Canning Tomatoes, My Way

For the sake of the historical record, my descendants, my failing memory, instructional purposes, whatever, I am recording the method I use to can tomatoes.  It may be different from the way you can tomatoes in some small way.  But it works for me, and it may for you

This is my method for canning tomatoes somewhat whole.  I quarter them so they fit in the jars more efficiently.

Materials:

• Mesh strainer over a medium bowl (x2)
• 4 qt. saucepan ¾ full of boiling water
• Stainless steel bowl
• Ice
• 1 qt. saucepan ½ full of boiling water
• Water bath canner ½ full of boiling water
• Can lifter
• Dish towels (2)
• Colander
• Lemon concentrate
• 1 Tablespoon measure
• Serrated tomato knife
• Paring knife
• Knife sharpener
• 1 qt. canning jars, sterilized in the dishwasher
• 2 part lids
• Paper towels
• Food mill (Mirro Foley 2-Quart Stainless Steel Food Mill)
• 2# (or about 11) small, handball sized round Italian tomatoes/1 qt. jar

Method:

1. Sterilize the 1 qt. jars in the dishwasher or a pot of boiling water.  Place them upside down on a towel to dry.
2. Remove the stems and rinse and score the bottom of 11 canning tomatoes.
3. Drop the tomatoes into the 4 qt. saucepan of boiling water and cover.
4. Fill the stainless steel bowl with a dozen ice cubes and cold water.
5. Remove the tomatoes from the boiling water once the skin peels and submerge them in the ice water.  Do not overcook the tomatoes.
6. Remove the skin, quarter the tomato, remove its top, and place these in the first strainer over a bowl.
7. Scrape out all the seeds and put them in the strainer with the discarded skin and core.  Place the quartered and seeded tomato in the second strainer over a bowl.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 until all the cooled tomatoes are processed.
9. Put 2 T. of lemon concentrate in a 1 qt. jar.  Place the quartered tomatoes in the jar, occasionally gently taping the bottom of the jar on a folded dish towel on the counter top to help the tomatoes settle into the jar.  Continue until the jar is full.
10. Top the jar with the liquid drained from the quartered tomatoes and their refuse, leaving ½ inch space to the top of the lids.
11. Carefully wipe the top of the jar lid with a damp, clean paper towel.
12. Drop the 2 part lid into the 1 qt. saucepan of boiling water for one minute.  Carefully remove and place it on top the jar, screwing it down firmly.
13. Repeat steps until all the jars are full.
14. I only process five quart jars at once.  I tried doing seven, but two knocked into each other as I lowered them into the water bath and those jars burst in the processing, making a huge mess and wasting two quarts of tomatoes (super sad).
15. Cover the jars with water 1" above the surface of the quart jars.
16. Bring the pot to a full boil then reduce the heat to medium heat and process the tomatoes for 35 minutes.
17. Remove the jars from the canner and cool on the counter top listening for the "ping" of the 2 part top that says sealing was a success.
18. Once completely cooled, check the tops of the jars to be sure that the seal is strong.  The top of the jar should not “pop” up and down when you press on it.
19. Mark the jars as to their contents and the date.
20. Run the discarded tomato bits through the food mill.  From five quarts of waste, I milled 1 pint of tomato puree that I will use in my spaghetti sauce that I can next.
21. Take the refuse of the food mill, the seeds and skins, out to the chicken so that they might process them into eggs and some excellent compost ingredients.

For more information on canning, see Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes, Another Way to Preserve Summer

I first read about oven roasted Jaune Flamme tomatoes in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.  I found a recipe online and tried them today.  Delicious!
I found the recipe on Willi Galloway's site digginfood.com.  Keep a close eye on them.  I let mine get a little dry.  I just scooped out the tasty insides and froze those.  I am planting more of those Jaune Flamme tomatoes next year for sure!
The recipe can be found at http://www.digginfood.com/2010/08/slow-roasted-tomatoes/.  I vacuum sealed the ones I didn't eat, marked them, and popped them in the freezer to add to sauces this winter.
SOOOO tasty.

Ever wonder WHY? Here's another good reason.

On Friday, I heard a snippet of a show about tomatoes on NPR's Science Friday segment.  It was an interview with Barry Estabrook regarding his new book, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit.  It sounded intriguing and timely, so Saturday, I replayed it while I was canning tomatoes.  By the time I was finished listening, I was happy to have spent my time canning my tomatoes and those of local farmers and friends.
I knew that they were grown and picked ethically and I will return to my canning endeavor again today and never eat another industrial grown tomato again if I can help it.  This interview is worth a listen.  http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201108265

Tomato Season Opens with a BANG!

