The taste of summer.

Last evening I made one of my favorite summer things, pickle juice. Water, sugar, vinegar, and a pinch of salt, seems simple enough, but it brings such joy and fond memories to my heart that it just screams summer to me. Simply bring to a boil and let cool. Add fresh, peeled, thinly sliced cucumbers and a thinly sliced onion and you have heaven. I also throw in a bit of celery seed and fresh dill for an extra punch of flavor.

I wish the cucumber were from my own garden and soon enough they will be, but for now they will be procured from the local greenhouse just down the highway from our home. We had them with dinner last night and again with lunch today, I suppose we will have them with dinner this evening as well. And the fact that everyone, including the picky RAT (Little), loves and eats the snot out of them I am sure we will be sick of them long before the harvest slows.

I used the last of our chicken eggs today. We hard boiled 8 and used 8 on scrambled eggs for breakfast, they were a big hit. I figure I will make egg salad for lunch tomorrow and then we will be all duck eggs from here on in. At this point the ladies are laying 3 a day and that is really more than we use on an average day anyway.

Between breakfast and lunch, during the rain, we made chocolate chip cookies, which are even richer and more delicious made with duck eggs, I think. I was a bit worried that MAT might be yucked out by eating duck eggs in anything. But he seems to to take delight in using the eggs he helped gather. I think the transition will only be hard on Mr. T, simply because he can be a bit picky about food, but if he gives them a chance he will love them. About the time we finished it stopped raining so I went to the garden to do some weeding and harvesting.

I pulled a lovely mixture of lettuce, spinach, radish, and mesclun out of the garden and had a delicious salad for lunch, with a side of pickles of course. MAT even had a bit, though he just picked out the lettuce to eat mostly. I was pleasantly surprised that he ate any. He is more of an iceberg lettuce, lots of cheese and ham, drowned in ranch kinda kid. But he did eat quite a bit, I was rather proud. RAT and Mr. T opted our of the "rabbit food", not really a surprise but they both heaped on the pickles, also not a surprise.

Now it is officially summer in the Little Squidgen house and it smells and tastes delicious.