Garden's Bounty

I am thrilled with how our garden has done so far this year.

Jet wanted to pose with our most recent garden picture.

 

I'm also thrilled with what we've done with what our garden has produced. 

I cut a bouquet of basil and made homemade pesto (a couple times). The recipe came from Shelf Cooking 101 by Jordan Page.

Some I froze to be used later. Some I used to make pesto alfredo. Oh, that's yummy.

We've used banana peppers in sandwiches and in salads.

 

We ate one cucumber and have more to use. We're still figuring out cucumbers.

 

We've used jalapenos for various things including mini jalapeno popper egg rolls, which I love so much, but didn't get a picture this time because they didn't last long and got all gobbled up. 

 

We used zucchini to make zucchini bread- LOTS of zucchini bread. 

This year since we actually grew zucchini early enough, I took some of that zucchini and on August 8, I baked zucchini bread. Then I put some bread on a friend's porch and sent her a message saying, "Happy Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Night. Look on your porch." I didn't actually want the zucchini bread to sit there all night and it was fine that she knew it was us. She likes my zucchini bread so I like to give her some when I bake enough.

 

We also harvested enough tomatoes (and basil) to make homemade spaghetti sauce, which we used in more slow cooker beef lasagna (from Six Sisters' Stuff). 

I am so happy with our garden this year. 

Movie Night!

June 12 was National Movie Night. I was so busy that day. There was pizza dough in the fridge so I told the kids to make pizza and to put fresh basil on it. I got basil from our garden that morning for that reason.

I also told the kids to decide on a movie to watch for Movie Night. They picked Matilda so we watched that while eating pizza and I completely forgot about us having popcorn during the movie. Nobody else mentioned it. Jr. did make some cookies, though. 

Matilda was also a good choice because June 12 was Magic Day. 

 

Another day, I used fresh basil again in a pasta dish.

 

Basil Rathbone

This is a basil plant. I brought it home from a Relief Society activity. As soon as Jr. saw it, he started calling it, Ba-sil instead of Bay-sil. That led to us saying, "Basil Rathbone," so I decided to name the plant Basil Rathbone, pronounced however you want to. Ba-sil or Bay-sil. It's the pun that counts.