Today, we were supposed to go work in school (by the way, an average teacher donates $7,500 worth of hours to their profession), getting our rooms put together a bit because this weekend is Iowa Irish Fest and next week is the Iowa State Fair. However, my wife got an email about hallway cleaning or something to that so she decided against it today.

That was followed by messages from both our daughters, they’ve tested positive for Covid.

#profanity

Not only that, the daughter who rode RAGBRAI, the friend of theirs we helped out tested positive and was in our truck for an hour on the way home. WE are close contacts as well.

#moreprofanity

So, we drive up to the pharmacy to get some Covid tests, got some soft serve frozen yogurt at the local dairy (best thing EVER), pick up egg roll wraps, four dozen ears of corn, and supplies.

It’s time to start putting some food away. We’ve gotten rid of our giant chest freezer, so this will be an interesting fall. Typically, we’d have bags of frozen tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries, and peppers, along with pork and beef from our local farmer. I’m not sure how that’s all going to fit this year. I’d love to purchase blueberries, but I can only find them in 10-pound boxes, and I don’t need that many! 🙂 Our tomato plants went into the ground way later than usual, so they’ve not started really producing yet. Neither have our beans or peppers.

The only thing in our garden that is really producing is the zucchini plant, and I swear, I’m about done right now! 🙂

So, first on the docket, corn. We husked the four dozen ears, then started boiling and cutting, along with eating a few ears for ourselves as well (it was delicious). My wife has a creamed corn recipe that she’s basically memorized, so we cut 18 cups of corn, threw in some butter, some half and half (her mom used whole milk), and baked it for an hour. We put away 15 pints altogether and may go back for more corn tomorrow.

While we waited for the corn, the cabbage was shredded, along with ginger and carrots, and the sausage was cooked for egg rolls. As you can see, made a batch with half a cabbage, a pound of pork sausage, a pound of carrots, ginger, soy sauce, ground mustard, pepper, and a dash of salt. I fried them in olive oil (got a nice big blister on my thumb) and laid them out. We tried them in the air fryer, but they just weren’t the same. A light fry did well! 25 egg rolls later, we were done. We ate three cabbage rolls, then ran out of filling! So, my wife hops on the Internets and comes up with a “chocolate blueberry cheesecake egg roll”.

#WHAT

Oh. My. Goodness. My wife just leans over to see what I’m doing and said, “They were so decadent!!” And they were. They were egg rolls you could sell and make millions! Another reason I love my wife, she’s the brains of this whole operation!

We’ll do another batch of these as well because cabbage show up in 6 packs when planting and we have a bunch left to pick! 🙂 My daughters love them, as do my parents (the egg rolls), so they’ll go quickly!

Our garden will give us a bounty, there is no doubt there. It’s all about timing and this year, it will be a little later than in the past. But we’ll get there.

We always do! 🙂