It's Shelftember

You know I love participating in Shelftember- saving money on groceries. So here we go again.

So far I've:

inventoried our freezer, 

collected and used produce from our garden,

tried out new recipes using what we have (These chicken and dumplings are from a little book from our young married ward at BYU.),

made what I wanted from what we have (mmm, enchiladas, using falling apart corn tortillas and BLTs using homemade bread and tomatoes from our garden),

ground wheat to make homemade bread.  

You know, the usual. 

Po-Ta-To

August 19 was National Potato Day.

We ate Slow Cooker Swedish Meatballs (from A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 3, by Jordan Page) with rice and Bacon Ranch Potatoes (from Instant Cooking by Six Sisters' Stuff) and some cucumber from our garden. Yummmmm. 

A Few More Holidays

August 16 was Tell a Joke Day. We told jokes.

 

August 17 was I LOVE My Feet Day. I celebrated by appreciating my feet while I did different things. I love my feet because they help me get around to run errands, harvest vegetables and herbs, take the kids places. I love my feet.

August 18 was Bad Poetry Day. Jr. Jr. and I celebrated.

 

Jr. Jr.: 

I would choose to rhyme

But I don't wanna.

 

Me:

Good?

Not good.

This is not good.

This is bad.

Bad. 

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. 

Garden Update

Our garden did well while we were on our trips. While Jeremy was back in Utah for a week between fairs, he took out the dead bell pepper plant and put in a banana pepper plant. Mmmmm.

We've already been able to harvest a few things and use them. Woo hoo.

Pacific Northwest Trip 2026- Part 12

Tuesday morning we headed to the coast.

We stopped to see the sea lions at Cape Arago then headed to Shore Acres. 

Nichole got pictures of the sea lions. 

We had a lovely picnic in the mist and wind.

We spent some time in the botanical garden. 

Look at the teeny tiny leaves.

I got to take pictures of and with the monkey puzzle tree I grew up visiting when we would go to Shore Acres as children. 

My parents headed home so they could make dinner. The rest of us headed down to Simpson Beach. Because of the weather, we thought we might not even dip our toes in the cold Pacific Ocean, even though it's tradition. By the time we got down to the beach, though, the weather was beautiful and we spent more than a little time with our feet in the water. 

 

Beach! 

 

Make me a mermaid! 

Sand Angel! 

And of course we got juggling pictures and videos.

 

We had an absolute blast. I love the ocean. I love the Oregon Coast.