Fruit and Vegfull

Friday's garden harvest!

The first tomatillos of the season! Along with some beans, chives, and parsley.

The tomatoes and basil.

The haul of squash, 8 more! Zucchini 100: 73 + 8 = 81 to go!

Here are the bumpy gourds we found at the farmer's market yesterday. (That's the wall I painted last week behind them) Also at the market this week, we found terrific local oysters from the Washington coast. We BBQed them up for Saturday's dinner along with some spicy sauce, a pot of fresh corn from the market, potatoes from our garden, and cherry tomatoes (garden). We also found some long thin yellow beans from the Root Connection farm, berries, raspberry lavender sauce, potatoes, and a yellow heirloom tomato.

Yesterday evening, we went for a walk along the Sammamish river. As we were drinking our evening coffee, we noticed all the ripe blackberries on the bushes. As we finished our drinks, we filled our cups with juicy berries which I froze for use later in the winter.

This morning, we decided to pick blackberries near the same location for jam. (Local food foragers are free to pick berries in our local county parks where the bushes are unsprayed.) We set out with our buckets to see how many we could pick. We had a contest to see who could fill their bucket first. We found a mathematical correlation between picking the most and getting stuck the most by the pricklers. I picked the most and needed the most Bactine and bandages. (ouch!) We turned our berry bounty into 2 apple-blackberry cobblers and 14 jars of jam! yum!

Our jam making was a real win-win. Many of the jars were garage sale finds from our friend Lisa, the berries were free foraged, and the water used in processing the jam will be reused to water our plants tomorrow!