First Rhubarb Harvest

After mowing part of the lawn, I decided it was time to make my first rhubarb harvest of the season.  Always a fun day for me each year - love that rhubarb!  So many delicious things to do with it.

This was only about half of what I finally ended up working with.  There was way more ready to harvest than I realized.  Still is!

Drin has never made rhubarb sauce (to serve on ice cream, toast, biscuits, scones, shortcake or pound cake) so I decided to make a batch of that to give to her, and had enough to bag for a pie.  That, too, is always a nice gift - which I gave to Betty!  I love sharing my rhubarb - it is superb.

This is the final rhubarb sauce which I have canned so it will last if I don't want to use it right away.  My four cups of sliced rhubarb made three half pints of sauce.  Pretty, huh!

Well, when that was all done and delivered and the rest of my Bountiful Basket veggies were done I decided that I just had to make up a batch of orange chocolate chip scones.  Love those scones.

Here they are out of the oven, cooling so I can glaze them.

I put a yummy orange glaze on them - nice and thick!

And here they are - ready to give away as gifts.  Yes, I had one when they came out of the oven - they are so delicious - but I have to give away the rest of them.  If I had them in the house, I would probably have to eat them - all of them!  The guys at coffee in the morning will certainly enjoy them - and save me all those yummy calories!

Pool Time

Riding With Emily

Bountiful!

I love the new "bounty" in my life. I've joined "Bountiful Baskets" and am able to order a basket of fresh vegetables and fruits every week in Dillon. Not only can I pick up my basket, but I can order other items in bulk. I am lovin' it!

This is the truck that brings all this "bounty" to Dillon. It is huge! I don't know how many stops this truck makes before it gets to us, but it carries a whole lot fresh pproduce.

The volunteers are getting organized to start loading the baskets.

"Counting" is a big deal with Bountiful Baskets - making sure that everything is on site.

All the bulk items are separate from the baskets.

Busy volunteers.

My 20 pounds of lemons!

My first batch of Sliced lemons that I have dehydrated and is now ready to pulverize into powder - lemon powder which can be added as flavoring to cookies, frosting - whatever I'm cooking.

My 8 pounds of strawberries - well 7 pounds as I gave away one of them!

I don't have time to dehydrate all the 20 lbs of lemons, so I'm juicing about half of them and freezing the juice in ice cube trays that I will be able to use when I need fresh lemon juice. I'm so clever!

My strawberries are washed, hulled, sliced and ready to go into the freezer to be used for my summer baking - pies, shortcake, cream and sugar, smoothies. Yum!

This is my ice cube tray full of lemon juice ready to freeze.

And finally my fresh pineapple sliced and bagged to use for smoothies. Love those smoothies. I also did sliced apples for a pie, and mashed bananas ready to make some banana bread. Just can't bear to let any of this wonderful "bounty" go to waste. It is so delicious!

Outside My Window

"Outside My Window"  looks like springtime in the Rockies!  There are actually three moose in the above picture - you can just barely see some ears over the rocks.  Mama moose and her twins were munching on some willows behind our waterfall! 

It snowed really hard for awhile and we had more than an inch of new snow.  But the sun came out in the afternoon and it was quite warm.  Springtime.  So typical for us here.

This robin sat outside the window peering in for such a long time.  Wasn't the least bit disturbed by me moving around inside.  I laughed at her.

So I decided to work on my bounty from my Bountiful Baskets pick-up this weekend.  I had ordered an extra 25 pounds of tomatoes, and got some of those put up.  They look beautiful sitting on my counter, and I know how good they are going to be in my soups and sauces.  Today I finished up the tomatoes, made and canned applesauce, and baked 5 loaves of zucchini bread for the freezer.  Have beautiful lemons that I will use to make lemon curd, which is one of my favorite things.  Springtime snow in the Rockies is good for doing indoor work!