DTC and the summer crops

I guess heading off into the mountains is still good for the writer's soul.  :)  Sometimes blogging is feast or famine, and this week it's a feast of potential blog posts to write.  I have some great news from the Etsy shop, an update about our weekend in Taos (hence the mountains), thoughts from a church service, and the results of our summer crops, amid a few other nascent ideas.

But first, an adoption update...we got the email yesterday that our dossier is on it's way to China!  For me, the wait is still the wait until our daughter is home, but it's nice to reach a milestone along the journey.  Our next big milestone is getting our Log-In Date (or LID), which our counselor said should take around 4 weeks. 

And now about our summer crops...  Our peach tree had a rough spring/summer, so the crop was way down.  I haven't even googled peach recipes once.  :(  We've had upwards of 2000+ peaches in the past, but I doubt we even had a quarter of that this year.  I'm sorry to all those who usually come pick, as it's a pleasure for us to share our bounty.  I canned some of the better ones--thankfully not all of them were rotten--but we're practically down to the end already.  At least this year hasn't had the urgency and pressure of dealing with all the peaches, but it's still pretty sad.

I also tried my hand at canning tomatoes.  It was a lot of work for 7 pints of tomatoes.  When you hear about those people who save money by couponing, gardening, etc., remember that they probably aren't paying themselves for their time.  I'm going to make roasted tomato soup out of the next batch from the garden (http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/1952487-Roasted-Tomato-Soup-Pesto-Mozzarella-Dippers), and I think next year we'll stick with cherry tomatoes and some San Marzano for pizza sauce.

If you've made it this far, I'll end with my resurrecting eggplant.  We bought a bunch of tomatoes and one eggplant, all of which were growing quite well.  I came out one day to find the eggplant had snapped at the base (a cat, maybe?), and resigned myself to store-bought eggplant for the rest of the summer.  Lo and behold, it grew back and is now covered with blossoms!  I'm hoping to get some by the time my parents visit.