Fall Harvest

Remember my cute little garden box that David made me for Mothers Day. We've been eating our vegetables from our garden for awhile now and this past week I've been canning and freezing like crazy. Dad and Mom have been gracious enough to let me scavenger their garden too so I've had enough tomatoes and tomatillos.

Roma, San Marzano, and Cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, jalapenos, serranos, red onions, yellow squash

Adam loves to help pick the produce. However he likes to ignore the instructions "Only pick the red ones!" On the left are nectarines from our tree, cucumbers and right are Roma tomatoes. The nectarines I mostly gave away and we ate them fresh but I did freeze 8 quarts of nectarine fruit cocktail that's pictured below. Sorry I took the picture wrong and it won't flip in this silly blogger program. We've gotten a great crop of cucumbers and the boys of gobble those down, with lime and salt, of course, so they can be just like their daddy. (I drew the line at putting chili powder on the cucumbers.)

This is one of my awesome onions, which along with all the tomatoes were made into salsa and spaghetti sauce which took me two very long days to can. I ended up with 8 quarts of spaghetti sauce and 10 pints of salsa. Next time I'm not going to can when I'm the only adult home with my 3 kids. Can we say INTERRUPTIONS!?

With the tomatillos I made green enchilada sauce and froze it. I also made red enchilada sauce which has some other name David taught me but I forgot it. It tastes super good and that's all that really matters. When it comes to Mexican food, I don't have to know what it's called to eat it.

Spaghetti sauce

Salsa (which I think looks so pretty in the jars)

Next up are the peaches. Every year I prune (hack) my peach tree thinking that I've cut off enough. But every year I still get massive amounts of fruit. So my plan is to can them, freeze them and make fruit cocktail with them. But this year I'm going to skip the peach jam. My kids just don't eat it very well especially if there's strawberry freezer jam around. Then I still want to pickle my dad's Sante Fe peppers with jalapenos and serranos. Plus my dad was wanting his own spaghetti sauce so if enough of my mom's tomatoes come on at the same time I'll do more of that. Oh and I still have lots of tomatillos but hey you can never have too much enchilada sauce. Who knew that I would derive so much pleasure out of growing and preserving my own food? I sound like a 1950s housewife with their cute little frilly aprons. I love it!

AP Poll: BYU ranked #9

Update: On 09-09-09, I blogged about BYU being ranked #9 in the nation. I'm pretty sure I have just lined up the stars for BYU to bust into a BSC bowl game this year. :)

Number 9....I was shocked. My guess was number 15 because the rankings are always mean to BYU. In fact they may have even been generous with this ranking but we'll take. Now Max just don't let it go to your head! GO COUGARS!

I LOVE BYU FOOTBALL

Seriously! I mean SERIOUSLY! Life does not get better than BYU beating Number 3 OU. Oh wait it does...watching BYU beat OU in HD on your 52 inch TV....yep that was goooood. (Nacho accent included). I declaring my new "guy" for the season as Brian Kariya number 33. After losing my last "guy" Austin Collie to the NFL I've had to pick my new "guy". Kariya is going to be my guy. When Harvey gets back he may not get much playing time but man, Kariya had a great game. Other random things I love about BYU football....did you hear the ESPN announcer say "I think Max Hall just said 'Oh my Gosh! or whatever it is they say in Provo'" Hilarious! Did you catch Sportsbeat and the Beat Goes on??? I love Tom Kirkland and Bronco. Now not as much as I love Greg Wrubell. Did you hear Greg call the last play of the game?? Beautiful! Nobody calls it like Greg. The last time I was dying of so much anticipating was the 2006 BYU versus Utah game with John Beck's famous last play of the game touchdown to Johnny Harline (yeah Johnny was my 2005 and 2006 "guy". I have a talent for picking THE guys.) Greg Wrubell called that last play also....screaming "caught for the touchdown" over and over again. This time he screamed "it's not gonna make it" over and over again after OU tried for a 54 yard field goal. Now there is this issue of how my brother didn't call and invite me to come down to the airport to meet the plane last night. And we have another issue...Matthew's first BYU football game resulted in a lot of tears for him. Not tears of joy over the win rather frightened sobs every time we cheered. And the last issue is that I have to wait 6 more days to watch BYU play again. Oh, I love Cougar football. I don't even have words to describe the euphoria state of joy college football season brings me.

P.S. There are 7 (yeah, count 'em, 7) players from Timpview High School on BYU's roster. Hah, Go T-birds!