Monday, August 1, 2011

A Little Bit of Everything......

Happy Monday!  I hope everyone had a great weekend and survived the heat.  Smoothies are really hitting the spot with me on these hot mornings.  This morning I had a green smoothie made with pineapple coconut water, which was delicious!

2 stems of kale (minus the stem)
a dash of cinnamon
a dash of ginger powder
1 cup pineapple coconut water
1/2 frozen banana
a handful frozen mango chunks
2 tablespoons hemp seeds

You know the drill...throw it all in a blender and blend until smooth and creamy....very yummy!


Sunday morning I made Happy Herbivores Apple Crisp Muffins.   These muffins are great!  They were so moist and and the chunks of apples in the muffins really made them the perfect muffin.  In case you don't have Lindsay's cookbook, the recipe can be found here  http://happyherbivore.com/recipe/apple-crisp-muffins/ .  I really suggest you try these.  :o)


Saturday night we decided to grill.  Tony grilled eggplant for me, which was out of our garden.  While it was on the grill I rubbed some Italian dressing on each side as Tony flipped them...very tasty!  We also grilled some asparagus, fresh corn, jalapeno poppers, and even a sweet potato.  I did cook the sweet potato half way in the microwave though.  I then wrapped it up in some aluminum foil and threw it on the grill.  It was awesome!  We also roasted some bell peppers on the top rack of the grill.  I have a yummy bell pepper in my plate below that we roasted.  He didn't get roasted as much as the others, but it was still good.  These little peppers are so sweet.   On the jalapeno poppers, Tony stuffed them with cream cheese (of course mine was vegan) and wrapped bacon around them (again...vegan bacon for me)   These were awesome!  Tony did scoop out the seeds because I can't handle all that heat.  :o)  It was great to not have to turn on the oven for once.  Every thing we ate Saturday night was cooked on the grill.


Here's some veggies out of our garden.

Roma's out of our garden...my favorite kind of tomato.

Yummy bell peppers.  I love that they are so tiny and sweet.

 Here's one one of our bell pepper plants.

Yellow squash...of course.

The squash bugs destroyed our squash plants this year.  After they had infected out plants the squash plant still tried to produce some squash but could only make the little squash balls.  At least we did get a few squash of the plants before they got infected and died.

This was the first bell pepper that we pulled off our plants...It was huge!

 Here are a few pictures of our little garden that we took several weeks ago.




Our garden has about produced all it's going to this year.  It's been so hot that the plants are dying.  They just aren't able to hang on any longer. Oh, has anyone ever made freezer pickles?  I picked the last of my cucumbers over the weekend and found a freezer bread and butter pickle recipe.  I didn't really have enough cucumbers to can more pickles, so I decided to give the freezer ones a try.  The recipe says to wait at least 2 weeks before trying them, so I'll let you know how those turn out.  :o)  I hope everyone has a great week!

~Peace~Love~Happiness~

9 comments:

  1. Your garden is looking really great, I hope you feel like you got enough from it this year!

    I've never heard of freezer pickles, but I am a fan of grilling everything when it's this hot. I grilled sweet potatoes last night too. I'll have to try your homemade popper - genius idea!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm so happy to see you posting again. I missed you!

    I keep reading about all of these different flavors of coconut water now, but have yet to see them. I don't like regular coconut water, but want to try them. The pineapple one sounds especially good, and thrown in a smoothie with frozen banana? Yum!

    All of your grilled food looks fantastic and I agree with Jessica- the poppers is a great idea!

    I'm going to put those muffins on my list of things to make. They sound like a great breakfast muffin.

    Your garden looks so green! Our wildflower garden is starting to die off, too, because of the intense heat. Makes me kind of sad, but the sunflowers are just starting to bloom, so it's all good.

    A co-worker of mine has made freezer pickles and really liked how they turned out. I'm sure they'll be delicious.

    I hope that Maggie is doing well. Give her lots of love for me!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your grilled dinner looks delicious! I love the idea of those little jalapeno poppers. And thanks for the garden update! So much gorgeous produce! I'm jealous of those peppers...magnificent. So far, I have two little peppers that are the size of a lima bean. :P

    I've never heard of freezer pickles! But, I'll be interested to hear how they work/turn out.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your garden looks great, well done! I never get bell peppers that big!

    Ciao
    Alessandra

    ReplyDelete
  5. Aw, it's nice to see how far yr garden has come along! The eggplant off the grill looks especially great.
    I've been meaning to try those muffins too but I always eat my apples!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I don't even like Eggplant, but it seems live growing one would be pretty difficult. They're so big. That is some successful gardening.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jessica, you should try the popper...they were so good. I love it when I don't have to turn the oven on...it gets the house so hot!

    Molly, thanks..I've missed you too. I found a bunch of different flavors of the coconut water at Kroger. I couldn't believe they had such a large selection of it.
    I think you will really like the muffins. Let me know when you try them.
    That's good to know that someone else tried the freezer pickles and they turned out good. I'll let you know how mine turn out.
    My sunflower is just starting to really bloom too. This heat is so hard on everything.
    Maggie is doing much better. She's back to Maggie before her surgery. :o)

    Thanks Rose...I bet your peppers are going to be gorgeous...just like everything you have! I'll let you know about the freezer pickles. If they turn out good, I'll post the recipe. :o)

    Thanks Alessandra!

    Maud, Funny that you always eat your apples. Ours seem to never get eaten....not sure why either...maybe because I get too lazy to peel them. I'm not a big fan of the peeling.

    Shen, It amazes me that you don't like eggplant! They are so easy to grow though. I thought they would be hard also, so I only planted one plant. I have gotten 3 eggplants off of it so far, and there are 3 more on the plant that will be ready before long.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Love this post--great smoothie recipe I'll definitely try, good tip on the HH muffins (haven't made them yet), and your garden looks awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  9. YAY for your beautiful garden, Michelle! And your smoothie sounds delicious.

    ReplyDelete