How does your garden grow ?

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

I have no clue what made me think of that, but I started saying that old rhyme as I was taking these pictures :)

I am getting excited thinking of all the recipes and food I will be able to make and store up. Being as I have over 20 tomato plants I will hopefully be making a lot of pasta sauce, Salsa, and stewed tomatoes for adding to recipes later.
If you have any recipes that use a lot of tomato I would love it if you would share! ;-)


These are yellow zucchini. I am really liking the way the plant looks. It's kinda got a white variegated pattern on the leaf.




Tomatoes


These are squash plants the mom bought and then gave to me.


Lemon Basil and marigolds to help keep out the bugs.



This is one of the red sunflowers. am still just thrilled to see what the blooms will look like.



Squash. As you can tell weeds don't really bother me all that much :)


Cucumbers. I just added the trellis thing for them to climb on today so they aren't looking their best in this picture.



More surprise sprout-lings ! I found them growing the the side of our yard. They are either watermelons or bird nest gourds. I am hoping for watermelons, we had gourds grow in our yard freewill several years ago and they took over a huge part of the yard. One good thing about them though is they would get the loveliest white blooms the size of your hand that would only bloom while it was dark. Big night hawk moths were all over the place.

Honey & Jam

Here is a really good cooking blog I found recently.
She takes lovely pictures and her recipes are to die for !

Honey & Jam

Here is her recipe for Oatmeal Cream Pies :) Soo good.


Enjoy !

Free Classic Audio books

I have been trying to find some affordable classic audio books for Collin and Ashley to listen to and I came across this site ! I was so excited :D

LibriVox

There are about 50 pages of titles but here are just a few ;-)


A Little Princess
The last of the Mohicans
The Red Badge of Courage
Robinson Crusoe
Bleak house
Don Quixote
Manalive
The hound of the Baskerville's
The Count of Monte Cristo
Captains courageous By Kipling
The Red House mystery
The tragedy of Macbeth
Crime and Punishment
The Black Arrow
Kidnapped
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea
Freckles
Sir Gawain and the green Knight



I did say just a few right ? Right.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Muffins

I made these the other day and they were simply to die for ! I can't wait to make more and I think I might even change it up to be blueberry. But I loved the strawberry. So, I think I will have to make both. ;-)





2 cups all -purpose flour
3/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 baking soda
6 tablespoons butter. Chilled , cut up
1 cup chopped strawberries
3/4 cup plus 2 table spoons buttermilk
1 egg
1 pkg. cream cheese cut into pieces

1. Heat oven to 400. Grease bottoms of of muffin tins. In a medium bowl stir together flour, 3/4 cup of the sugar, baking powder and baking soda. With pastry blender or two knifes, cut in the butter until mixture is crumbly. Stir in strawberry's.



2. In small bowl, whisk together buttermilk and egg until blended.
Gently stir buttermilk mixture into flour mixture just until combined.
Divide evenly among muffin tins. Dip cream cheese pieces in 2 tablespoons of sugar; place in the center of each muffin. Press cream cheese to be level with batter. (Do not cover cream cheese with batter) Sprinkle muffins with remaining sugar.





3. Bake 20 to 25 or until light golden brown and toothpick inserted in to the center comes out clean. ( Do not put tooth pick in cream cheese !) Cool on wire rack 10 min. Remove from pan ; serve warm or at room temp. Store in refrigerator.



Per Muffin :
235 calories
9.5 g protein
34 g Carbohydrates
40 mg cholesterol
155 mg sodium
1 g fiber

Tortilla Soup

I could probably live of this soup for a month ~ It is just soo good ! It has cilantro so that automatically means I love it. Oh and if you add lime juice... ;-)


------------Tortilla Soup--------------------------------
From the kitchen of: Tiffany Hebert

Ingredients:
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
2 red bell pepper, chopped
2 onion, chopped
3 jalapeno pepper, chopped, with or without seeds
1 bunch green onion, chopped
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 6lb, 6 oz can whole tomatoes, blended until no large pieces remain, with juice
4-5 cups cooked chicken, chopped
shredded cheese, to serve
sour cream, to serve
lime, to serve
avocado, diced, to serve

Directions: Heat oil in large pot; add bell pepper, onions, jalapeño, cilantro and garlic. Sauté until very soft. Meanwhile blend tomatoes in blender, or with stick blender, until no large pieces remain. Add tomatoes and spices to pot; bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Add chicken and simmer 30 minutes. Serve hot.

$50 Rivers & Co. Gift certificate contest !

My Brother has started a new business making custom and pre-made jewelry.
He has been doing this for almost 3 years now and really enjoys it !

It's all high quality materials, he uses precious and semi-precious stones.

http://riversandco.blogspot.com/

He is giving away a $ 50 gift certificate to Rivers & Co. on June 1st.
I wanted to let you know so you can come enter to win !

The rules say 1 entry per person.
If you post about it on your blog you get to enter twice. ( Please include link)
If you twitter about it you can enter 3 times :)
(Please include user name)

A cheaper cup of Coffee

I thought this was just too funny !

Calves

Here are the two calf's we had born this week.



The red one is a boy and the dark one is a girl.
We named the boy "Profit" and the girl "Pansy" :)
I am so glad we got a girl this year, the last 4 have been boys !

P.S. You can tell she is a girl by her long eye lashes ;-)

Hope Chest find !

I found these plates at Ikea last night.



Best part ? They were 49 cents a piece ! When I got home I looked up the original price online and it was 2.99 a plate !
I bought 6 dinner plates and 4 salad plates.I was thrilled to get such a great deal. I need to remember more often to look for things to put in my hope chest now.