DIY Energy Bars

When it's late afternoon and you haven't quite finished your To Do list, you might want to reach for one of these little beauties.   There is no reason you can't have a container of healthy energy bars on hand, especially when these are so easy to throw together.

Mostly Heirloom Tomato Soup

Just as cooler temperatures are settling in, I came across a basic cream of tomato soup recipe in the Soup & Bread Cookbook by Beatrice Ojakangas and was inspired to create.  As chance would have it, all my semi-ripe and green tomatoes on the vines had to be brought inside to finish ripening due to frost warnings.  But rather than looking at it as 'Darn, my dining room table is covered in unripe tomatoes',  I'm thinking this is a good thing.  I can keep tabs on their ripening progress and plan accordingly.  

The heirlooms I used are Dr. Wyche's Yellow, Cherokee Purple, and Mortgage Lifter, along with Green Zebra and Black Krim which are not pictured.

Sweet Potato Pound Cake

I don't know where this sweet potato pound cake recipe came from, only that I added it to my cake folder in February 2012.  Bob likes anything with sweet potatoes, for that matter he may have sent me this recipe.  Bob's birthday was yesterday and this was his birthday cake.

It is so moist and delicious.  I roasted and pureed the sweet potatoes the day before, which made the assembly on baking day a piece of cake (I couldn't help myself.)

On the corner of Summer & Fall

We are now at the corner of summer and fall.  While some days the temperature is in the mid 70's, the daylight hours are getting shorter, mums are in full bloom and you can't help but notice the golden leaves collecting on the ground. 

All the tomato plants from the garden with the exception of my still ripening tomatillos, have been added to the compost pile.  We have both anerobic and aerobic compost piles.

Red, White & Blue Potatoes

This summer we grew our first crop of potatoes.  After reading a little bit and talking to a few friends who had grown them we decided to give it a try. There are as many ways to grow potatoes as there are different varieties.  Having transplanted the horseradish to another location in the yard there was an available space to build a potato box.

I had purchased some red seed potatoes a few weeks earlier and set them in a cool place to sprout.

Pineapple Tomatillos & Oatmeal

For the past several years I've been growing Pineapple Tomatillos, tossing them into salads and eating them as a treat while I worked in the garden.  They are much smaller than the regular green or purple variety, about the size of your thumbnail.  In fact the only thing they all have in common is the little paper lantern that precedes the fruit, so to shield it as it grows inside.

There is the age old question... is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

The Squirrel Who Loves Tomatoes

The squirrel that shares in our garden harvest was filling himself, much the same as a bear about to go into hibernation, with cherry tomatoes.  Truly, as I watched him watch me, he handpicked nearly a dozen and enjoyed quite the feast.  However, I much prefer him eating those rather than taking a few bites out of a luscious ripe tomato, leaving 7/8ths of it to rot away.

Snowfall in the mountains doesn't come as a surprise when the calendar changes from September to October.  Even down in the foothills we are ready for the light dusting.