Dog Days

 We've had quite the garden year this year, maybe you did too? We don't know.

Last year our tomatoes came in around the middle of August, we would pick them by the bushel and then a day or two later, we would can them, make soup, sketti sauce, whatever.

This year, they started coming in around mid July. We would pick a couple of buckets, and the next day we would have a bucket full of tomato goo. We would pick another bucket full, next day, same thing. We got to the point we would have to pick them and can them or soup them the same day or we would lose the majority of them. We thought maybe blight? Turns out, it was the dog days of summer. Cupcake looked it up. Another of the weird things about the dog days is, dogs won't go into water. We noticed Willow, who starts her day off with a swim in the ponds, wouldn't get in the water, even if we threw a stick in for her to chase. Folk lore is funny, but it's also true as it turns out.

Anyway, our garden is about done for the year. We've got several watermelons and pumpkins still on the vine, and we've not harvested our beets yet. We're already dumping duck poop in the gardens for next year. 

Most of this week is food related. We started out by making white peach jelly.

And Lawman whipped up a fresh apple pie

No crazy granny pie crusts for us

We found two briskets at the K-Rogers on the cheap. Lawman seasoned one up and let it chill for a week, then put it in the smoker, because it felt like fall this week and that makes us want to smoke meat.

And what's a smoked brisket without fresh made dinner rolls?

And Cupcake found a recipe for pecan pie brownies that she wanted. And what Cupcake wants, Cupcake gets.

We've had a can of crab meat in the fridge for a couple of weeks, and we wanted to free up some real estate in there, so Lawman whipped up a batch of Maryland crab soup for dinner one night. He's no fan of MCS, but he used fresh tomatoes, peas, corn and some of that Lawman seasoning for seafood. It turned out pretty well.

One non food related thing this week. 

We let the baby guineas and pheasants loose this week. They go back up to the coop each night, but are starting to wander further from the coop each day foraging for food. It's all starting to come together now that we're foxxy free.

We ended the week with chicken wings and naps.

K&K