End of Summer Update
How is your summer going? Mine has seemingly flown by! My garden was pitiful with the exception of my herbs and berries, which did wonderfully 🙂 I’m sure forgetting to water and fertilize had nothing to do with my lack of produce, lol.
However, I was able to score 65 pounds of tomatoes at a great price from a local greenhouse and for 2 days (mornings actually) I was busy putting them up. I actually love canning produce, though with 3 young ones running around it can be slightly hectic. The first day I put up half my tomatoes and it made 10 quarts of crushed tomatoes for soup and chili this winter. I canned these in jars. Jake helped with getting each lid and ring out of the hot water.
The next day, my wonderful Mom came over and played and read to the kids while I used the pressure canner to put up a mixture of tomato base with beans and hamburger for easy chili, taco soup, ect… I cannot express how much her help meant to me! And of course the kids loved it too 🙂
I also froze some plain tomatoes that I ran through the food processor and added vinegar and salt to for soup bases. I was able to put up another 12 quarts that day.
My kids are growing like weeds. Lately, its been cooler so they’ve been spending lots more time outside. Gabe and Lilly love the sandbox and Jake has built a gymnastics area out of Lilly’s swingset and rope and some other items. He and Gabe perform circus tricks on them, which while really fun for them, is also great exercise, strength training and balance practice!
I had my first midwife visit and everything looked great. I’m almost 15 weeks along and the heartbeat was 170. I keep thinking I look 6 months pregnant instead of almost 4 but when its your 4th you do show really early.
Over the weekend we made our first attempt at outdoor dutch oven pizzas. They tasted really good, but my crust was too thick. The next time I’ll use a recipe for thin crust. Dennis likes his dutch oven to cook with so well we bought him another one that was deeper. Maybe I can just get him cooking all the time, lol.
So, that’s what we’ve been up to lately. How about you?