Veggies galore!!!!

Veggies veggies, glorious veggies!!!

Do you love them or hate them?

I didn't grow up loving them. All we ate were canned veggies (peas, green beans, corn,and carrots), carrot sticks, and sometimes salad. I would go to a friend's house and they would serve me something odd, and disgusting, like broccoli and cauliflower. I remember one of the first times that I ate dinner with my husband's family. We had only been dating just a short time. I was raised to always get a little of each thing being served to be polite. I scooped up a small spoonful of a veggie medley (broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots). His sister came up beside me and scraped it all back into the bowl and told me I didn't have to eat the nasty vegetables.

Fast forward several years...my kids love veggies! Not all of them, and each of them have their likes and dislikes, but I can cook a variety without too many complaints. Broccoli and green beans are the basic go-tos.

When Mark and I got married, and moved into his grans old house, we decided to continue on her tradition of a garden. This is not your average sized backyard garden that you plant a few peppers and tomatoes and a cucumber plant. This is a GARDEN, or more like a small farm or homestead if you throw in my chickens. Seriously my garden is 83'x56'. That is over 4500 sq feet of dirt and fruit and veggies. Perspective? My house is only 1100. Yes my garden is 4x bigger than my house!!!! After raising 5 kids, my garden is often my sanctuary. My peace and quiet. We will discuss the benefits of playing in the dirt another day, but trust me, you need to take some time to go do just that.

When we started this adventure 23 years ago, we knew absolutely nothing. And somedays we still know nothing. Gardening is 100% trial and error. My experience with growing things was helping my grandma plant corn, picking and eating her cherries and strawberries, and arguing with her that cucumbers were destined to be dill. I don't know how much Mark helped his grandparents. He does talk about his grandfather growing peanuts and other things like that. But you know how it is when you are a kid, "old people" stuff like that didn't matter.

Planting a garden has expanded my taste in vegetables. I would have never touched a yellow crookneck (or straight) squash. Okra was a big NO WAY!! Wasn't much of a fan of cucumbers unless they were made into dill pickles. And peppers were on my not eating that either list. I had never had a fresh green bean. With the exception of last summer, we have planted the full garden every single year. I love almost every stage of it!! Not everyone shares my joy of watching the first plants pop their heads out of the soil or hunting for the itty bitty baby watermelons. That's ok, we all have our own hobbies. My oldest will patiently share my excitement of my garden treasures, and in return he tells me all about his video games, comic books, and the latest car he found. Seems to be a fair trade. Out of our 5, I do have one that is my dirt fairy. I will tell you about her another day.

Being forced to try new things meant that I needed to either try out new recipes or create my own. My next several posts are going to be a few of my favorite summer veggie recipes. If you have a specific vegetable that you would like some new ideas for, drop me a note in the comments and I will work on it.

~Michelle