I spent the day with my tomatoes.

Not all were from my garden, but they are all heading for the pantry.

I bought two five pound bags of roma tomatoes at the farmer’s market for four dollars each.  Di’s gardening guru of a guy let me raid his patch too.  He gave me some small, round, Italian tomatoes and some “Viva Italia” and “San Marzano” paste tomatoes.  I have four quarts of chopped tomatoes, two cans of “whole” tomatoes (really, they are quartered), and one quart of tomato sauce.

A great tutorial for tomato processing can be found at http://storageskills.blogspot.com/2009/08/preparing-tomatoes-for-canning.html. 

I made a few minor adjustments.  Instead of cooking down the tomatoes, I packed the chopped or quartered tomatoes in jars, and topped the jars with the reserved juice from peeling and seeding the tomatoes.  I added very little juice to the four jars of chopped tomatoes and much more the jars of quartered tomatoes.  I reduced all the extra juice into sauce and put that in the final quart jar and then processed the lot altogether.

I very purposefully collected the juice of the tomatoes by employing a couple of colanders and a food mill, see Mirro Foley 2-Quart Stainless Steel Food Mill.  I peeled, cored, and seeded the tomatoes into a colander over a bowl and chopped the tomato meat I intended to can into another colander over another bowl.  I reserved the drained juices to top off the jars of chopped and quartered tomatoes.  I processed the skins, pulps, and seeds through the food mill and reduced that for the tomato sauce.  The remaining skins and seeds were a great snack for the chickens.

I could have canned the juice as juice, but I still have the juice I canned last year.  As far as improving upon last year’s tomato canning effort, I was careful to remove as many seeds as possible and I hope that the addition of the juice will give this year’s canned tomatoes a more tomato-y taste.

It is alot of work, but I spent my day in the kitchen with my family checking on my progress.  The house smells fabulous.  I have seven quarts of organically grown tomatoes for twelve dollars.   These beautiful jars just look like summer to me.

I still have another twenty pounds of tomatoes to can with lots still ripening on the vines.  I’m looking forward to some late summer days of salsa and spaghetti sauce with many more cans of chopped, quartered, and pureed tomatoes.  I can never get enough of them!

You Snooze, You Lose—Picking Wild Blackberries

Around here, the best fruit of the season is free and found in the back of the graveyard.

My youngest son was scared to death the first time I took him to pick blackberries in the cemetery.  He wasn’t sure what frightened him the most, the idea of “trespassing” on cemetery property to pick fruit, the possibility of being followed home by “haints” who didn’t appreciate the thieving of their blackberries, or the idea of eating things that drew their nourishment from dead bodies.  The whole time he whined, “I think we have enough, let’s go home.”  He was mortified, terrified, and horrified, all at the same time.

He changed his tune immediately when I baked those berries into a coffee cake.  He nicknamed it “cemetery cake” and became my best picker.

Blackberries aren’t nearly as prolific here as they are in the Northwest where my BFF beats them off with machete and Roundup.  This stand of canes is the only one I know of in the area.  It’s an old town secret that the cemetery is the best spot for blackberries and those “in the know” race to get there before the rest.

Megan and I stopped to check them a couple of weeks ago and they weren’t ready yet.  Figuring that they would be late like everything else, I forgot about them until this week.  I braved swarms of mosquitoes to check on their progress yesterday only to find the canes picked clean.  I climbed through the brush to the oft neglected back of the stand to see that had been picked clean too.

Well, I have said it many times to my kids, you snooze, you lose.  There will be no blackberry jam this winter and no cemetery cake for this household.  Next year I’ll have to be more militant about my reconnaissance missions to check on blackberries.

Evil Elves Have Taken Over My Life!

What was I thinking, leaving town for a few days to help with my dad?  Aren’t good deeds to be rewarded?  Though all seemed fine and dandy when I returned, I quickly realized that total chaos reigned in my absence.

All week I have been doing laundry and picking up messes. In an attempt to find his floor and the source of “that smell”, my oldest pulled all his laundry to the first floor to sort and sniff.  We think that the cat may have been locked in his room for an extended period, hence “that smell”.

