a veg life

(posted by Emily) We are always looking for new dinner ideas and ever since canning day , we've tried to find ways to eat all of our delicious food! Jennie reignited our love for almond feta that day, and one of our new favorite dinners is almond feta served with nectarine jam and nectarine chutney, spread on toast.  I've made batches of the cheeze in two different ways--processing the almonds into a flour first and just mixing the slivers with the other ingredients. I definitely recommend getting them ground up first, as it leads to a smoother cheeze. This feta is seriously one of the easiest nut cheeses to make--you need to try it!  feta wrapped up and ready to sit in the fridge for 12 hours  ready to bake baked for 35 minutes, broiled under close supervision for about 5 minutes to get the top browned We have had a variety of bread maker adventures since purchasing our machine this spring. I hesitated to post a recipe until we had the kinks ...

(posted by Emily) We got back from our Europe trip pretty late on Friday night, July 25th. Of course, as any sensible person would, we decided to check out our garden and harvest all of the tomatoes that had been popping up in our absence. Yes, at 1:30 in the morning. Many of the tomatoes were soft or splitting, so we knew we wanted to use them soon. I prepped a bunch to put in the dehydrator for homemade sun dried tomatoes, but we were hoping to get some canned as well. I've never canned anything in ball jars before, and it was just our luck when I noticed a post from Jennie on Facebook about a collective meet up that Sunday to make jam. After a quick exchange of messages, it was all settled and we headed to the shop with our tomatoes and jars in tow. One of Jennie's friends, Judy, had received a huge number of nectarines from the Matsumoto Family Farm . Like, hundreds of pounds worth. Judy, bearer of nectarines (photo by Juli Frankel) (photo by...

(posted by Emily)   Thursday 24 July Thursday was a very low-key day for us. We spent most of our time drying laundry, packing, watching tv, paying bills, and noodling on the computer. Rick and I had both really hoped to be able to take the boat out one more time, but it was too windy and the water was too choppy. I was pretty bummed that we didn't get another opportunity, but it's not like we won't be back! At some point, I was going a little stir crazy, so we grabbed a bag went foraging for blackberries.  We even had a little friend to keep us company :)  Dobby's mom, Hailey, saw us heading off on a walk and offered that we could take little man along. It was fun to have some puppy time, and Dobby loves  blackberries. We worked on sit with him with the fruit as a reward :) For some reason, dogs in the UK walk on the right. Wrong side of the road for them, too? :) The blackberries were growing wild everywhere--in huge bushes, reaching ...