Not a homemaker, homemaker weekend

Happy Tuesday Thursday!

Hope you all are having a fabulous week! I meant to post this on Tuesday but life got super busy and I also had some technology fails too. My camera showed me the blue screen of death and the only way it would come back to life would be if I deleted everything off my memory card. AAaaah! I had most of my pictures on my computer but all the amazing photos I had from my weekend were gone. Boo! Anyone else had to do this with your camera?

Anyways, here is a re-cap of my past weekend which is so far gone..but I wanted to share some of it at least:)

Another second cousin was welcomed into my family over the weekend!! That's #2 this month already..and a third is on the way! Do you find that babies and wedding come in waves? In my family they do, big time!

As for my weekend it was a busy one (as usual) and I actually got a lot of my to-do list completed. The only thing I didn't work on was my ND school application and that's okay as I have some time before the deadline. So that meant I was a total homemaker this weekend preparing the winter months:) Little House on The Prarie, anyone? HAHA not quite..but almost.

My itchen got a huge workout and I made a big mess, as usual, but it was great fun. I felt happy to know that I'm able to have nutritous food from the summer months in the dead of winter.

Let's start off with the tomatoes, shall we?

"sun-dried" in my dehydrator! I don't know wht I haven't thought about doing this before! I wish it was still summer and I could actually sun dry them:)

About 20 pounds of tomatoes turned into sauce and frozen! It's super delish too. Can't wait for a cold, rainy day to use those up:) I'm pretty happy that I was able to use a lot of glass to freeze everything too. There still are a few foods in plastic but not nearly as much as in glass! Plastic is freaking me out after my ND visit. PS the other jar is filled with golden plums.

some more "sun-dried" action

Oh sun-dried tomato hummus, I hear you calling my name!

Up next..pears!
My dehydrator was full all weekend...and still is! These are pears from an organic farm literally down the street!

Mmm...these are probably my favorite dried fruit!

I still have quite a few pears left over so I'm thinking about making some of these recipes:

Bonzai Aphrodite - Vegan vanilla pear muffins

Veganbaking.net - Ginger pear muffins

Raw Epicurian - Chocolate pears

Gluten-Free Goddess - Gluten-free apple and pear crisp

Any favorite pear recipes?

Herbs! I didn't have time this morning to take more photos but I dried thyme, pineapple sage, mint, lemon balm, and some cilantro.

Pineapple sage! Mmm this stuff is amazing! I picked it from my work and need to dry more. It has such a unique flavor!

Mint! I never tire of the smell or taste of mint. In the winter I love sipping on peppermint tea..I want some now actually lol as the rain continues to fall.

As for the basil I picked from Covert Farms, I thought I would try a preserving method that I heard works well for this amazing herb -ice cubes!

They smell amazing and how convenient to just drop one of these into a soup or pasta dish!

Just squish as much chopped basil into an ice-cube tray as you can then add purified water and freeze!

Then I tried to make zucchini bread -twice! I thought I had done something wrong the first time so I gave the recipe the benefit of the doubt and went for it again! Fail! Ahh nothing is more disappointing than that. I try to use the healthiest ingredients possible and so that means a would-be healthy, expensive dish goes in the trash. Boo! Oh well, I'll look for a different one. Thank goodness I still have zucchini growing in the garden:)

Have an awesome Thursday!