This, my friends, is what I harvested from the garden today. Today...yes, in just one day I got all of this.2 summer squash
1 patty pan
9 ears of corn
10 green peppers
6 beefsteak tomatoes
3 "Mr. Stripey" heirloom tomatoes
1 plum tomato
39 cherry tomatoes
a handful of basil
2 pickles
and a half a sink-full of green beans
The garden that started out as an experiment of sorts has grown into a full blown, living, over-producing monster. A monster that I created. It wouldn't be a problem if I lived near family and friends in Michigan, but here it is much harder to find people to share it with. I don't know a lot of people that like to cook around here and that leaves me with a lot of produce. I've been using as much as I can but I think that we are all "green beaned out." We just can't take eating anymore. We've had them with nearly every meal for over a week. So after days of eating them and giving a few bags away(to the two people I know) I finally resorted to freezing some of the green beans.
Besides green beans we've just finished up with the peas. Here you can see last week's meals. We got a couple of pounds of tenderloin and each night we tried it with a different sauce and accompaniments. One night we had it with fried shallots, smashed potatoes, and green beans. The next night we had steak with a blue cheese sauce, snap peas and corn, and deconstructed bruschetta, and the last night we had it with steak sauce, fresh pea risotto, and Gabe's sweet potato mash. 
I call it Gabe's because the day we went grocery shopping my husband decided to let Gabriel push his own little "Shopper in Training" cart. Gabe did a good job of picking out the things we needed but he added in 3 sweet potatoes as well as a few other things willy-nilly. He was such a cute little shopper that we ended up keeping his items and cooking them up last week.
So, the experiment turned monster has taught me a lot this first year. I've been keeping a mental note of all of the things that need to be changed for next year. I will definitely have a better laid plan going into the planting so that I don't have this problem with overproduction next year. I think I should jot down a map for next spring while all of the changes are fresh and present in my mind.
