Peaches, Pears & Mushrooms - Oh My!

No, I haven't forgotten that I was telling you all about our great road trip/camping adventure.  As life goes, the busy canning season is upon me and for whatever reason it is proving difficult to juggle the many demands on my time.  At any rate, I shall finish the story of our road trip/camping adventure shortly but here are just a few things that has side tracked me :)

I had to drop of my husband at a golf course near one of the mushroom farms so stopped in.  I reasoned that we were having an end of summer party featuring steak, lobster, scallops and shrimp so stuffed mushrooms would be a nice appetizer.  I made my standard purchase of 20 lb of mushrooms, 2 boxes each of firsts and seconds (left).  A little further down the road I stopped for large peaches (right, black bin) despite the fact we had just finished picking over 3 hampers of pears and two good sized boxes of small peaches from our trees (right).  Only some of the fruit from our trees are pictured as I gave some to our neighbour and an couple of friends.

When we moved into this house in 2011, I was ecstatic to discover 3 peach trees, a pear tree, a gooseberry bush and several herbs.  Imagine my dismay when two of the peach trees had to be removed as they were damaged enough that last year's frost that resulted in almost no fruit also was the last straw for those trees.  So we are left with a peach tree and a pear tree for fruit trees.  This year, the peach tree looked to be doing quite good then all of a sudden, the branches drooped heavily to the ground.  The tree is over laden with small fruit and we don't know if it can be saved with a good pruning or not.  The pear tree definitely needs pruning but the fruit is large and abundant!  Both the peaches and pears are deliciously juicy.   I don't use any pesticides or synthetic fertilizers on foods I grow so this is just one example of how I save on the cost of organic foods.  Of note, one of our kids lives in the GTA with a postage stamp size front lawn about 7' x 7' if that.  They planted a small peach tree instead of the normal ornamental tree and it produced nicely this year too.  They also grow a few potted edible plants on their small balcony.  This is proof positive that it doesn't take much space or effort to grow a few fruits, vegetables or herbs to supplement your grocery purchases.

At any rate, I've been busy quite busy in the kitchen...