10:30 and time for a short break  Norman has a cup of coffee and a country biscuit while I have a glass of ice water.  I can’t eat at break or I blow up like a baloon!  If I even look at food between meals or have a dessert at meals I put on a pound a day while Norman can eat everything in sight and never gain an ounce.  He didn’t used to be that way but after his open heart surgery 21 years ago when he lost 20 pounds he just has never been able to put on weight.  I on the other hand can’t get it off and I love to cook and eat so I drink lots of water!!

Yesterday our grandson Alex and his new wife came to visit with his father, Joe and two half brothers.  Alex is a special grand son as he was born the same day that Norman has his open heart surgery.  Norman called Alex’s mother to congratulate her on his birth from his hospital bed in a different hospital.  We haven’t seen him for many years so we had lots to catch up on.  We had a nice meal all together and all from the garden.  We had beets and beet greens, broccoli, cole slaw, salad with green peppers from the garden, baked potatoes and a wonderful ham.  Then I made them some stone ground, whole wheat rolls and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  Everyone ate their fill and they took home the leftover ham, which was good bagful and a dozen and a half of the rolls for supper and I kept the bone to make pea soup today.  Norman can’t have ham every often so it loves it when I serve a good ham for company.  He is very good though even when it loves it so much he still only has a 4 ounce serving and no left overs the next day.  I do make a pea soup with the bone and that gets just a very little meat in it that we use for suppers for a couple nights.  Our suppers are always two slices of stone ground, whole wheat bread and either a salad or a cup of soup.  We eat light at night.

Today I went out and picked worms off the broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants.  I got about a dozen from the kitchen garden and about 30 in the lower garden so you see I am able to keep ahead of them and everything but the cabbage look good.  I also picked my first zucchini which we will have for dinner, I got 4 small ones.  I like to pick them when they are small but every year some hid from me and get larger than I like then I have to peel them.  When they are small I just wash them, cut the top and bottom off, cut them in half lengthwise, put them in a baking dish and grate cheese on them and with just a very little pepper and herbs bake them for 45 to 55 minutes at 350 and they are soo good .  I found one plant in the first row of beans that did not get it’s top eaten off and it had a handful of green beans ready to pick so I took those and will put them in with the zucchini today.  I still don’t know for sure what ate the tops but now that they have gotten over the shock they seem to be paying attention to growing the beans again and there are many little inch and a half beans coming so this week we should be getting some beans to eat.   Also tomorrow I will pick my first cauliflower for dinner.  Then we dug one row of Yukon Gold potatoes.  We got a half bushel and found many that some critter dug up to eat.  It seems that any that were near the top of the ground some thing got in and dug them up and ate about half of the potato.  No idea what it was but it has small rodent like teeth marks.  Norman does not want to put a trap out for it as he is afraid it is a skunk and we have been that route before.  So since they don’t take too many we will share the bounty!

Now it is time for me to get to work cooking dinner and Norman is down finishing up weeding the corn.  That is coming along great and I am sure the raccoons are already checking those out as we always have to share that crop with them and who should be surprised since we live on Raccoon Trail, Spencer, TN  !!  Have a great day.