Fresh Eating

I tried a new recipe, Butternut Squash Lasagna, from Mother Earth News. It took a while to make, but it turned out really good.  Of course, we used homemade whole wheat lasagna noodles with homegrown/homemade mozzarella.  The kids liked it as well as we did.  The squash gave it a creamy quality.  Next time we'll use more cheese and add meat: hamburger cooked up with onions, peppers and spices.

Lamenting the pour word, squash, for this fruit, my cousin suggested that zucca is the Italian word.  We like it!  So last night we had zucca lasagna! It has a nice ring to it.

I've been hungry for something fresh, and lamenting that I didn't do a better job getting things like lettuce, spinach, and cabbage planted for a fall crop.  Then I remembered some carrots hiding under those huge broccoli plants.  They've been out there a while, probably over the heat of the summer, so I was figured they would be dry and woody.  But they weren't.  They were sweet and crisp.

While I was out there, I walked in the furrows, even though nothing is growing in the beds.  Some weeds have grown up so I didn't look too closely.  Then I realized that I was walking on spinach!  These must be from seed that washed into the furrow and waited for good weather to grow.  There was enough for a nice salad.  Fresh carrots and fresh spinach!!  Praise God!!

Vanilla beans are on sale for the holidays.  A friend of mind told me how easy it is to make vanilla — soak vanilla beans in vodka for six months.  I got the beans at Costco and sliced them open before putting them into jugs of vodka.  She said to put three beans in a flask, so I figured ten beans in the big 1.75l bottles would work.  Next May I'll pour them into smaller bottles to use.  In the end we probably spent as much as buying the vanilla straight, but I'm hoping it will taste better.

My older daughters are studying solubility in Chemistry.  This slow dissolving of the vanilla flavor was a good illustration of solubility level.

We are eight days from Christina's due date.  Her udder looks slightly less empty to me, but nothing else has changed.  We are all watching her closely.