More Canning and Greening

The produce just keeps coming!! We are getting big Brandywine tomatoes now and lots of cucumbers—regular and lemon.

Randy made jelly with red and green jalapeños...delicious with crackers and cream cheese.

Randy sliced zucchini after zucchini on the mandolin and used our dehydrator to make chips. There're pretty good just popping them in your mouth, but we can also use them for soups and stews this winter.

This is the view from our west facing deck. We had just over five inches of rain in July and we have had similar rainfall in August. This area in the photo used to be brown but things have really greened up lately. Towards the upper left side of the photo (over the bank) is a pond where the elk drink and play. The elk are happy to have it full of water again.

Canning, Concealed Weapons and Cooking

Randy is canning our small tomatoes so we can use them in sauces and soups this winter.

Randy has made two batches of vegetable stock with our abundant crop of squash.

He strained out the veggies, canned some and put some in vacuum bags in the freezer. It will be great to have this winter for soups!

This is Turbo. He is a 138 pound Great Dane. We took a concealed weapons class on Sunday at the instructor's house and Turbo kept us company the whole time. What a sweetie! We were there from 8:00-4:00 with just a short lunch break. Part of the class included qualifying at the shooting range. I can't believe I did it. Don't much care for guns but.....the coyotes are outnumbering the dogs in our neighborhood and several dog walkers have been chased by Javelina. The Javelinas have babies now and they are fierce if you get between them and their young. We are now licensed to carry a concealed weapon in 36 states.

I had another cooking class today. Jude did brunch dishes. We started with a Bloody Mary Soup with Avocado Mousse. Jude is working on refried black beans and a trout hash with chive sour cream in this photo.

South of the Border Chocolate cookies......addictive and easy to make.

Layered Avocado, Sour Cream and Red Bell Pepper. You can eat this on crackers.

Fiesta Brunch Casserole.......tortillas cover the bottom and sides of a springform pan and get folded over the top once you put in a sausage mixture, cheese mixture and egg mixture. Very yummy!

Rodeo Parade

We went over to Matt, the builder's new house on Main Street to watch the Rodeo Parade this morning. Matt and Becca invited all their friends to come over for coffee, donuts and muffins and a "ring-side" seat for parade watching.

Payson has the World's Oldest Continuous Rodeo. It has taken place every year since 1884.

Prescott boasts the World's Oldest Rodeo but they skipped a year during one of the World Wars.

Here's the Rodeo Queen. The Rodeo used to be called "August Doin's" and the cowboys closed off Main Street and had the rodeo right in the center of town.

The rodeo has always been in August, right before the fall roundup. Folks came from miles around and had a big party for a week.

The rodeo clowns are always a favorite.

There were so many beautiful horses.

The kids lined up on the curb because many of the parade participants were throwing candy.

The high school cheerleaders got a ride in the car club's restored cars.

The football team came in "manly" trucks.

Love the big draft horses.

Here's our vet (everybody loves to walk in the parade). She was with one of her dogs and was handing out dog biscuits.

What rodeo parade would be complete without a stage coach?

And covered wagons....

It was a fun morning........on to the rodeo.

Garden.....etc.

This is one of Cooper's favorite nap spots....on the stair landing between the first and second floors. He lays out and just hugs the wall.

I have been seeing a lot of tarantulas on my walks lately. I love to watch them. This guy was moving very fast and I only got a blurry photo with my iPhone.

This is pretty much the daily pick. We are getting a little tired of squash but are so enjoying the carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers.

Randy picked some basil this morning and made pesto. He tried the stick blender and it worked great. No need to get out (and clean up) the food processor.

Another favorite Cooper spot in the early morning and evenings (west deck). He watches over his domain. A herd of elk were splashing through the pond near us this morning at about 5:00 a.m. The young ones squeal and play in the water. I'll try to get a shot of them another day.....didn't want to get out of bed that early this morning.

As you can see things are greening up around us as we have had some rain......thank goodness. The garden is filling in and we are enjoying it so much.

My foot is SLOWLY getting better. Still no hiking for me yet. I manage a dog walk a day and a bit of exercising on the rowing machine, wii and a little treadmill. I'm hoping my foot will be good enough for the exercise classes we signed up for that start in a week.....Pilates, Physioball, and Yoga.

Canning and Foot Progress

Randy has been busy canning some of the vegetables from the garden. He made pickled turnips, zucchini pickles and beets with orange and rosemary. I made a delicious chocolate zucchini cake....I ate half (over several days) and put the other half in the freezer.

I got my boot off yesterday.....yahoo! I have to take it easy for a month and slowly build up strength. Right now my left foot is taped and I am trying to wear athletic shoes as much as possible. It's just so nice to get rid of that big, bulky boot.

We are starting to get carrots......I love carrots. They might be my favorite vegetable. We have picked about half a dozen ears of corn. There are some worms on the tops but they are easily cut off. Did you know you could microwave corn in the husk? It takes about 2.5 minutes for our smaller ears. A larger eat would probably take about 4 minutes. It's so tasty and stays hot longer. AND you don't have to put a pot of water on the stove to boil.