Family Farming

After an exciting afternoon at the beach on Saturday, we decided to spend Sunday at home. We had a big breakfast of Dad's homemade (hunted, killed, butchered, and cooked) venison breakfast sausage and some french toast! Damn good! Then we putzed around the house and eventually made our way out into the garden to take care of some chores. Cabbage, Cauliflower, Radishes and Sugar Snap Peas were the harvest....and there were plenty of peas to go around!

Sugar Snap Peas

Red Cabbage

Cabbage

Greens

My Dad, showing us around, and pointing out the gardens local Bunny...

Mom, pulling up the roots from the cauliflower. The cauliflower plant will only yield one and then its gotta be pulled and another replanted.

Mom and Dad...stoked on their organic garden

Em and Me...pickin' peas

Gary, there for moral support and regulation {aka eating half the peas!}

Mom pea pickin'...

Dad pea pickin'... (its a family affair)

Mom's radishes, that Dad said would never grow! Take that!! Can't say that I'm excited about the radishes, but I sure am excited to sautee their greens!

The main harvest were the sugar snap peas. We blanched and froze a bunch of them, ate a ton, and still have a heap more. So, last summer I tasted a fantastic summer cocktail, the SNAPTINI, at the Ebbit Room in Cape May. If you click on Snaptini, I have it linked to the original blog. But here I've reposted the recipe as well....a perfect excuse for an afternoon cocktail if you're garden is overloaded with sugar snap peas :)

SNAPTINI
makes one drink

1/4 cup organic snap peas, ends trimmed
1 lime, cut into 8 wedges
1 ounce simple syrup (or AGAVE NECTAR)
1 1/2 ounces gin
Coarsely ground organic black pepper

In a cocktail shaker or tall glass, combine the snap peas, lime wedges, and simple syrup and muddle thoroughly. Add the gin and a handful of crushed ice and stir, then pour the mixture, unstrained, into a rocks glass. Garnish lightly with pepper (one crank of the pepper mill is plenty).

**From personal experience, you WANT coarse ground pepper in it -- I acutally added some extra to my cocktail. It gives the drink some depth and an earthy flavor. Without the pepper it's a bit too sweet.

As far as the nutritional breakdown for sugar snap peas:

Good points

• Very low in saturated fat
• No cholesterol
• Very low in sodium
• Very high in dietary fiber
• Very high in iron
• High in manganese
• High in magnesium
• High in pantothenic acid
• High in phosphorus
• High in potassium
• Very high in thiamin
• Very high in vitamin A
• High in vitamin B6
• Very high in vitamin C

Bad points

• Very high in sugar