If you have access to a local farm, I would highly recommend you do your produce shopping there and support as many local farmers as you can. Hubby and I took a 30 minute ride to get to one of our favorite local farmers and buy as much produce as possible. With prices such as $1.00 for an eggplant or $1.25 for 3 frying peppers, we plan on making this a weekly habit till the last acorn squash is harvested. Corn was .50 cents an ear, cantaloupe was $2.25 each, peaches were $5.00 a pint (6 peaches to a pint), plum tomatoes were $2.00 a pint (7 tomatoes). The zucchini was only seventy-five cents for any size. naturally, of course, I bought the biggest size! Corn was fifty cents an ear!

Since we still have temperatures in the high 80sF, hubby and I do all our canning and cooking in the evening. I’m making another peach pie, another batch of peach preserves. I used half of the zucchini in a frittata for breakfast and the other half I shredded and baked into a loaf of bread complete with pecans. Delish! Hubby makes his family favorite antipasto of caponata (click here for the recipe). It’s a dish of eggplant, peppers, onions, celery, tomatoes, olives, pine nuts and capers roasted in the oven and topped with a sweet/sour vinegar dressing….just perfect smothered on top of a slice of toasted Italian bread. Note: The recipe sautéed the veggies on top of the stove. We prefer roasting them in the oven.

This photo is from the recipe book. But you get the idea!

Here are a couple of photos of the many dishes hubby and I have been cooking each night: zucchini bread, canning jars of peach preserves and strawberry jam just perfect to be served over pound cake and topped with real whipped cream, bow tie pasta with sautéed zucchini and tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, red onion and fresh basil salad and lastly we tried to air fry chicken legs. They came out delicious and crispy. Here’s that recipe here. We’re learning new ways to prepare chicken thighs and legs (since they’re the parts of the chicken that are still affordable!)

Our air fryer is small. Or our chicken legs are huge? Either way, we can only make 2 chicken legs at a time, which is perfect. By the time we finish eating one leg, the second batch is done!

This week I’ll be canning green beans for the first time. Wish me luck! And I’ve been freezing batches of snowpeas as well as the actual peas themselves! Green beans freeze well as does raw zucchini. It looks as if my cucumbers might really come to harvest. If they do, I’ll be canning them as pickles and bread & butter round chips (perfect on hamburgers!).

Stay tuned!

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