Missing Willow Farm

Our chickens occasionally gift us with a double yolker.

Our peppers are just starting to come in full force.  I’ve been stuffing the pimentos (bottom photo) with cheese and roasting them.  The smaller round ones are some sort of cross from seeds saved from our garden last year.  I suspect a ghost pepper/red caribbean habanero cross.  I tried stuffing and roasting a few of those and the heat almost killed me.  Those are going right into the dehydrator for pepper flakes.

We had a big rain and they started leaning on our garden fence so we took them all down.  Some for display, some for seed saving and some for our chickens.  They are eating well this Summer.

The annual event that we manage for a friend ended this morning.  I went through the photos on my camera and found that I was probably busier than I realized this year.  I think I just grabbed my camera on occasion for some photos in the kitchen pavillion.  Fried pies for breakfast, brisket, some fresh ingredients and a slab of pimento cheese.  Three days of amazing food, wine & music.  I’m tired.

We were last weekend and ate at Ed’s Lobster Bar in lower Manhattan.  The lobster roll is epic and worth the trip!

This little sweetheart joins us for dinner every evening.  We sit out on the back deck watching Food Network shows while we enjoy our meal and she comes right up to the edge of our deck behind our chairs to munch clover in the yard.  I think she has a crush on Bobby Flay.  🙂

Along with sunflowers, we planted morning glories and moonflowers this year in pots from seed.  This will happen annually from now on.

They’re starting to bloom and are so much fun.  I’m definitely planting them again next year.

For the past week I’ve been roasting  tomatoes, canning them, serving BLTs and making tomato pies.  The roasted ones are done with a sprinkle of olive oil and salt.  Once they’re cooled, they go in a quart zip loc bag and right into the freezer.  I think salsa is next on my to-do list.

Here’s my first attempt at making bitters for cocktails.  I used oranges that my dad brought us from his neighborhood in Florida along with cardamon, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, coriander and demerara sugar in a base of grain alcohol.  They aren’t quite ready to sample yet.  I got so excited about the process, I already have a batch of bartlett pear and vanilla bean bitters brewing.