LOOK HERE ..... RED!!!

 Well would you look at this.  TOMATOES!  April Fools ... they are not from MY garden.  My good Elk Friend has the most interesting back yard ... the same one with the swimming pool we were at recently.  They put up a fence INSIDE their fence, leaving a 10' wide space all around the outside.  That became their garden, which is now covered in tomato plants, asparagus and squash.  Their Early Girls are producing like crazy.

Just down the road from them lives Dole Company.  As I've mentioned previously, this is farming country.  They have a huge section of peaches grown just for their canning operation.  Once a year the harvesting crew goes in to check them and comes out with buckets of fruit they give to the neighbors.  Not quite ripe, they need a few days on the counter.  I'm thinking peach pie!

After a quick walkthrough of my garden, which takes all of ten seconds, it's so HUGE, I came up with two more cucumbers to go with one of those tomatoes for breakfast.  You would think by now I would have lost 20 pounds.  Not so much ... there's been too much bread around here.  And THAT was what kept me home all day long.  

However ... LOOK HERE!  One little tomato on my biggest plant is turning RED!  Woohoo!!  I'm just so shocked that I actually grew some vegetables!

The rest of the same plant is growing like crazy.  There will obviously not be enough to feed the neighborhood, but at least I will have a nice taste of home grown tomatoes before too long!  The second plant ... not so much.  It's weird that this one has grown so big.  The other one is 1/3 the size, spindly and has one tomato on it.  I bought them at the same time and they are planted side by side.  What's up with that?

The reason for all this vegetable nonsense is because it was bread day.  The yeasty stuff was finally ready to be worked into a loaf of sourdough.  When people tell you they make this bread, they don't tell you what is involved.  This stuff takes ALL DAY.  

Mix it up, let it rise, mix that up with more, let it rise, let it rest, let it rise ... what a PAIN!  Four hours, mix, rise, mix, rise ... wait 5 hours ... beat it up ... it literally takes ALL DAY.  At least this time I didn't get quite as much flour all over the kitchen, but my hair is one shade whiter now.

While waiting 5 hours for the last rise, I stitched out a few more squares of this quilt.  It's an easy pattern to get rid of fabric that's been laying around for years.  It will for sure be donated.  This is now about half done.  Some days it doesn't pay to sew when you make mistake after mistake, not knowing why or how, and you have to take those squares apart THREE TIMES!  This one is lucky it's not in the trash can.

At long last the not so pretty bread (because I was getting tired of the process) went in the fridge for its 16 hour rest and rise.  Too bad I can't do the same!  It will be baked this morning ... I'll let you know how it goes.

With that finally done, I'm not sure how long the remaining starter is going to last.  It's challenging to keep it going, and I never quite know if it's gone bad, whereupon it might kill you, or whether it's still alive.  I think my sourdough bread making career just might have come to a floury end.  

Today I'll be going through miles of paperwork and gearing up for the Trustee Meeting tonight.  Luckily we GO DARK in July and August, meaning there are no lodge meetings.  Too bad that doesn't go for trustee meetings too.  Here's hoping it's nice and quiet, NOT a knock down drag out affair.  

Enjoy your day ...