Bounty

We are easy to grow

Well, the garden has officially exploded. Today alone I bagged three quarts of halved Sungold tomatoes for the freezer; the other tomatoes are still just limping along, so I figured I had better make the best of it.

I've harvested the first crop of tomatillos, and now I'm thinking I had better go to the grocery store to get some tortillas and such. I think it'll be catfish tacos tonight.

I pulled four ears of sweet corn. We'll see how they are; we are definitely sharing them with a very overzealous pack of Japanese beetles. Frankly, though, after my dismal failure last year, I am thrilled to have any corn at all. Maybe it's the big, easy-to-cross-pollinate block of corn I planted; maybe it's the weather; or maybe it's the interplanting of purple-hull peas that has helped this time. Whatever it is, we have corn where previously we had none. So hurrah!

A friend has photocopied a couple of pages for me from this aptly named cookbook because we needed the excellent recipe for cold cucumber soup. She made it for us once, and it's genius. You cook most of the soup ahead of time and freeze it. Then another day, perhaps when you are not quite so inundated with produce, you thaw it out, stir in some sour cream and a grated cuke, and you have something totally delicious to eat.

Lastly, I've dusted off the food dehydrator. It's currently humming away, sucking the moisture out of a few handfuls of cayenne peppers. The whole house smells spicy!