The tasty tasty harvest

Yay for blueberries! Strawberries and snow peas are SO last month - gimme more blueberries!


I'll be honest - there wasn't more than a couple minutes between the first picture and the second, and here's all that was left of that first small harvest of blueberries in such a short bit of time.


And if you got back up to the top pic, you'll even see there were a couple wimpy raspberries in there. That MAY be all I get this year - the plants aren't doing well where they are right now - the bed wasn't prepared well at all. Per some advice from dad, I'm actually thinking of digging them up, potting them up or heeling them in elsewhere, and then redoing the bed and planting them this fall for next year?

Oh, and those blueberries? SOOOO tasty! I can't expect much from the bushes this year - but in another year or two they should be doing great! For now I'll be happy with a small handful each week...there ARE more berries just waiting to start ripening, and I managed to pic a few more today.

Lunch today was ramen. I know - not too exciting, and I didn't even have any leftover grilled meats to put in it. But I DID raid the garden this morning - check it out.


Some of the carrot thinnings, some of the snow peas, some of the broccoli "2nd attempts" (that's what a plant will put out after you chop off the main head), some of the bok choy, the green onion stalks, and both of those little squash went in for my lunch. YUM! Oh, and those two strawberries (with the slug damage cut off)? Appetizer! ;-)

And a few hours later for dessert, while Brett's out running errands? I whipped up a little something-something!


Granted, it's no black cherry chip or strawberry ice cream like Finny's, or cinnamon ice cream (YUM!) over at Peter's, but vanilla's a nice all American classic, and gee, with the couple mini strawberries and three (yes, count them) newly ripe blueberries I picked just a short bit ago, it made for a really nice combination! And the recipe couldn't have been simpler - AND I had the stuff on-hand. I wanted a no-egg recipe a) because we're actually out of eggs at the moment, and b) I haven't had the best luck with heating eggs for ice cream - I'm a very impatient boy, and often make scrambled eggs IN the custard, and you just can't strain that out and still make ice cream. Quite disgusting. Anyhow - it was 3 cups half-and-half, 3/4 cup of sugar, a pinch of salt, and 1 tablespoon of this wonderful vanilla bean paste I don't use often enough! Whisked all that together, and dumped it into the ice cream maker. The good news is the bowl was thoroughly chilled, not having been used in, oh, gee, possibly a YEAR!?

I originally thought I'd find the ideal recipe quickly in the Ben & Jerry's book, but since I only had half-and-half and whole milk, no whipping cream, no eggs, etc...I lucked out in a web search and found this recipe, which was really simple. If you want to know what the recipe results were like, I'd say it's very much like a soft version (right now) of Breyer's "vanilla bean" vanilla - which I don't see listed on their site. Maybe it's just called natural vanilla these days? Anyhow - sorta like that flavor, and I'm sure once it's set in the freezer for an hour or two, it'll have more of that dense texture. Clean tasting and not eggy in any way.