Lavender Festival, Independence Days Challenge, Road Trip

Lavender Festival-
Every year I always miss the Lavender Festival outside of Boise at Thelavendermerchant.net. This time I was smart and marked it on my calendar extra early! It's really a fun place to go, lots of arts and crafts for sale, some food/ drinks, and lots of U-Pick lavenders of several different varieties. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to pick lavender because I already had some at home so I decided to pass on that. I did take lots of photos of bees which was great. I have never seen so many bees in a small area before!!!  I thought the Lavender Festival area would be bigger, but they do a good job with the space they have. It's not like France where you see hills and hills covered with lavender. Instead it was probably about a half an acre of solid lavender, about 8 varieties. They rent the space for weddings, photo shoots, etc. Here's some photos of what I saw, but it didn't take any pictures of the crowds so as not to invade people's space. Check for bees in the photos!

Melissa white Lavender, great scent!

There were a couple of vendors in beautiful tents that had some really cute, but overpriced for me, lavender-oriented items. Way too much for my budget, but I did find this Pewter Revere candy dish with feet for $5. I didn't really care about the black spots but it did Shine up quite a bit more with silver polish

Independence Days Challenge-

1. Plant Something
We have all our veggies and things planted so far so I think we're probably done for now. I will buy more Cilantro if I can find it since the bugs ate mine.

2. Harvest Something- Eggs!!! Lavender, but I left some for the bees, more lavender mini-bunches in both bathrooms-

Got our first summer berries- raspberries/blackberries, and cherry tomatoes. Picked first Marconi pepper, supposed to be red, but harvested early-

3. Preserve/Store Something-

Dave harvested our neighbor's Rhubarb that she hates! Washed and laid out on baking sheets to freezer, got several Qts. The peach tree is really loaded so we should start harvesting peaches in about two to three weeks, maybe. Dave harvested the last of the Service berries, about a 1/2 Qt. The full total is about 2.5 gallons! That's crazy!!!

4. Manage Reserves- Get a Good Deal/Barter/Stock Up/Prep-
Leaving freezer space for fruit from trees and tomatoes. Got 2 really fun, heavy paper buntings on eBay, $5.00 each!

5. Eat the Food- Try New Foods/Recipe-

I saw Jamie Oliver last night on PBS with a recipe I have to try- Jamieoliver.com  Only 5 ingredients, quick flat bread, with mango chutney, cooked eggs, red chili, yogurt! Looks great!

Chutney for the above from Cost Plus. I'll make some homemade peach chutney to can this summer-

Found a fun Greek, vegan food also at Cost Plus-

For the rhubarb I tried this new recipe Rhubarb Coffee Cake  It came out great, nice and moist. With my new cookbook from our plant-based diet classes, my new fave is here-

I used spinach instead of Arugula and used ready to eat, roasted canned red bell peppers. It's FABULOUS!!! I added our fresh tomatoes, and you could switch things up. Use raisins instead of figs, etc. The dressing would be good on shrimp too-

6. Build Community Food Systems-

Haven't been any farmers markets yet for what I want. Waiting for some peaches and apples of different varieties to come into season.

7. Recycle/Re-Use-

Dave mixed last summer's potting soil with manure and compost to lighten it up. Potato seeds failed so we recycled. Donated misc. household stuff and toddler toys. Grandsons are getting too big! 

8. Skill Up-

Learned all about how to clean pewter! And there are 3 different kinds of pewter, who knew!

9. Regenerate What is Lost/Salvage Something-
Mixed up the potting soil and cleaned up the pewter.

Road Trip-

Dave and I both decided we wanted to get out of the town for the day on the 4th of July. Sadly we both had to work on the 5th so there was no 4 day weekend for us. We decided to go to Baker City, Oregon since it's only a short 2 hour/easy drive. Since is higher in elevation it's about 10 degrees cooler, and there has lots of fun things to do. There was no way we were going to stay until midnight to watch fireworks, get up to go to work in the morning after driving all the way back. So we had breakfast and then hit the road and had a nice lunch at one of our favorite places AJ's Corner Brick Bar and Grill-

It has lots of sandwiches, burgers and brews. They had one of the best sandwiches I've ever had, an American Hero. It had homemade focaccia bread, roast beef, sharp cheddar cheese, pepperoni, and horseradish in sour cream. The bread was really light and toasty, not heavy and you really got some of the spiciness from the ingredients. I'm going to make this at home, I know, not plant-based! We hit a small flea market outside town, way up in the mountains. Gorgeous drive, but prices too high. Hit a storage unit sale outside Baker, then stupidly realized neither of us had much cash, they didn't take plastic, and we didn't have a check.  Oh well, live and learn. We got home about 6 p.m., had dinner and watched some of the fireworks on TV before we conked out. Sadly one of our neighbors decided to do his annual way too loud, very illegal, fireworks sharing. He does the big booming, deep rumble ones. I don't know what time I fell asleep, but it woke up Dave up at 2 a.m. Luckily it was slow at work on the 5th.  I'd love to find out who it is and turn them in to the cops, but I don't know that they would actually do anything. If you're going to do all that noise all hours of the day and night, go out in the middle of nowhere, that's my motto.