Homegrown Meals

Gardening has been sowed into my blood for as long as I can remember. I can recall at a young age tromping through my grandmother's garden just in awe at the round, plump, bright red tomatoes hanging on by a thread off of their branches. Then glancing down at the tilled ground and discovering the yellow squash curled up safely under the leaves of its plant. Every time we went to grandma's in the summer I had to go check out the garden, and I still do to this day. There is something that just lights a fire in me when I discover the perfect green bean dangling by my ankles or when I get the chance to pluck the biggest tomato in the field. 
This undying love for fresh produce, of course, is seasonal in Michigan, our gardening days are a short 3-4 months before the frost comes in again. That being said, we do our best to savor these bright flavors in the summer by cooking farm to fork meals every chance we get. This year my husband and I knocked an item off our bucket list by making fresh homemade pasta from scratch and using items from our little 2-acre piece of land to bring together the perfect meal. We started with a simple toned down recipe using just flour, egg, and salt to make the pasta dough. We pressed, push, wheeled, and sliced the dough into ​a Bucatini pasta and then we splashed it into the pot to cook. As we cooked the fresh pasta over the stove we also simmered tomatoes, garlic, basil, and rosemary into a nice thick red sauce. Lastly, I made fresh meatballs with leftover homemade bread, eggs, fresh venison from last fall's hunting season and Italian seasoning.
This process was a lengthy one at that but we had the best time running around the kitchen together creating this masterpiece of a meal that we grew, gathered, and hunted ourselves. And it tasted pretty darn good too, which always helps!