Weekend gastronaut

Here's a little photo essay of a pretty great weekend.  We headed down toward Indianola to check out the...

Summerset Winery!

It was a beautiful sunny day out, the sky was perfectly blue over the grape vines

We did the whole sample thing, and although Iowa wines are unlikely to ever compare to those we sampled out in Sonoma on our honeymoon, we found one that was pretty good.  So,

We got a bottle!

Stacia liked it.

I liked it.

Good times all around.  With a few glasses under our belts we headed down to Lake Ahquabi State Park to camp for the night.  But it was totally full up.  No campsites anywhere.  :(  We rented a canoe and toodled around on the lake for a while (lots of fun but no pictures taken).  That got us pretty hungry, but without a campfire to cook our hot dogs over, we had to get food in Indianola.  Luckily there was a super cute

A&W restaurant!

This place was 1950s style all the way!  They had carhop service in the back with the old-fashioned trays that swing into your car.  And on the inside, they had the craziest way to order...

By telephone!

Stacia ordered us up some food, which was marginal, and some root beers, which were awesome!  On a 90+ degree day, there's nothing quite like a big frosty mug of root beer.

Mmmmmm.

With that, it was time to head back home.  But since this was Indianola, we saw a balloon before we left.

Back home again in West Des Moines, we found our garden had gone insane!  Gigantic plants!  Vegetables out of control!  Zucchini gone wild!

Note the expression of terror on Roxie's face

What to do with a baseball bat-sized zucchini?  Besides play baseball, of course.  Well, make zucchini bread, of course!  Using just half of this beast got us three full loaves of zuke bread.  No pictures, sorry.  One went to my coworkers, one to Stacia's, and we're still polishing off the last one.  I do love zucchini bread, but this may be a little out of control.  Time to channel my inner Bubba (Forrest Gump, anyone?) and start making zucchini everything.

Oh, and then there's the beans.  Picking on Saturday left us with four and a half pounds of green beans.  Which is way too much for two people to eat.  So we went all pioneer on them and decided to...

Can them!

That's 9 beautiful pints of green beans right there, plenty to last us well beyond the growing season.  I can't wait until it's the middle of December and we are still able to enjoy green beans out of our garden!

All in all, it was a jam-packed weekend.  We were busy from pretty much sunup to sundown, Saturday and Sunday.  And aside from the godawful "chili cheese fries" at A&W  (if that's chili, then I'm a Vermicious Knid)  it was an awesome food and wine experience.  I love to eat local and support local businesses, but even those can't compare to stuff you grow yourself.  I'm hoping to keep preserving this harvest and having lovely fresh vegetables for many months to come.