It's raining... it's pouring...

and the "old dude" is sleeping. Or so says my 4 year old son :)

The rain is always so welcome here in Colorado. Tomorrow we will be cutting down a big tree in our backyard. We have just bought a Husky chainsaw for that purpose, it will be handy on the farm someday as well.

Since our fireplace doesn't really heat the house (no fireplace insert) we will be giving away the firewood for free, hopefully we can find some takers.

Gem Squash

Want to try something new in your garden next year?

Try get your hands on some gem squash seeds! If you can't find any drop me a line, I'd be happy to share a couple seeds with you :)

Gem squash is grown in South Africa and very similar in taste and texture to acorn squash, but half a gem is a perfect serving size, unless you happen to be in my family, then you'll need one squash per person!

Gems are round and smooth. You can pick them at any stage of their development. If you pick them when they are still very little then you can cook them whole and eat them seeds and all. If you let them get big but still green then they will be very tender and the skin will also be tender enough to eat if you want (like my kiddos!) Once they start getting a little orange then the skin becomes thicker and you can store them for a long time.



This is what gems look like as little bitty baby veggies.



And here they are, halved and ready for the oven. You can see the difference in the ages of the gems. The very yellow ones were allowed to riped and the skin to thicken. They make a good side dish no matter what their age!

Our favorite (indeed the only way we do!) way to cook them is to halve them and then place them cut side down on a cookie sheet with a little water in the bottom. Put in the oven at 375 F for about 45 minutes. You should be able to easily stick a fork through the skin once they are cooked. Don't let the pan dry out, top up with hot water if needed.... but don't mess cold water on the glass of your oven door in the process! The glass *will* crack very prettily, and this will happen just before Thanksgiving, leaving you without an oven. Ask me how I know! Ha!

Talk about getting sidetracked. Anyway, once the gems are done, you will remove them from the oven and then scoop out the seeds. If your gems are tender enough then the seeds will still be edible, so you can eat them if you like. We scoop out the seeds and then add a pat of butter and a teaspoon of sugar to each gem half.

A true taste of South Africa!

At a loss on what to do with all that zucchini?

Well, you're not alone! We're just about ready to start blanching ours and freezing it for the winter.

I saw an ad on craigslist this week for free zukes. We shared some with our neighbors today. I spend a lot of time visiting recipe zaar for zuke recipes and trying out new dishes.

Thankfully most of our family LOVES summer squash, so I can serve it in various ways and they will glady eat it - with the exception of our four year old who doesn't care for it too much.

One of the simplest ways we eat it is to simply roughly dice it and then fry it up in our cast iron pan, add some seasoned salt, black pepper and garlic and then cook 'til just tender. It's prettiest if you have a mixture of summer squash, like yellow ss, zukes and white scalloped ss. Throw in a few pieces of ripe tomato for a splash of red.

Good eating!

Playing catch up!

We had family visiting again for three weeks in August and we've been busy this summer as usual.. we don't seem to spend enough time *inside* to update our blog.

Our chicks have just starting laying and are proving to be extra noisy, I'm guessing they've learned well from our three older hens! We tried to put them in one area together but I had to break up a big fight so they are staying separated.

The chicks (okay, I *really* need to stop calling them chicks! ha!) are still little compared to the other 3 hens, but we'll take what we can get :)

Our garden is incredibly productive right now, we can go out daily and collect produce, it's great! Here's a photo of a small sampling from our garden.

Let's see, in the basket we have scalloped summer squash, zukes, yellow summer squash, yellow crookneck squash, a japanese cuke, various tomatoes, a poona keera cuke and a gem squash. There are other various veggies as well, not pictured here though.

What a blessing to be able to go out into our backyard and pick food for dinner... or go out in the morning and gather eggs for baking!