It's not bars of gold, nor shares of stocks, nor fancy jewelry that makes me feel wealthy. It's an abundant garden.
Today was apple picking day for our early apples. This apple tree is an overachiever. It outdoes itself each year, giving my family buckets of apples. I filled 3 produce drawers with apples today and there are still more on the tree. I think this is the most apples we've had in a season from this tree. It's a good thing this tree is so productive, as our two late season apples don't do as well. (But they're great pollinators.) Early apples are generally not good keepers. Along with our abundance of cabbage, we'll be eating apples morning, noon, and night from now until mid-September. I also collect all of the apples that I knock off, or dropped, and cut off bruises, chop the good parts, and freeze those in chunks. I have 3 gallon ziplock bags in the freezer of apple chunks. I use the frozen chunks in sautéed spiced apples to serve as a side dish in fall and winter. So, in one way or another, we'll be eating our own tree apples from now until next spring.
As with the apples, we're eating cabbage daily, too. Tuesday's cabbage was raw with grated carrots in a salad topped with a fresh basil dressing at lunch and stuffed cabbage rolls at dinner. Yesterday's cabbage was raw in a Thai slaw at lunch and shredded, cooked, in a beef and vegetable soup. Today's cabbage was the vegetable component of fried rice for 3 at lunch time, and, surprise, no cabbage in tonight's dinner. (We needed to also eat the abundant Swiss chard.)
In addition to the apples and cabbage, we have kale yet to pick, 100 or so garlic bulbs to dig later this month, and I now have 8 pumpkins and 11 winter squash in the pumpkin patch! These are my worldly riches. I'd rather have abundant good food than any other worldly good or service.
I feel so blessed.
You truly ARE blessed and it is so good to see that in these crazy times. I feel exactly the same way. (Although I am in an ongoing war with squash bugs.) With a little coaxing, our garden is doing well so we have fresh each night and I squirrel a bit away for the winter. It's like seeing our wood supply as the same as cash, so it is with the garden. Not to mention the feeling of satisfaction, security and thankfulness.
ReplyDeleteHi Judy,
DeleteWe are both blessed.
Good luck with the battle with the squash bugs. So far I haven't had to deal with those, but we have our share of other pests in the garden.
The way you see your wood supply, equivalent to cash, I think that way about our food supply. It's money I won't have to spend some time in the future, should there be significant inflation or a significant drop in income.
Have a great weekend, Judy!
There are many different ways that our riches can be counted and good food is one of them. And especially when it comes from hard work of growing it yourself. And you are certainly a blessing to your family in providing such good food for them. Not many people would bother to use cabbage so many different ways. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Live and Learn,
DeleteWell, I think of providing good food for my family (and friends) as my job, as well as a way I can bless others. Looking for ways to use the same ingredients allows me to exercise my creativity, and therefore makes my job more enjoyable. There are days when I feel blah. But when I start to think of new ways to use tired old ingredients, it lifts the blahs from my mind. Cabbage has been a challenge, though. But cabbage is what did well this year, so I have to work with it. I will say that homegrown cabbage is so much better and versatile than the types grown for stores. It's tender and mild, like lettuce almost. It's good on sandwiches and tacos, believe it or not.
Have a wonderful rest of your weekend, Live and Learn.
Love this!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Kris!
DeleteIf you don’t already, be sure to use those apple peels and cores to make your own apple cider vinegar. Super easy to do. Look online for the steps, but basically apple scraps in a large jar (I use a one gallon wide mouth), fill with water, cover the mouth with a double fold of paper towels, rubber band it on, and give everything a stir once a day. It’s a fermentation process and produces excellent ACV for free. Annie
ReplyDeleteHi Annie,
DeleteThank you so much for mentioning this. Making ACV has been on my "list" for several years. My plan has been to use some live ACV as a starter. Every year I tell myself I'll do this, but then get carried away with other stuff. I will definitely do it this year! Thank you.
Have a great weekend, Annie!