Great Progress and a Snack

Its been a crazy week, but I spent one whole morning in the garden pulling weeds, staking and harvesting.  It was an exciting and bug biting time despite my liberal use of insect spray.  Something wayward did bite my ear, and it still hurts to wear my Bluetooth earpiece.  Ironically, my mother, who helped weed for the first hour, was also bitten on the ear and cannot wear her hearing aid from the swelling.  As a result, she has been unable to hear me complain additionally about the mosquito infestation.
I have attached a big wad of photos of the garden's progress post partial weeding.  I was most excited about the first harvest of beans and have already taken a second batch since the photo taken on Tuesday.  A Japanese eggplant has also been harvested since the pics.  The leaves in the bag are sweet potato leaves, and I am told by my mother that they are quite tasty sauteed like greens.  And I am stunned that we have corn growing!!  My doubting Thomas days are over, and I hope that they grow nice and fat, so that we will have some sweet juicy corn for summer cookouts.

At our front and side yard garden, the zucchini flower continue to grow, but I have no squash.  I have no idea what is wrong.  Anyone with any idea, please contribute to my learning process.  The dill has completely taken over and I have taken to ripping out entire plants to save space for the basil and rosemary that are just coming up to speed.  Below, I have a picture of my latest dill creation - gravalax, or as my daughter calls it, fish ham.  Gravalax is the heavenly combination of sugar/salt cured fresh Pacific salmon with peppercorn, dill, juniper, and a little fennel.  Actually, I didn't have any juniper berries so I cheated with my next best substitute - Hendrick's gin.  3 days under a brick, and this is what you get!  Jon is currently at the grocery store procuring bagels for tomorrow morning's breakfast feast. 

Well, I'm off to heat up the repairs from my roasted chicken fiasco from 2 nights ago.  Everyone have a great weekend!

I Remembered!!

So, I was sitting in this sales meeting today, and we were talking about why people blogged.  And, while I didn't verbalize, I was thinking the whole time, "hello, we blog to be able to say what we want to say while under the illusion that someone might be listening or paying attention."  I have no illusions.  I know that there are, like, 5 of you that read this on a regular basis and might comment.  And thanks to those of you, truly, because I then remembered that the real reason that I am blogging is to get support from all 5 of you to not be a quitter in my quest for local food consumption and production.  Thanks again.

Now, another "I remembered".  I made a dish the other night from the homegrown dill and remembered to do a before and after photograph!  Here is the before.  I ripped the entire plant out because it was impinging on my basil's ability to flourish.

And now the after - lemon dill chicken with crimini mushrooms.  Please forgive the elementary photo skills.  Thanks to Down Home with the Neelys for a little inspiration.  I totally couldn't find the recipe on their site so you just get the link to their page.  Sorry.  Plus, I made up my recipe as I went along.  Next time I will try to remember to write down the recipe for you.
While I have been gone, I am told, by my sweet hub, that the corn is human adult height now, so I'm thinking that we should get some flowering and pollination (fingers crossed) pretty soon!  Pics of that next time.