My son’s comforter sprung a leak and the whole downstairs is now coated in a thin layer of goose down.  The dryer keeps spewing up little tufts of down every time I clean the filter.  My other son emptied the garbage and all that downy lint from the dryer coated the whole place again with a fresh layer of dustiness. 

I feel like the shoemaker, up to my eyes in work, work, work.  Unfortunately, the elves that come to my house in the middle of the night only make more work for me.  I drop to my bed in exhaustion and those elves are still eating, drinking, and making general mayhem instead of something useful like shoes.

Football season is in full swing and both boys are eating four or five meals a day so the bread maker is going twice a day now.  Just to add more chaos to my day, the dog got into the bread drawer while I was gone on another school shopping scavenger hunt and ate this morning’s loaf.

My laundry room is littered with large pieces sports equipment, helmets, and shoes.  Once the laundry is under control, I plan to collect all the items that need to be put away and pile them on the dining room table.  I think I’ll withhold food until these items are all put in their proper places.

Tonight, I’ll booby trap the public areas of the house in an attempt to drive the evil elves away.  A refrigerator lock and removal of the gaming system and mouse for the computer should do the trick.  Perhaps then life can return to normal.  There are so many other things I’d like to be doing.

To read about some sure fire suggestions for getting boys to put away their protective supporters, see “Check It Out!”.

Midsummer, Take Stock, Part 2

Sometimes it takes some time away from the garden to really see it properly.
After being gone for a few days, I am able to look more objectively at the whole picture and evaluate what is working and what is not.
First on my mind are tomatoes. It looks like blight has taken out two of three of my canning tomato beds. At least the “San Martino’s Romas” look good. I’ll plant more of those next year. They are very big with fruit still setting, but I’ll be lucky if it all ripens before first frost. Those were late starts from seeds from the very last of the fruit of the season, so I am not surprised. Next year I’ll need bigger cages though. I’ll build bigger ones once I finish with the canning this fall.
The vertical cucumbers are really doing well and they don’t seem to mind the partial shade. I’ll have to take advantage of some more vertical sites to get enough cucs for pickles though. Once the garage is painted, I’ll do some prep work on that area so it will be ready for spring peas and summer cucumbers.
I learned that I can’t plant enough peas to keep my family happy. They love them in everything!
I am so happy with the grow lights I set up in the basement. I have broccoli and kale starts growing for the fall garden. The kale that I direct seeded hasn’t done a thing.
Best of all, I like my zinnias. The more I cut, the more they flower. I will DEFINITELY be scouring the seed catalogs this winter for some home grown happiness in all sizes and colors.
Take some time, look at what has worked and what hasn’t, write it down, and enjoy the moment. The pause before canning season can be such a sweet one.

Volunteer Pumpkin

At least three of my friends have volunteer pumpkins growing in their front yards.  They seem to be springing up from the ground just about where their jack-o-lanterns sat last Halloween.  Pumpkins rising up from the dead, it’s so Halloween.

The best pumpkins I ever grew came up from pumpkins that we’d tossed into the compost pile after Halloween.  The chickens were really intrigued and pecked one often to check if it was ready to eat.  The peck marks made for great pumpkin personality and my son ran with it and came up with a great jack-o-lantern that year.  Di had great Halloween pumpkins last year, some ugly prodigy of a sugar pumpkin and a gourd, all warty and weird looking.

I tell my friends to let those pumpkins grow!  They are the talk of the neighborhood.  If they don’t get stolen, we’ll have free pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns.  One rogue pumpkin vine can produce an insane number of pumpkins before frost knock down the vines.  Growing so close to the house, those vines will be protected from those early October frosts.  Sometimes the best things in life are free.

 

Saving Tomato Seeds—The Best and The Blightless

I’m finally getting my own tomatoes and they are SO GOOD.

I got all these heirloom tomatoes from The Friends Sale this Spring.  My indeterminate tomato crop is a mixture of cherry and slicer tomatoes.  Some are doing better than others.  My favorite is an orange one, about the size of a tennis ball.  I definitely want this one in my garden next year.  The only problem is that I am not really sure what it is.  The best solution to this problem is to save the seed and forget about labeling it.  I’ll call it “That Tasty Orange One”.

I can think of three great reasons to save seeds.

Saving seeds saves money.  A packet of seeds or a hot house start cost more than the free seeds I save from year to year.

