do with dehydrated zucchini? Love the soup idea, do you really eat them like chips?

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  4. Yes, Natalie! They really are good. If you lightly salt them before dehydrating, they are also really good. The dehydration concentrates the flavor and they are kind of sweet. I didn't dehydrate any shredded zucchini, but that is really good to add to meatloaf after partially rehydrating them. I'm so proud of my eggs, LOL!

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