The Sense of Pride From Growing Your Own Food

As you know, this is my first time having a real garden. It has been fabulous and I didn’t realize how rewarding it would actually be. I am filled with such joy and accomplishment whenever I serve my family food that I produced. I have tried a lot of new recipes and made things for the first time that my family actually enjoyed!

My cucumbers are growing very well and I have an over abundant amount of them. So, decided I was going to make pickles. I was super excited because I had never preserved food before and it was all new to me.

I started searching Pinterest for recipes and realized I needed a water bath canner, accessories, jars and lids. I mean I had nothing! I logged on to Amazon and placed my order. Here are the items I decided to purchase

While I was searching for canning supplies I found the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

And knew I had to order that as well. However, I found a used one on ebay and ordered that.

While I was waiting for my necessities to arrive my cucumbers kept coming. I was afraid they were going to go bad so I went back to Pinterest and found some refrigerator recipes for pickles. That way I could just use jars, make a small batch and keep them in the fridge. Here is the recipe I used, but there are many others on Pinterest as well.

My kids LOVED them! I made 5 jars two days ago and two are already gone. They were delicious, if I do say so myself. They actually tasked like pickles, I am not sure why that surprised me so much, but it did. I guess I didn’t think that making me own would really taste like the store bought, but boy was I wrong.

I also made Greek chicken Gyros with homemade tzaziki sauce and I was so proud that the tomatoes and cucumbers I used for the sauce where homegrown. I was was able to provide my family with something I produced from seed, knew how it was grown and that it was chemical free.

My plan was to can some tomato sauce, but my tomatoes are not doing very well. I have a great supply of grape and cherry tomatoes but the larger varieties are growing but they are either rotten or mushy. So, I will need to do a little more tweaking on those and hopefully next year I can make some sauce

I am still waiting for carrots and broccoli to produce, so stay tuned to see what I make from those.

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