Hill of Beans

A wheel barrow full of my parents organic greens, beets, kale and Italian purple beans.
Here is my full set of gardening pictures.

As of a couple days ago, it is officially fall, which means harvest time for the gardens. The past couple of times I've been back visiting my parents, my Mother keeps regaling me with stories of how many cans of tomatoes she just put up. It's not in a bragging way, but more in a "I'm sooo exhausted and if I see another ripe tomato on the vine, I'm going to destroy it with a tennis racket" kind of way. Of course, my Mom and Dad both love gardening, and get a real pleasure out of putting up their own food; the hard part about a garden is, it doesn't wait for you. You get home from work and you're tired. TOO BAD, you've got a bushel basket of peppers starting to go bad, and you've got to do something with them. It is rewarding yet tiring.


Bushel baskets full of heirloom tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and more beets.

So the upshot is, my parents are only too happy to send me home with as much stuff as I can carry because they get to feel like they are nourishing me while getting rid of some of their own work load. WIN WIN!


My Mom and I holding her Italian Purple beans. These guys were left too long
on the vine, so my Mom sent them home with me to see what I could do with them.

So, for the next week or so, I'm going to focus my posts on talking about how I processed the produce I brought home and some of the shortcuts I took to cook and preserve it all to save time in my hectic life.