The Fruits of our Labors (or someone else's labors.)

I can take no credit whatsover for this produce. Isn't it gorgeous?? The apples came from a tree in our backyard. A tree I have largely ignored for the 4 years we have lived here. And this year it produced gorgeous, delicious fruit. I think it's pretty just sitting in the bowl! (If only I had Martha Stewart's photographers and lighting technicians to catch the true beauty.) And for once I can have something live on my dining room table that doesn't trigger Michael's allergies.

Then: A neighbor gave us tons of grapes from their yard. They'd been eating grapes for the past 2 months and didn't want anymore. So they let us pick 4 BIG bowls full. I decided to attempt to make grape juice. Last fall I overheard a lady talking about how she makes a year's supply of grape juice every fall, and I thought, "Oh, I could never do something that domestic." Then this fall I saw my mom do it and realized how E-A-S-Y it was and I thought I might actually be capable of doing it. . .

. . . And . . . I did it! I actually made grape juice! I made 11 quarts - which doesn't seem like as much as it should considering how long I had that juicer going - but I am still proud of it. I think there would have been 12 quarts, but we drank a lot right out of the juicer. It is SOOOO good!

Before:


During:
After: Ta-dah! It really wasn't hard at all. My only recommendation - don't let the plastic tube fall on the stove burner and melt 4 inches of it while at the same time filling your kitchen with toxic smoke. Especially when the juicer belongs to your kind neighbor. Argh. I'm so stupid. Fortunately I could just cut-off the plastic part that was melted and re-attach the end valve, but now the tubing is 4 inches shorter. I did confess to my neighbor and she is an understanding soul. She had done the same thing to her mother's juicer. Phew.

This was our best vegetable harvest in the past few years. And I take great pleasure and pride in it. I finally realized that I am officially a tomato-snob. I can no longer eat grocery store tomatoes. They literally make me gag. But home-grown ones are heaven!! So for the past few summers I've tried, with not so successful results, to home-grow some. Mainly because I had nursing babies or really little ones whose audible cries were more critical than the non-audible cries of the tomato plants (who were probably crying none-the-less.) Well, this year I tried our plants in a new sunny spot, actually remembered to water them, and: VOILA! Deliciouso. The little ones are Sweet Hundreds. SO GOOD! And in other culinary experiments I tried roasting cherry tomatos for the first time. And they were GOOD! And it was so easy. Here is a great explanation.And here are our cute little white mini-pumpkins. I love white pumpkins and I love mini-pumpkins and I can't believe I grew my own hybrid!! Thank you Gregor Mendel. Amazing! This was not the original plan, but by the time I got myself down to the nursery in the spring (read June) most of the plants for the regular, larger, orange pumpkins were gone. But they had these ones so we gave them a whirl. Yea! They are very adorable. Almost as cute as my own children.