It’s hard to complain about any rain that we get these days but I’ll admit – it was a bit of a bummer that it rained on our last day of Kid’s in the Garden.  We had something really cool planned for the kids and were going to do it at the very end so the kids could just go home and dry off…but of course the thunder started.

So – members of Kids in the Garden!  There will be a ‘supplemental’ class next Thursday – August 16th at 5pm at the orchard.  We have something very special for the kids to do and it needs to be done in the next week.  If you can’t make it please email or call to schedule a different time to come out and we can help with our little *bonus* for our fabulous kids this summer.  Following the supplemental class at 6pm we’ll be having our ‘Mom’s in the Garden’ session to discuss how things went this summer.  I'll be making some beverages that use our Mojito Mint and Margarita Mint.

Other than missing out on our one big special plan…it was actually a pretty good week to have rain.  We all hung out under the lean and ate and ate and yup – ate some more!  So many wonderful fruits and vegetables are ready in our gardens we had to have some tasting for the kids!

We started out the day dipping chips into some Tomatillo salsa.  Diane made some Tomatillo-Cucumber Salsa right outside for the kids and I had made some Tomatillo Salsa Verde the day before (it had to be cooked and cooled).  The majority of the kids and mom’s really enjoyed both of the salsa – the Tomatillo-Cucumber Salsa being a refreshing hit and the Tomatillo Salsa Verde being the surprising ‘sweeter’ salsa. 

Next we tried something that also had a husk covering them – this time they were ground cherries.  There was a mixed reaction all around.  They are sweet like a cherry but with the texture of a tomato.  If you have texture issues with your food you may have to do a little something to make it more worth your while…like dip them in chocolate!?  Pip LOVED the ground cherries and Christian LOVED feeding them to pip!  It was great!  Pip also loved all the other fruit we had this day…we have to hide the fruit from her until the very end of the meal.  If she even sees it she won’t eat anything else but the fruit!

Hannah and Tyler got their hands cold rinsing out our beautifully colored baby tomatoes. 

Seriously – isn’t that just a gorgeous colorful plate of baby tomatoes!?  These are Capri’s favorites – she can eat them like candy!

We also tried cantaloupe (kids LOVED and I tried too…it was so amazing!) and yellow dolls (basically a watermelon with yellow flesh).  With the yellow dolls we discovered that we picked one a bit too early – it was good but the riper one was, as I like to say, “Better than chips.” 

In the picture above Diane is sauteeing sliced up summer squash, zucchini, and baby tomatoes in just a bit of oil and some Thai basil from our herb garden.  This was AMAZING!  I am definitely going to have to grab some Thai Basil more often while I cook!

And finally we had to try some new varieties of apples – scarlet, wealthy and sansa that they hadn’t tried the week before.  I honestly am not sure what the consensus was on them but I do know none of them were fed to the goats.

Above is a new variety of ours – the Scarlet apple (cut in half to show the ‘star’ apples can make).  I just went out to check out our Apple Variety page to see what it said about them:

Everything about this apple is rosy: red flesh, reddish leaves and bark, red skin. Tastes great, too.

It looks like we just planted these last year which makes sense as to why we only had about 20 apples total.  They were small and probably over ripe – but lots of fun!  By the time we have an actual crop of these we’ll figure out when we should be picking them for you all!  But don’t worry – I did snag a few to make some sauce with AND there will be one in Baker’s Mix bags until we run out so if you’re lucky you may get to try one too!

I had to end the post with this adorable picture.  This is one of the little ‘tag along’s’ since her older brother and sister are in the program.  Geneva was a joy to have with us and adorable too!  We were so excited to hear that she chose to spend part of our FOURTH birthday at the orchard with ‘Kids in the Garden’.  We hope you had a wonderful birthday sweetie!