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Hi Reader,

Guess what? Today (the 16th) is mine and Brian's 35th wedding anniversary! 🎉 It seems so weird - only old people have been married that long, so what does that make us? 😂

Last year we took a trip to Hawaii in the fall:

This year we are headed to... Newport, Oregon.

Not quite as tropical and warm, but still pretty (picture me in jeans and a fleece, not a sundress 😀).

Before we take off for a few days, I'm trying to get ahead of the harvest game so I don't lose anything while we're gone. That means I'm drying Italian plums my brother-in-law gave me (have you dried plums like this yet? They are my FAVORITE dried fruit and you can't get anything like it in the store), making a few more batches of pesto, and canning and freezing any ripe tomatoes on my counter.

Of course I'll be doing these things in between finishing this tiling project we started last week:

Yes, in the upstairs bathroom we started working on last February. Sigh. DIY is never fast for us, but this has been excruciatingly slow.

The good news is that the old house/walls/plumbing stuff is done and now the finish work should go much faster. 😀 Stay tuned!

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Popular Recipes Right Now

To prove I'm not the only one harvesting, hitting up the farm stands and preserving, I give you the top recipes on the site from the last 30 days:

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​Canned Pizza Sauce​ You can make this with fresh tomatoes or stick them in the freezer and make this when it's cooler or you have more time. The bonus with frozen? You can pour off the juice as they thaw and shorten the cooking time! ​

​Copycat Rotel for Canning​ This is a simple tomatoes and chili mixture that I came up with using a tested tomato mixture recipe substituted with the ingredients on a can of Rotel. Very close dupe. ​

​Favorite Thick Salsa for Canning​ I've now made 5 batches of this (and a few of the roasted chipotle salsa) to give us a year's worth of salsa. I ran out in June this year and found salsa is expensive and not as good! Lesson learned.

​Sourdough Artisan Bread​ Whew, no more tomatoes, ha! Rounding out the top four spots is this easy, one day sourdough loaf. Apparently it's get-back-to-baking time as well as preserving!

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From The Blog

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​BEST Easiest Roasted Tomato Sauce​ This is an incredibly flavored tomato sauce that you can throw all kinds of different vegetables into. It's only safe for fresh eating or for freezing, and my freezer always has a year's worth of this sauce because it is the BEST. ​ GET THE RECIPE​ ​ ​

​25 of the Best Apple Breakfast Recipes​ Let's ring in the start of fall this week with a comforting breakfast that stars the season's apples! From baked apple oats to simple apple pastries and everything in between (all real food and many healthy options!). ​ GET THE RECIPES HERE​

Wishing you a wonderful start to fall this week!

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