Taking Advantage of Some Cool Weather

One of the problems with this experiment--and I would be the first to admit that there are several--is that harvesting the garden & canning all these great, nutritious, additive-free foods needs to happen when it's insanely hot here. I can't even imagine the brave women who did this without air-conditioning. No real challenge to guess why people pounced on the idea of buying already canned foods.

The last two days have been unseasonably cool & rainy, so pouncing on the opportunity do take care of a few things without roasting, I baked zucchini bread
which one is probably morally bound to make when one grows zucchini, and "zingerbread" for Monday's Soup Nightwhich would fall more under the "being a smarty-pants about zucchini" category. I've never actually made real gingerbread, but does it normally involve coffee and molasses? It's a VERY dark cake.

Since our tomatoes have produced ONE red tomato as of yet and the jalapenos are going crazy, I pickled some of the jalapenos:and have been out giving pep talks to the tomatoes.

I also picked our first buttercup squashwhich is our first "winter" squash to be harvested this year. I can't really figure out if this was "ripe" or not. The pictures all show a dark green squash that looks like this, and there were 4 on the plant and none seemed to be getting any bigger, so I assumed they are full size & mature, or at least close enough. Some people claim buttercup squash is so sweet that it tastes great plain, but those are people who like squash a whole lot more than I do. I like it for what can be made out of it, but not just plain. However, it made a killer squash-garlic-Gorgonzola soup today for lunchAnd everything has been supervised by my sidekickwho finds rainy days a good excuse for a nap. Like everything else in life.