Soup in the summer???

I could make this short and sweet by saying this is all we've been eating lately, because it just about is all I've been wanting!  I am butt crazy for watermelon and so much of it is being enjoyed here, I've found my favorite and it's from Shetler's stall at the A2 Farmer's Market.  We've had the big daddy watermelon and lots of the smaller sized ones.  I have seeds drying from both on the counter for our garden next year.  We're going to need to put in a couple of additional beds next spring if we want to plant zucchini again ;)  and also have room for melons and other sqaush! 



Here's our organic loot from a trip that's now a couple of weeks ago...all the goodies have since been eaten and the ends, husks, scraps are doing their thing in the composter.  Yikes, I'm really getting back logged here with recipes, photos, and posts...I need to set better intention.



This was the last tomato purchase as ours are now in, yeah!  green onion, and what else but a few watermelons



collards, beets, and sweet corn



The beets were spiralized for this salad of spinach, Mushroom Quinoa Pilaf, and house dressing ( both from Get It Ripe) 



keeping the spiralizer busy I made zucchini pasta with an impromptu sauce using ingredients we had on hand:  sundried tomatoes, olive oil, nooch, basil, parsley, garlic, salt and water. 



Dave's dinner one night looked like this:  butternut squash ravioli , peas, our green beans, with a sauce made of raw tahini, lemon juice, daiya cheese, miso, brown mustard, garlic, and olive oil.  The sauce was great!  It's a whole different world now with daiya =)  On South river miso's site it's says they'll have dandelion leek miso ready in the fall, that sounds AMAZING.



We have two types of beans in the garden this year and have had success with both, but this Contender bush bean is my favorite.  They're really delicate and delicious.  These are the seeds we used. 

Somehow soup sounded good even though it's the middle of the summer here.  I had yellow split peas in the pantry so I subbed them for the green in this recipe, I also didn't have any potatoes on hand so they got left out.   This is one delicious and simple soup to make, it also got two thumbs up from the two omnis that I made it for =)  Take away lesson here is;  soup is good food (even in the heat), it's easy to make, you can put lots of garden veggies to good use, and it's an economical meal (especially good when you have guests), and it makes for great leftovers. 



Another recipe from the blogosphere that sounded too good not to try are the grilled salt and vinegar potatoes (ok, obviously these meals are out of order since I did have FM potatoes to use here;)  Dave loves potatoes, but I will go looooong periods of time with never thinking about making any.  I think he's been happy about their appearance at the FM!  I read about the recipe here on Oh She Glows, and followed the link to use this actual one.  We had purple new potatoes not waxy ones as the recipe calls for and they worked fine, I also used apple cider vinegar as it's what we had.  (we've used our supply of white vinegar in a solution on the weeds that grow in the seams of our driveway, which works pretty well)  Here they are grilling inside on the cast iron grill pan. 



I tasted a couple and found them yummy, Dave loved them and ate the rest =) 

Also from Oh She Glows I found myself drooling over her healthy blueberry chocolate glaze cake...it was bound to become dessert here too.  I wanted to make it gluten/wheat free and subbed brown rice and coconut flours for the spelt and followed a couple of Angela's recommendations.
Changes I made:

added two mashed bananas to the wet mixture
used 3/4 cup of water (instead of the 2/3 c)
used 1 cup of brown rice flour and 1/4 cup of coconut flour (instead of the spelt flour)

It turned out really well, I know it can be risky subbing non gluten flours, but I was in the groove and knew it was going to work.  I think my favorite part was the glaze, yum yum yum!  Make this cake =)



Back in garden news we've been harvesting lots of these lovely cucumbers.  This was my first year growing cukes and it's been very successful even with Japanes beetles chowing on some leaves ;)  These are the seeds we planted. 



in an effort to not waste any (I have given some away too) we've been continuing to refill our Bubbie's pickles jars and they are oh so good. 



Has anyone had this flavor of Tempt???  It's good...you may even finish the container in lieu of dinner...it was one of those days!  Girls you know what I mean?



I've hunted around in town some at the asian grocery for kelp noodles to no avail.  I was passing thru Livonia recently and decided to stop in to Zerbo's and pick some up.  I also bought little powerhouse hemp seeds, if anyone is wondering they are now sold out of GT's too.  Last I was in they had a bunch of grape and a couple other juice ones and this was a bit after the distribution stopped. 



I drank one of my last two kombuchas...I'm curious to see what will end up happening with the whole ordeal.



I finally finished an order for colorgrown organic cotton farmer's market bags that have longer handles.  Hopefully soon they'll be toting around produce in Pennsylvania!