Red Robin Date

Red Robin opened a restaurant in Twin Falls this summer. In order to train their staff before the grand opening they opened up 5 days of spots where people could come in, get a free meal, and let the staff practice on them.  I managed to get one of the spots and so Robert and I got to go on a free date! Each person got to pick an entree and drink. The table got to pick either a free appetizer or a free dessert. Plus they would surprise the tables with something else for free. So I got a Prime Rib dip on a gluten free bun and Robert got a burger with macaroni and cheese on it. We tried a couple of different drinks. Robert had purple lemonade. It had prickly pear syrup in it. He really liked it, I thought it was good, but super sweet. I tried a berry limeade. I really liked my drink. We were also given a strawberry lemonade to try. As we were eating our server brought us a strawberry shake that the bartender used for practice. It was super yummy! For our dessert we got some brownie sticks with a berry dipping sauce. I forget what they were called. I would go back again. There were a couple of other burgers on the menu that sounded interesting that I wouldn't mind trying. All in all, it was worth the drive for a free meal.

Robert hardly ever looks at the camera.

Wood Chips!

Have you ever wanted free mulch? Well the power company was going around and having trees cut that were close to power lines. The limbs were then either chipped or shredded. I asked the drivers what they did with it after that and was told that they just take it to the dump unless someone wants it. Well, I told them I wanted some.

I watched a documentary a couple years ago where they took wood chips and used them to mulch their garden and trees. It was very interesting and I wanted to try it out, but didn't know how to get that much mulch.

So far I put some in the chicken coop for bedding and we have started mulching around some of the trees. There is lots more work to do, though. It should be an interesting experiment to see if it makes any difference.

Bake Sale and the Blaine County Fair

Rachel has been asking me all summer long to have a yard sale. It finally worked out for us to have one at my brother Matt's house in connection with their yard sale last month. Friday found the girls busy in the kitchen baking cupcakes, cookies, and cake balls. Saturday morning we packed it all up and headed out.

Once we got there we also got to use Grandma Emmy's cotton candy machine and sell cotton candy also. You can use hard candy in her machine to make the cotton candy so we used Jolly Rancher's and we had blue raspberry, cherry, watermelon, green apple, and grape cotton candy.

After we got done with the yard sale we made a quick trip to the Blaine County Fair. We went through and saw all the fair entries and the pigs and sheep. I didn't go in to see the cows. The kids also got to ride the swing ride that was there and Rachel climbed up the climbing wall.

Apricots

This has been a good year for a lot of the fruit trees. Many neighbors had apricot trees that were loaded and some even had branches break under the weight of the fruit. We were able to help lighten the load for a couple of them.

We even used the van as a ladder! We went picking a couple of different times. The first batch went mostly to be dried. We also froze quite a few.

And, I tried a new recipe this year. I made Zesty Apricot BBQ Sauce.

We tried it on some pulled pork and that was good and we also made bbq chicken pizza with it and that was good, too.

I really wanted to get more, but life got busy and I moved on to the next adventure. I sure have been enjoying the frozen apricots in my smoothies.

Corn!

A neighbor had extra corn and invited people to help him pick it. We went and filled up quite a few bags and boxes. The kids had so much fun hiding in the rows of corn.

Once we got the corn home the real work came. Kids shucked while I blanched and cut it off the cob. then we just put it into freezer bags and froze it. Then, because I didn't get it all done in one day Taylor and Lindsey finished it while I took the little ones to do some testing for school.

I think there is close to 10 dozen ears there.

We should have plenty of corn for this winter. It feels good to put food up and know that you have it for later. It has really helped us eat better and helped our food budget to live in a place where we can grow our own food and also share in the bounty of our neighbors.

Canning Peaches

I have never canned peaches before this year. I don't like canned peaches, I rarely eat canned peaches, and I've had nightmares about being covered in sticky peach juice. However, my kids really like canned peaches and Taylor told me that she would help me out if I canned some this year. So, I ordered a case of peaches and we got to work.

I blanched and she did most of the peeling. It went a lot fast when I showed her how easily the skins would slip off if you did it just right. We worked together to pit and slice them. Once we had a bowl full then I started canning and she kept slicing.

All in all we canned 12 quarts with the kids eating a couple out of the box. I think I could do this again next year and maybe get 2 boxes. It really wasn't as bad as I feared it would be and it was nice working with Taylor on it.

I'm not sure the purple jars really captured the essence of the pears.

My Garden

Every year I have good intentions for a garden, but not every year do they end up coming to pass. This year seems very promising so far.

It's not the prettiest picture, but there is stuff growing, and not all of it is weeds! My tomato plants are huge and beautiful and have quite a few green tomatoes on them. My swiss chard has also done really well this year. We've managed to get a couple of onions to grow, too. I harvested radishes and peas already. The bean plants are looking pretty good too. My pepper plants are small, but they have been producing fruit. We got a bit of a late start and the sheep did get into the garden once in the beginning but most things managed to come back pretty good. I did lose my lettuce and brussel sprouts, though. I'm also using carpet this year for weed control. I really like it! I have more carpet scraps that I need to cut and place in the garden, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.

Something else that I am super proud of this year is my compost pile. Yeah, maybe that seems like a silly thing to be proud of, but I am. About once a week I will turn it by shoveling from one side to the other. I throw in weeds from the garden, grass clippings, stuff from the sheep and chickens, and veggie scraps from the kitchen. It is amazing to me to see how much it has broken down each week. At the beginning of the summer I had enough compost that I was able to fill up a couple of my garden boxes. My goal is to have enough that next year I can add some to all the boxes again. If I can make it myself then there is no reason that I will need to buy it from someone else. I can use my money instead for more seeds and plants to put in the garden. Or for tacos, those are good, too.

The biggest thing that I am still working on for this year is a fence around my garden. I've started it and it is looking really cool, but you will have to wait until it is finished before I blog about it.