A fair, garden shame & a new recipe

We went to the Crawford County fair this week; my husband and I, the little man and the baby along with my in-laws.  It was a great time.  I had the baby strapped to me in a carrier the whole time which made it easy.  My husband, god bless him, was in charge of the oldest.  This fair is the largest in our state and there are so many wonderful things to look at.

There were two mama sows with their piglets.  This was the smaller of the two mamas (the larger sow's head was the size of a car tire - honestly I don't know what she weighed but it was actually frightening).  I love this picture because of piglet butts.  They're adorable.

All of the pigs looked fat and happy, napping in the bedding under fans.

Jacob's sheep with their many horns, my favorite.

Lovely ladies.

Watching the mounted police ride by.

My favorite guy from the poultry barn.

He was so handsome.  I love that storm cloud grey color on birds.

A Columbian Wyandotte rooster and hen.  I am looking to order a flock of these in the spring.

In other news:

It really stormed the other day and some of the purple potatoes were washed off by the rain.  We'll have these with breakfast this weekend.

A handful of tomatoes and eggs (check out the cute tiny one).  The garden has been terrible this year honestly.  It's totally covered with weeds and completely gone to hell. We are getting a very minimal amount of food from it at this point. I mean, I did grow a human being and all this summer but the garden and yard are the worst they have ever looked.  It's embarrassing and if I get some free time (ha!) I need to start tearing it down for fall because it will take forever.  As it stands we are getting the minimum of tomatoes, not enough to bother canning, and I am carrying out armloads of kale and weeds to the poultry every morning.

Airing our dirty laundry.  The yard looks horrible.  Planting all of that in the spring was important for my mental health but now it's just embarrassing.

I tried a new recipe this week from this Jamie Oliver book:

There's a recipe in here for fish cakes made with fresh salmon.  I had some fresh tilapia fillets.  I wanted to try the recipe because he has you cook the fish by steaming it in a colander over the boiling potatoes.  It worked like a charm and is a good technique to have under my belt.

They were really good and served with a tomato and olive sauce from the book.

I also baked bread (a loaf and some flat breads) and made pizza crust this week.

The baby has been smiling at me in the mornings, ear to ear and cooing.  It's the best thing ever.  Heart-breakingly wonderful.

Our oldest has been building elaborate trucks with his duplo blocks.  

That's Miss Rabbit driving.  

He is also enjoying playing "I Spy" in the car, but refuses to give a guess to the clue.  He started out guessing but now gets a bigger kick out of me answering my own clue.  I'll say "I spy something green" and he'll say "Mama, what IS it??"  Me: "It's green and tall and has leaves". Him: "Mama WHAT IS IT?!" It's really cute.  He's also calling me Mama Panda this week.  And Mama Newt (slightly less cute).

Oh, life.  I love it.