Saving seeds allows me to build a pallet of my favorite varieties of vegetables.  I can’t always rely on being able to find them in seed catalogs or start sales.

Saving seeds insures that I’ll have a selection of varieties that do well in my garden.  I can save “the best and the blightless”.  A tomato that is blight resistant is well worth the “trouble” of saving seed.

I have saved tomato seeds before, only to learn that I hadn’t done it correctly.  It still worked and the paste tomato plants I started from those seeds are the best in the garden this year.  I just decided to do it correctly.

So I have a cup of tomato seeds fermenting on the windowsills with a big “DO NOT THROW AWAY” sign pasted to it.  We’ll see what happens.  The worst threat to my success is always my husband.  Fermenting tomato seeds surely look destined for the trash to him.  Hopefully he’ll remember the pea incident from earlier in the summer and heed my sign to back off.

To learn more about saving tomato seeds, see http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/seedsave/2002084456024410.html.

Pickled Okra

Once again, the farmer’s market provided.

I told my brother to be on the lookout for okra.  He is a farmer’s market devotee and hits some great ones in The Cities.  Okra doesn’t show up often here at our small town markets, but his neighborhood vegetable stand markets their produce more towards the African and Asian members of his community and big baskets of okra are plentiful at his corner farmer’s market.  The great prices and abundant produce (plus the cup of coffee and time together we shared) made the drive worth the trip.

For fourteen dollars I got ten pounds of okra, two bouquets of dill, and a beautiful bunch of garlic.  I added some cider vinegar, pickling salt, distilled water, and hot peppers from the garden and POOF… I had sixteen jars of pickled okra, our family’s favorite pickles.

I used Linda Ziedrich's recipe from The Joy of Pickling: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market (Revised Edition).  The key to pickling okra is getting all the pods into the jars.  I packed the pods pointy side up first, then pointy side down to fill the jars most effectively.  

Pods too long to work their ways into my pint jars were served for dinner, stewed with garden tomatoes and leftover farmer’s market garlic.  It was one of my mom’s favorite dishes.  She cooked it fast and it was never slimy.

Farmer's Markets... Find one!

The produce is rolling into local farmer’s markets by the bushel, which is a lot more than can be said for my own garden.

I rely on the farmer’s market for fruits and vegetables that I don’t come from my garden.  I don’t have the space for sweet corn, the sun for okra, or the heat for sweet potatoes.  I’d like a bumper crop of cucumbers for pickles, but I don’t have the space for that yet.  I’m hungry for beans, but mine are still little plants.  I never have much luck growing cilantro.  My tomatoes are showing signs of late blight.  I can get all of the above and more at the farmer’s market.

Farmer’s markets are popping up all over the country.  Even in my small town, I can find a farmer’s market or a local famrstand within ten miles seven days a week.  The produce is far cheaper and much fresher than anything at the grocery store and I love meeting the people who see their produce from seed to sale.  I like to hear about their farms and their lives.  When the cherry trees on our block failed to fulfill my dreams of pie, the farmer’s market provided.

Some of the fare at the farmer’s market isn’t strictly organic, but all of it is guaranteed to be locally grown by the sponsors of the market.  It’s still a great way to get fresh, affordable food to put away for the winter.  Every week, I bring home extra of those things I love to flash freeze and save for winter.  Last year, before first frost, I got a box of red peppers for five dollars.  I roasted them that evening, vacuum sealed them, and enjoyed them all winter long.

My plot can’t provide all the produce I want or need, but the farmer’s market generally can.  It’s fresh.  It’s local.  And I can feel good about supporting other small farmers while feeding my family truly good food.

To find a farmer’s market near you, visit http://search.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/default.aspx.

Why Did I Think This was a Good Idea?

Sometimes, I swear, I think my kids are trying to kill me.

Is it my imagination, or is summer break just about a month too long? 

Last week I thought that I might trade my teenagers for something more useful, like a bucket with a hole in the bottom of it.

I REALLY wanted to inflict bodily harm when they whined in unison, “We have to paint the whole garage OURSELVES?!?”

First, “we” (meaning me, I) painted the whole house MYself.  No one helped me, with the exception of Lisa, who came and rescued me from impending snowshowers and my husband came out and slapped some paint on long enough to have his picture taken.   That was the Summer I heard my daughter tell a friend, “Dads don’t paint!  That’s a mom job!”

