We've been blessed with garden-fresh tomatoes this year; oh, how I love tomatoes from the garden! The store-bought ones just don't compare!!

I've added two new tomato recipes. The first is my Tomato Cucumber Salad recipe, which I made last week. I ate the entire batch in one day. I love tomato cucumber salad! I had almost forgotten how much I like it!

The second new tomato recipe is called Greek Pasta Salad and is best made with cherry or grape tomatoes. We didn't grow that kind, but my neighbor did and she brought me a grocery sack full of them. Joshua brought them in and said, "Beverly gave you a ton of tomatoes." I could hardly believe it when I saw that the grocery bag was practically bursting from all the tomatoes!

So, I got busy and ate lots of fresh ones for snacks, and made the pasta salad, and used them in various other meals. Read more for more tomato recipes!

Tomorrow: An Autumn Pear treat!

You know you don't comb your hair often enough when your two year old sees you brushing your hair and says,

"Going bye-bye, Mama?!"

Nope, sorry Yehoshua, this is just my once-a-week brushing, whether we're going bye-bye or not! We usually only go out once a week, and this week it's not until Friday. :D

Actually, I do comb my hair, but not every day. I wash it and put it in a bun and usually leave it in for a couple days without touching it, or, at most, simply putting it in a more secure bun.

But I would like to do better at making myself look more... presentable on a regular basis. :P Maybe soon I'll post our new schedule and ask for beautifying tips :D

There are lots of ripe red raspberries here right now. Yehoshua loves to go out to the patch and walk along it (it's more of a large "row" in my parents' garden) and pick off ripe ones to eat. ;) Last summer he wouldn't eat red raspberries. He loved blackberries (?! the sour ones!) but would spit out red raspberries. We tried sneaking them into his mouth, but nothing would work. Oh well, this year he loves them. :) (Read about what we have been making with red raspberries!)

Tomorrow: It's all about tomatoes!

Yehoshua is so sweet. I just had to share what he told me this evening. He gave me a compliment!

He said, "It's so yummy, Mama!" :D His little voice melts my heart, and it's just precious to hear him talking. (He's still learning how to talk in first person!)

So, what was so yummy? ;)

We were making a dish of stuffed shells, and I was stuffing the filling into the shells. Yehoshua was standing on a chair beside the counter, helping with the dishes while I worked on the food. He kept begging for a piece of the cooked pasta, so I found a few little broken pieces that were cooked in with the shells. As he ate them, he said, "It's so yummy, Mama."

I laughed and said, "Yehoshua! That is so nice of you to say!" So he said it again. ;)

My mom grew lots of cabbage this year (either that, or else it just did really well!) and has given us some to use. Admittedly, cabbage isn't our most favorite vegetable (we wouldn't want to eat it every day!), but we do enjoy it.

Our simplest way of eating cabbage is making Quick and Easy Fried Cabbage. It's not too greasy, but tastes better than plain old boiled and salted cabbage. Fried cabbage is what my mom usually made with it when I was growing up, and I always looked forward to it!

Recently, I tried a recipe for Easy Cabbage Casserole. I was quite pleased with the results! I made a large dish of it, and Yehoshua and I re-warmed leftovers for two additional meals (without Joshua). It's not something I would want to eat really often, but it was good, and used lots of cabbage :D.

I still have a head of cabbage in the refrigerator, and am trying to decide if I want to go to the bother of making cole slaw (I have a good recipe, but Joshua and I both aren't real big cole slaw eaters) or cabbage rolls, or, creating my own "cabbage roll casserole" which has been "cooking" in my brain for a while now. ;)

A couple years ago, we dehydrated a lot of cabbage, and I love to use it in my Beef Vegetable Soup! Cabbage is one of the key ingredients in that soup, and it's so delicious! Using the dried cabbage makes the soup even quicker and easier to make, since I don't normally buy cabbage.

My parents make sauer kraut, but neither Joshua nor I care much for that, either. Last week, my mom made 60 pounds of cabbage into sauer kraut, and she said she still has more cabbage to use!

Tomorrow: A special red raspberry treat!

The first meal we made this year with garden produce was Easy Stuffed Peppers! This is my mom's stuffed peppers recipe, and is always enjoyed by guests. I love to make stuffed peppers when there is an abundance of fresh bell peppers from the garden!

I use a lot of green peppers in my cooking, particularly when they're "free" from the garden, since they can be rather expensive to purchase. We chop lots of them to fry with taco meat or other meat for casseroles; we also chop and eat them fresh on salads and mexican dishes; Agk's Organic Chicken Fettuccine calls for a lot of bell peppers, also! Making homemade salsa uses a fair amount of bell peppers, which we sometimes substitute for the banana sweet peppers it calls for, and even add a little extras. ;)

If all else fails, we do like we did last year, and dehydrate them. Last November, after we were all finished canning pizza sauce and salsa, and had eaten lots of fresh bell peppers, we decided to dry some. It was nearing the first frost, we we picked them all and my mom came over to my house. She and I spent the entire morning (at least 4 hours!) chopping bell peppers to dehydrate. After they were dry, they all fit into a gallon-sized freezer bag! Kind of amazing that 8 hours of work was all in that little bag! ;) It sure has been handy, being able to use some here and there for soups and such, when there aren't any fresh ones handy. :)

Tomorrow: What to do with cabbage!

My friend Nicole made a new lens on Squidoo: MSG is Evil! Whether or not you like MSG, her page is a handy source of information and links!

We personally try to stay away from it as much as possible (we like to read labels!). It is amazing how frequently MSG is added to food. We're used to using our own spice combinations for various seasonings.

Just yesterday, Joshua and I were discussing how it would be nice to create substitute recipes for the expensive (and MGS-laden!) seasoning packets sold in grocery stores. We decided that our main hurdle to doing that would be the fact that we've never even tried most of them! (Besides taco meat seasoning!) If any of you readers have good substitute "seasoning packet" recipes, we'd love to hear from you! :)

A couple weeks ago, we tried a new recipe that was submitted to the website by Amy B.: Veggie Tuna Casserole! I always enjoy a new casserole recipe, so I was excited about trying it. :) I enjoyed it, and am just now getting around to posting the recipe! Be sure to check it out, especially if you have zucchini or other garden produce on hand!

This week promises to be a busy one for us, with out-of-state out-of-country guests visiting for a couple days, along with the usual things of life. :D

So, I will be posting recipes and things we have been doing with the fresh fruits and vegetables we've had recently: tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, bell peppers, and apples. Stay tuned! :)

The week is nearing an end, and I'm thankful and relieved, too!

I did a lot of baking, cooking, and canning this week, in between all the "normal" stuff of my life. We tried a recipe for Triple Chocolate Quick Bread, and it was delicious!!

There's also a new poll about whether or not you've tried a recipe from this site, so be sure to go vote! :D

Today I was able to get all my jars of tomatoes washed up and ready to be put into boxes and stored on our enclosed porch (I don't have a pantry, so I use the porch. :D) I took a picture of Yehoshua next to the jars, and thought I'd share it quick before I went to bed. (See photo)