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Every time you feel in God's creatures something pleasing and attractive, do not let your attention be arrested by them alone, but, passing them by, transfer your thought to God and say: "O my God, if Thy creations are so full of beauty, delight and joy, how infinitely more full of beauty, delight and joy art Thou Thyself, Creator of all!
- Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain

You can’t get to joy by making everything perfect. You can only get there by seeing in every imperfection all that’s joy.
-Ann Voscamp

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Fresh Bread and Goodbye Snow Peas

Yesterday I finally baked bread. I made 6 loaves. The first 4 were pilgrim's bread, and two of them I made into cinnamon swirl bread. The last 2 were brown bread. My brown bread recipe is one of Dan's favorites. It's good with jam, especially raspberry.



I'm really not sure what happened to the 2 loaves on the right. They're the same dough as on the left. The only difference is that the ones on the left are the ones I made into cinnamon swirl. I'm sure the taste and texture when baked will be fine, but I like it pretty.



The finished pilgrim's bread loaves.



All the finished bread. One of the loaves of cinnamon swirl lasted a whole 10 minutes. I guess this won't last a week!



And, I pulled the snow pea vines today. There were a lot of little green worms in them. I'm going to try to find out what they are, since I'm pretty sure they've eaten holes in all of my plants.

We ended our day yesterday with a trip to town for groceries. I found some heirloom and open pollinated seeds to plant in the empty spaces. It looks like if these grow we'll be ending our gardening season with some nice green salads! I decided on:
-white icicle radish
-broccoli raab
-chioggia beet (mostly for the greens, but perhaps we'll get some small beets before the cold weather)
-arugula
-chard

I'm going to weed and plant!

Happy Sunday, everyone! God's peace to you!

7 comments:

  1. Around here little green worms are cabbage worms, maybe they are different there? I started baking bread again, I am getting so tired of how much it costs and how much the kids go through! Right now I'm baking it in the bread machine, but I don't like the loaves so I think I will do it in pans like you did, what's the best type of knife for slicing it for sandwiches? Hubby and I used to just make nice crusty loaves we would rip apart but now with kids they want it to be cut like "at the store" UGH! :)

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  2. Mmm, wonderful looking homemade bread! We've been making a concentrated effort to stay away from bread this summer because of the heavy carbs . . . but we both miss it. Gotta work harder so we burn the calories . . . and carbs!

    I started to pull out my edible podded pea vines today, too, but got rained out. Sad to say, I think my shell peas are about done, too. :o(

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  3. Erin- I have a serrated bread knife that works pretty well. I think the best thing I've seen as far as bread slicing knives go is my mom's serrated electric knife. Yes, I completely agree that bread in the store is SO expensive! I know the kids eat more bread when it's homemade, and unfortunately Dan and I do too! But at least you are able to know exactly what you've put into it.
    I think you're right, the worms do look like cabbage worms.
    Mama Pea- Yes, I think the shell peas are done too. I know mine are, and I was wondering if you were still getting any. Boy, did that seem short! This was my first time growing peas, so now I'm wondering, do they always last such a short time? If that's the case, I really need a LOT more plants than I had!

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  4. Patty, you just had the "what the heck?" moment! We can never seem to grow enough peas to preserve for later... NEVER! It doesn't seem to matter the climate, either, I swear that peas and edamame (soybeans) each need ACRES worth to feed a family from the freezer all winter, LOL! You are in good company... Come to think of it, seemed like my mom froze a good deal, I'll have to ask how she did it, maybe the farmer's market supplements LOL?

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  5. Oh, Erin, you have no idea HOW MUCH I wish we had that kind of farmer's market here!! And you're right about how many peas you would have to plant. I'm sure that even if I planted every bit of my garden space with peas there wouldn't be enough! I can put half a gallon of them (in the pod)on the table at lunch, and they're gone just like that!

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  6. This year's shell pea season was VERY short. Not the normal at all. It just has been toooooo hot for them since they prefer growing in cool weather. I'm going to try to squeeze one more picking out of my mine, but don't know for sure if I'll get it.

    With my 64' of them, I can (usually, but I'm gonna fall short this year) get enough for the two of us for the whole year's supply. But for you guys, six of you, that would mean nearly three times as much! Oooof. Just try to imagine how big a garden the wives of years gone by with their family of 8-10 to feed had to have!

    Erin, our farmer's market doesn't have a lot of produce for sale. It's mostly craft type items. The produce that is there is just a little of this and that that is excess from home gardens. We aren't in farm country by any means and it's truly difficult to grow enough for yourself let alone have any amount to sell. Sad to say but true. :o(

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  7. Mama Pea-
    I'm glad to hear that about the peas, but at the same time, I know I don't have enough space to grow what I wish I could. It's just going to take time.
    Yes, those women of the past had to have HUGE gardens. My grandmother's garden when I was a kid was larger in area than our whole house. It's still really big, and she still planted it full this year, even at 80 something. I helped her get started, but she and my mom are trying to do the whole rest of the job this year. Grandma finally said it's too much. I sure wish I could be there now to help them!

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