The week in photos

It is lazy of me not to write, but I truly have been overwhelmed with work this week. So, I'll be writing more later, but here's some images from the week (that don't involve upset parents, second grade soccer field brawls, open houses, contract negotiations, and state standardized testing for school administrators...).

Louis is much to pretty to turn into Thanksgiving dinner, don't you think?

Marie is my constant gardening companion (and tomato theif).

Mmm... There's always time for cinnamon rolls!

Good morning!

eggsactly

Today's eggs. Snow White, the bantam cornish game hen (take a guess at who named her...) layed her first egg. Can you pick out which one is hers? I almost didn't notice it in the nest box.

How's that for tiny?

Is it the end already???

I can't believe it is week #12 of Liz's One Local Summer. I had hoped for a dramatic ending, but unfortunately we only made 3 meals at home this week. Pitiful, I know, but there are reasons! Charlie to off for Virginia for more than his usual amount of time. (More on that in a minute.)

There was a land mine found in the creek about a half a mile from our place. Yes, a land mine. How does a claymore anti-personnel device end up in a mountain creek in North Carolina? No one seems to know. A neighbor boy and his friend found it. Luckily they are two bright 4th graders and rather than playing with it went and told Mom & Dad. Smart kids. The police, volunteer fire department, highway patrol and anyone else with any sort of authority were down on the road (blocking my way home...). And the Asheville police bomb squad detonated it. It was "alive". It's got me thinking about walking willy-nilly through the woods, as I'm apt to do. Perhaps I should be training Gigi in explosive detection instead of agility...

Back to Charlie. He went to Virginia, signed a bunch of contracts, came home and quit his job. The contracts were for his new business. He's starting his own landscape design/consultation and planning company. No building or installing - just his own fabulous ideas. I'm very happy for him. He's wanted to do things his own way for a long time. The time was right and he finally (with lots and lots of careful planning and plotting!) just did it.

I've been extra busy at school with a few personnel issues. Did I mention that I will never complain about academic administrators again? I won't.

So, we did eat out a lot this week. We finally had time to go shopping yesterday. The cupboard is full of good things, so this week should be easy!

Anyway for our last hurrah of a local summer, we had eggs (0 miles), sausage (3 miles) and hashbrowns (0 miles). Sorry no photo, the camera is being quite tempermental. But trust me, it was lovely, homey, comforting and good!

OLS #11

Turkey Pot Pie! Everything is from the garden (or the chicken house), but the flour,butter (which are organic...), salt and pepper. It was a very busy week. I'm becoming more organized with this full-time job thing, but not organized enough to post my One Local Summer meal on time. I was organized enough to bake two pot pies. Everything is safely tucked away in the freezer for another day.

Did I mention how good that turkey was? Oh my. Yum.

Local Summer #10

I'm a little late in posting this meal, but it's a holiday weekend. I wish I had a picture of the whole meal, but we had guests and I totally forgot to take a picture of the lovely plate. Here is a photo of the turkey before we utterly carved it up into nothing. Charlie cooked it on the Weber grill.

Our dinner:

Turkey - 0 miles
Mashed Potatoes - 0 miles
Green Beans - 0 miles
Everything was flavored with herbs, onion and shallots from the garden - 0 miles.

Dessert was Belgian Dark Chocolate Ice Cream from Ultimate Ice Cream - a local establishment that makes exquisite ice creams - 5 miles

That bird is going to be feeding us for a long time.

We've been enjoying turkey sandwiches for the last two days. Tonight Charlie is making turkey pot pie (stuffed with veggies from the garden, of course).

We've also been enjoying these:

Kirby's Whippoorwill Cowpeas from Baker Creek Seeds.

And these:
Kentucky Beefsteak, also from Baker Creek. I ordered almost all of my tomato seeds from Baker Creek and I have new favorites. This one is extremely tasty and orange. It has yet to succumb to blight. It's still producing monster tomatoes. Another favorite has been Spear's Tennessee Green, which is green when ripe; turning to yellow if left on the vine. My only disapointment has been Amish Paste, which succumbed rather quickly to blight and split easily. Luckily, I had a lot of Italian Paste volunteers coming up from last year and I'm now getting a nice late crop of those.

I've spent the weekend in the garden trying to bring it back from the August Blah's. I'm ready to plant those fall crops now.