I love this time of year when so much of what we eat comes right from our garden.

As you can see, our peach tree has produced so many peaches this year (this is only a small amount of the peaches we’ve picked) that we’ve started to jar them to enjoy during the winter.

We’re enjoying cucumbers, cherry peppers, jalapeno peppers, cherry tomatoes and one of my favorites, string beans. This year we’re also having great luck with basil. The jars in the back are sun dried tomatoes (bought since it’s too humid here to dry them ourselves) sandwiched with our fresh basil under oil. This makes a great snack with a nice hunk of bread. The top jar is full of seeds from our amazing dill plants. Unfortunately our favorite organic farm didn’t get a good crop of pickling cukes this year, so it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to make pickles.

We’ve also started jarring gardiniera or pickled vegetables – a great Italian appetizer. There’s nothing like opening up a jar in the dead of winter and enjoying the taste of fresh vegetables that we grew in our garden.

Talk about low carbon footprint for our organic food!