June Happenings

Maddie's Garden Update

Alright roley poleys, this means WAR!

I tried to be nice and just spray them off with a hose. No more.

This morning, I headed out to the garden and found out the few roley poleys eating strawberries last week have now multiplied! Apparantly, they called all their buddies and invited them over to eat strawberries for breakfast. The party is over.

I sprayed all the plants with dish soap and they all scattered. We'll see how long that deters them. My next weapon is vinegar.

I also found this in the garden this morning...

What do you think? A bird? More bugs?

Well, whoever it is, I hope they like Dawn flavored tomatoes.

Here are the other tomatoes - just starting to turn red...

These are beautiful!

A couple of more days and these will be ready to pick!

And here are the strawberries the roley poleys haven't gotten to yet.

If I can keep the pests at bay for a couple of days, I think the strawberries will finish ripening and we can pick them. We'll see how well the dish soap spraying went when I check on the garden tomorrow morning.

Canyon Lake Trips
Well, we are over 100 degrees here for the duration of the summer, so off to the lake we go. It's so nice to have Canyon Lake so close that we can take our dinner to the lake and have a nice evening trip on a weekday after work.

Blackberry Blueberry Muffins

I had a ton of fully ripe, fresh blacberries and blueberries smiling at me in my fridge, so I adapted this recipe and came up with these little beauties.

I altered this recipe using one cup blueberries and one cup blackberries and using raw sugar crystals to top the muffins instead of regular baking sugar. They were delicious. As I pulled them out of the oven, a couple of the muffins had berry juice bubbling out of the top. Yum. I had no problem letting Maddie eat 4 of these in one day. She calls them cupcakes. They're made from scratch & think of all the anti-oxidents she's getting in her system- yay!

Here's what I came up with...

Blackberry Blueberry Muffins

18 muffins

Prep: 15 min. Bake: 20 min.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1-1/4 cups sugar

1 tablespoon raw sugar (to sprinkle on top)

2 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

2 cups fresh or frozen blackberries (I used half blueberries, half blackberries)

Directions:

In a bowl, cream butter and 1-1/4 cups sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; stir into creamed mixture alternately with milk. Fold in berries.

Fill greased or paper-lined muffins cups two-thirds full. Sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake at 375° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks. Serve warm. Yield: 1-1/2 dozen.

Nutrition Facts:

1 serving (1 each) equals 172 calories, 6 g fat (3 g saturated fat), 38 mg cholesterol, 172 mg sodium, 28 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 3 g protein.