Vendor Fair prize

This year's vendor fair at the Chateau was filled with even more vendors than last year. If you have never gone to a vendor fair in Branson...it's like one-stop shopping. You can get everything that you need for your show there. There are people that sell things from air conditioning to graphic printing to food and more. We have even found a plumber for our home from this fair.

One of the other perks of the vendor fair is the fact that you can win prizes! YAY PRIZES! This is what I won last year. VERY COOL! We don't drink coffee so we use it for herbal teas and my brother's family used it for coffee when they visited.

This year I won this nifty wreath. As you can see, Kahlan is already having a blast with it.

Hope our luck holds out next year. =)

9/22/2010 Garden Update

This is actually from Adam's parent's garden. We still have cherry tomatoes growing but we haven't picked them in a few weeks. DOH! These are the sweet potatoes that they have growing in the front. We have never planted potatoes before but I think we'll try some next year. We will probably skip planting the cantaloupes and use that section for potatoes. It took me a little while to harvest a few sweet potatoes because I kept digging in the wrong spot. I was eaten alive by bugs in the process but.....so worth it!
I only picked a few of them to try them out. The smallest one in the picture is about the size of a golf ball.
This one was a bit funky looking. =)

9/1/2010 Garden Update: WATERMELONS!!!

It's watermelon time y'all !!!!!! THIS is why I love heirloom watermelons! Aren't the colors just fabulous?!?! Here are the last watermelons of the season. As per usual, these all went to our family. We had already passed out a few to our neighbors....these are the ones left after that.
Here is a picture of the Orangelo. It was so incredibly orange. VERY cool looking, however, I still like the taste of the yellow better. This year the yellow was much sweeter, in my opinion. The Crimson Sweets didn't do as well because the vines got attacked by beetles. Arggg. That's what we get for having an organic garden. Well, that and the fact that I was too lazy to go out there and treat them with organic bug killing techniques. We'll make sure to do that next year.

Yep, I'm sitting ON the watermelons. Not too comfortable. LOL

8/22/2010 Garden Update

I haven't been posting a lot of our tomato pictures this year because they look like the pictures that I posted last year. =) We are still harvesting a ton of our Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes and the yellow pear shaped ones. As you can see, the tallest plant is at least 10 feet tall. It would probably be taller if we had a way to support the top vines. I'm a whopping 5'3" so you can see how much taller it is than I am, even on my toes. I've been mainly making the raw tomato sauce and freezing it for later this year. We've brought several bags to the theatre to share with our family too.

8/19/2010 Garden Update

These are the watermelons that we picked today. Kahlan decided to sit amongst the yumminess. The longer one is called an Orangelo. I CAN NOT wait to cut that one open next week. I want to see exactly how orange a watermelon can get. =) The other stripey one is a Crimson Sweet and the other is a Missouri Yellow. We like to wait for a few days before we cut them. I'm not sure if it's true, but.....in my mind they seem to get a little sweeter when we do that.
Here I am trying to sneak under the netting that we put up.

Adam cutting open the 32.2 pound Missouri Yellow.
NOM!!!!

8/13/2010 Garden Update

We picked 3 more watermelons today. Adam carried the bigger ones. =) These ones are the Heirloom Missouri Yellow Flesh Watermelons. Hopefully they are as yummy as "the Bean".
This is the main section of our melons that are left to harvest. To the right was where the Golden ones were and to the right of those are the Ali Babas and the Orangelos. These are the Crimson Sweets and the Missouri Yellows.
This was the biggest of the day! The other ones were 22.2 lbs and 15.8 lbs. As per usual, as kitty must be in the picture. This time Chewie wanted camera time.
Kahlan having fun on her new toys.
This was the cutting of "the Bean" AKA the Jelly Belly Melon from a few days ago. It was yummy!!!!

Raw Pasta Sauce Recipe

I am in love with this recipe. This raw pasta sauce is SO easy to make, healthy and SO YUMMY! Trust me, if you have garden tomatoes, you NEED to try it. I even gave some to our meat and potatoes neighbors and they loved it! Cindy found a recipe online but I am not sure what the source is so I can't credit it. I changed it a bit actually so....here is my take on the recipe.
6 tomatoes ( I used 6 two-handed scoops of our cherry tomatoes)
Handful of sun-dried tomatoes
1 small onion
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup fresh basil
1 T Rosemary
1/2 cup Olive Oil
1 t salt
1 T Balsamic Vinegar
4 pitted dates
Handful of cashews
Black pepper to taste

You will need a food processor or blender. Cut tomatoes and onions to proper size to blend. I love that you don't need to peel the skin off. The cherry tomatoes made this even faster. =)
Put everything in and whiz it all up. TADA. You're done!

It's great as a dip and on pasta. It's also good heated up but way healthier if you just eat it room temperature. I'm not quite sure how good it would be with store bought tomatoes because in my opinion those taste awful. Garden tomatoes or farmer's market ones would be best.

ENJOY!!!

8/9/2010 Garden Update

This update will be all about the watermelons. =) We picked all of the Royal Golden Watermelons. They look pretty cool when you slice them open because the rinds are nice and golden yellow while the flesh is red. We are trying to avoid the crows attacking them, as usual, hence the newspaper in the background of the picture. We wrapped them for a few days since I didn't have time to buy the bird netting. It actually worked! I forgot to wrap our one cantaloupe and it was attacked....the watermelons were unscathed.
We picked a total of 5 Royal Goldens. The largest one was 20.4 pounds.
We also picked an Ali Baba Watermelon AKA my Jelly Belly Watermelon. We are waiting to cut this baby up...we need to finish the one we cut up yesterday. TeeHee
Jelly Belly was a whopping 28.6 pounds. Every single one of the pictures that we have taken, while weighing a watermelon, comes complete with Kahlan.
I finally had a chance to go to Home Depot to pick up the bird netting. Adam had to pound the metal poles in with the back of an axe. Wahoooo. We tied the netting to the poles and are hoping that this will be enough to keep the crows out.

We found a cute bunny amongst the melons today. Unfortunately he is eating the plants. Grrrrrr. Shotgun anyone???