With all these on-the-go meals served in fast-food chains nowadays, will you agree with me if I say home-cooked meals are the best? And nothing beats if these meals are freshly taken from your home's humble garden straight to your dining table, right? And I mean the happiness in going home to your Mama's home-cooked meal. A farm-to-table experience and for me, that is one of the privileges we get to have when we are lucky enough to be living the province life.
Hello, dear hivers! How did everyone's weekend go? I hope everyone has spent a quality meal with your family. And speaking of meals, it's good to share with you my Mama's awesome way of spending her time planting vegetables. And she's so happy to finally harvest (well, literally) the sweet fruit of her labor. This time, all her efforts in taking good care of it from being a seedling into a full-grown vine that produces fresh and healthy vegetables, and now it's the harvest time of winter melon (kundol) from our little backyard garden. Not quite sure if this is categorized as a fruit or as a vegetable, but anyway, in my home province, we cook this as a dish. Usually, we stir-fry this with garlic and onion and add some chopped pork or chicken or fish. And as easy as that, a yummy and healthy food is on the table. Courtesy of Mama, of course.
When something is planted, something is harvested. We are glad and thankful that our backyard is blessed with fertile soil and that we can cultivate varieties of vegetables here. Its vine has climbed and clung to the mango tree that's why at first look I thought it is a large mango fruit. Oppppss! Am I the only one who mistakenly thought this one looks like mango? Haha!
It is our first time having a winter melon planted in our backyard. Mama usually plants here tomatoes, squash, or sometimes string beans. But our neighbor gave us this vegetable and we were not able to cook it because it was too old to be cooked, so she managed to get all the seeds and plant them instead. And here it is, finally, the vegetables are ready for harvesting. It's good to know that aside from getting it free from the garden, we also get to eat healthy food because this one was not given any pesticides. Mama uses rice hulls and carabao manure as natural and organic fertilizers as an alternative. And that is much better, I guess.
Mama's smile says it all. Planting has always been her happy pill. She loves doing it, not just to occupy her vacant time, but to avoid from spending extra money on buying vegetables in the market. Yes, we are blessed with lots of empty spaces to plant these vegetables on so she thought on why not make use of it? In a very productive way, I suppose. Aside from the fertile soil we luckily have in our backyard, Mama's diligence in pouring her sweat to grow vegetables in our small garden, not just to save money, but she also loves to serve us a healthy and delicious meal. That's why the genuine blissful smile is painted on her face. And of course, this harvest would not be possible if it weren't for her green thumb. That's why she's motivated to plant more because she's able to grow, not just vegetables but lots of flowering plants in our house's surroundings as well.
That's all for now my friends. Sure there'll be more harvesting to do in Mama's small garden. And I would gladly share it with you again. Thank you for dropping by. I hope you all have a great day ahead!