Marie's Sunday Six . . .

Welcome to my Sunday Six Smile Makers!! I forgot to do them last week, and I sure missed it! I think it's good to take some time to reflect on the past week and all that was good about it. It's always a chore for me to keep it down to only six!




I would have to say the "highlight" of my week was having the Young Women over for a Barbecue this past Thursday evening. We have a very small group of girls. Most weeks we only have two girls that come out regularly. Sometimes they bring friends with them to help pad out the numbers, but really we only have the two. It's kind of nice in a way, because they have formed a good friendship with each other, but I feel kind of sad for them sometimes, because it would be nice if they had a lot of girls to chum around with. It can be very difficult to be a member of our church and stand up for your ideals when the numbers are very few and spread out and living quite far from each other. If it is difficult as an adult, I can only imagine how much harder it is when you are a teen. I admire the teens in our Ward so very much. There are very few of them, only about half a dozen all together. Most go to different schools, and so they end up being very isolated in their faith. That they hold on to it at all is a huge, huge thing! I know that they are all looking forward to their EFY camp later this month! I am sure they will have a wonderful time with other teens from all over England and it will be a great opportunity for them to make some new friends and to feel that they are truly a part of something large and wonderful!



I love tomatoes and the tomatoes we planted in our garden earlier this year are now ripening fast and furiously! I could just sit and eat a whole plateful of them, simply sliced and sprinkled with salt and pepper. With a slice of buttered white bread, there is no finer meal on earth I am thinking! You just can't beat the flavour of a ripe tomato, fresh from the vine with the heat of the sun still on it's skin. Heaven on earth!




The Sweet Peas in our garden are blooming profusely right now! They were really late getting started. We had begun to despair of having any bloom at all, but lo and behold they finally have let go and are chocker block full of lovely blooms. Our friend Alan gave us these plants earlier in the spring. He is a wonderfully proficient gardener and I just knew they would be beautiful, and . . . they are!! A lovely variety of colours and shades. Sweet Peas are one of my favourite flowers. I love the old fashioned blooms, like these and Pansies and Petunias. If I was a young bride, I would want a bouquet of Sweet Peas.



The trees in the Orchards that surround us are just full of ripening apples and I don't think it will be long now before they start picking them. They have already set out the apple boxes . . . great towers of wood scattered here and there throughout the Orchards. It won't be long now before the air rings with the happy chatter of the pickers as they go about their business. We often walk through the Orchards. There is a public footpath that goes right through them. It's a very pleasant walk and so very pretty. The other evening when we were walking through them, the air was very still and, as I looked up into the sky, I could see a hot air balloon floating overhead, the only sound the whoosh of it's gas burner as it fired up again, and again . . . the hedgerows are full of ripening blackberries and the ground is covered with windfalls. We're allowed the windfalls and so at this time of year we often pick up a few. The other night we got enough cooking apples that I made a big pot of applesauce as soon as we got in from our walk. I froze most of it, but then we sat down and enjoyed some of it right then and there.



Jess enjoys the windfalls too. She is ball crazy most of the time. Having us throw her ball with her is one of her absolute favourite things to do. When we are walking through the orchards, she often picks up a windfall and walks the whole way with it in her mouth, just like a little piggie waiting to be roasted. Occasionally she will drop one at our feet, just hoping that we will throw it for her, and so . . . we do . . .



I am so very grateful to be able to live in such a beautiful place. Surrounded by Orchards and tucked away down a quite lane we are quite far away from the world. It's quiet and peaceful and so very, very beautiful. A walk on a quiet afternoon is always filled to the brim with beauty . . . even the seed pods of the wild flowers in the meadow are beautiful in their own way . . . a hundred million pods of promise waiting to find their wings and take to the wind . . . to end up who knows where . . . they do not fear what awaits, or where they will end up. They leave it all to the Master who directs their paths . . . we could learn alot from those little seeds.

And there you have it, my Sunday Six Smile Makers for this week.



Earlier this week my fruit and veggie box arrived with these odd looking flying saucer shaped vegetables tucked into it's bounty. I have seen small patty pan squashes before and they are delicious steamed and served simply with salt, pepper and butter. I had never encountered one quite as large though as these two and so I really had to put on my thinking cap to figure out what to do with them. I thought about stuffing them, or just pan frying them in a bit of olive oil with some salt, pepper and garlic, and then I thought why not do something totally old fashioned with them and so I made a Summer Squash Escallop. It was deliciously different and we both enjoyed it immensely!!



*Escalloped Summer Squash*
Serves 6
Printable Recipe

I love vegetables cooked in this way. Tender and delicious, this is a wonderful side dish in the summertime when the squash are ripening on the vine faster than you can eat them. Sometimes it's the simple things in life that taste the best, don't you think?

2 medium summer squash, thinly sliced
2 TBS butter
1 small onion, peeled and minced
1 tsp salt
black pepper to taste
paprika
4 TBS freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cream



Pre-heat the oven to 180*C?350*F. Lightly butter a 1.5 litre shallow casserole dish. Cover the bottom of the casserole with squash. Season with salt, pepper, paprika and minced onion. Dot with butter. Repeat the layers until all the squash is used up and finish off with a final layer of cheese, onion and the spices. Mix the milk and cream together and pour over. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the squash is tender and the cheese is lightly browned.



If you like Blue Cheese dressing on your salads, you may want to check out my tasty recipe HERE.

Happy Sunday everyone!