Cooking From Our Garden

We've been enjoying the fruits (or vegetables) of our labors and making some yummy meals from what's been growing in our garden.  We had an explosion of ripe tomatoes all at the same time, so I figured sauce was in order:

 Ingredients: Red Bell Peppers, Onions and 5 pounds of tomatoes

To peel the tomatoes I boiled them for a minute and then plunged them in an ice bath - the skins just peeled right off.  We grew several varieties of tomatoes, but these little grape ones (which grew like gangbusters) were such a pain to de-seed.  They are obviously not the preferable variety to use for sauce, but they sure are yummy and plentiful.

This was more of a "garden" sauce because I also added carrots and celery.

And a couple of days later I made chicken parmigiana with the sauce.  I think it was one of my all-time favorites, so delicious!

I forgot to take a pic before we started eating, so sorry for showing you a half eaten meal!  Cora loved it too!

Next was a Butternut Squash and Corn Gratin:

We had two big butternut squashes and one went to make baby food and a roasted chicken and vegetable dish and the other one I used to make this Gratin recipe that I pulled out of a magazine in 2004 (the date was on the recipe)!!  Did it really take me me 8 years to make this??  

Can't believe I waited so long, it was delicious and a big hit!

Our neighbors behind us also have a garden and where tomatoes have been our success, cucumbers have been theirs, so we did a nice little swap.  We traded a basket of grape tomatoes and a bell pepper and several Italian roasting peppers for 5 cucumbers - a fair trade I think :)  We ate one in a salad, gave one to Grammy and used the other three to make pickles:

We love pickles around here and I have to say, we all agreed that these were probably the best pickles we've ever had (and I'm not exaggerating).  I found a refrigerator dill pickle recipe on Pinterest, Wes and I made them one afternoon and we were enjoying them on sandwiches two days later.  We'll definitely be growing cucumbers next year!