Second, I was going to help, model, mentor, demonstrate.  Painting is an important life skill.  Kids need to learn how to do it.  “We”, in this case, meant three people.

Third, we technically aren’t painting the whole garage.  Most of the east side is taken up by the wood pile and the chicken coop.  The north side faces the neighbor’s garage and is only partially accessible, thus only needing minimal painting.

This morning, I am pretty sure that my oldest tried his best to get fired from painting.  “Getting fired” is a trick I think he learned from his father and uncles.

I once heard my husband and his brothers explain to a soon-to-be-husband how he could get “fired” from doing laundry.  The trick is to do it so badly that the wife doesn’t allow the husband within the confines of the laundry room for fear that mayhem may ensue.

Now, my husband and his brothers are pretty liberated men and I KNOW their mother taught them to do laundry.  She would have hauled them all off by the ears had she overheard this conversation.  I’m pretty sure they were just yanking my chain.  I was crashing their bachelor party.  But I had second thoughts about the concept of “getting fired” from a job today when my son came in to say that he’s spilled “some” paint.

“Some” paint was a quarter of a gallon of oil based primer, splashed in the grass, the garden, and up the limestone retaining wall.  The painting that he had completed was splotchy, random, and drippy.  I took deep, calming breaths and reminded myself that everyone must start somewhere.

So instead of “getting fired”, my oldest became familiar with paint thinner and toxic spill clean up procedures today.  I had to be more specific about just what needed priming and what resembled an acceptable level of coverage.  I remind myself that this is just the west side of the garage, not the side that faces the street and there is a very good reason why we are starting on this less public side.  I taught my boys to cook.  I can teach them to paint.  “We” will paint the garage together.

It’s a good thing that we have another few weeks of summer left.  We’ll need all the time we can get to paint this garage.  Tomorrow I’ll go buy more paint and an extra gallon of patience.  Lord knows, I’ll need it.

The Joy of Pickling

It’s time for pickles.

We have hit a cool spot in the weather and there is not much else to do but pickle things.

My beets are getting big, but that’s not really a good thing.  I tried a new variety this year.  “Great Storage Beet!” said the catalog.

“Yuck,” said the family.  They usually do turn their noses up at beets, but this time I had to agree.  These beets didn’t taste very good.

So I pulled out my book of pickling recipes and looked up “beets”.

The Joy of Pickling: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market (Revised Edition) is a book I borrowed from a friend until I was afraid I might send it back too drool stained to be acceptable.  I had to break down and buy a copy for myself.
Last year I tried Linda Ziedrich’s recipe for Pickled Beets with Red Wine.  EVERYONE liked them, including my husband, the big beet hater. This would be the perfect recipe for my less than perfect beet.

I was disappointed that Linda didn’t have a recipe for Pickled Beets with Horseradish, my personal favorite.  I may just need to come up with that one on my own.

Pickled Beets with Horseradish was my standard side order at the Busy Bee Restaurant on Damen Avenue in Chicago until they closed in 1988.  I had to have them.  Whenever a find someone of Polish ancestory who cooks, I ask about Pickled Beets with Horseradish.

“Oh yeah, my mother used to make those,” they usually say.

“Have you got a recipe?” I ask, with hope in my eyes.

No one ever does.  My search continues.

But Linda Ziedrich keeps me busy with pickled beets in red wine (a Central Coast Merlot is GREAT in this recipe).  This year I am trying pickled okra and Armenian Mixed Vegetables.  The Limed Green Tomatoes that I made last year are SO tasty and such a good use for all those leftover green tomatoes. And  I have high hopes for those cucumbers.

Pickling is a great way to keep the summer’s harvest into the winter and there is so much to consider beyond the dill spear.  Pulled pork sandwiches wouldn’t be the same without okra on the side.  My brother called to report that there is okra at the farmer’s market in the city.  My niece and I may need to take a field trip this weekend to get some and do some pickling.  It sounds like a memorable weekend activity to me.
I love having a pickling bible on hand to inspire me and push me to try new things.  Cranberry Ketchup sounds fantastic! This book gets my brain going and my canning pot bubbling.  Well worth it!

Berry Picking, Again

We went to the berry patch again this morning.  This time, it was more about entertainment than food acquisition.

I just needed to kill some time with a bunch of kids.  All but mine had never been berry picking and our group ranged in age from 5 to 16 (excluding, me, older than dirt, according to the teenager).

Only one decided that picking berries wasn’t his cup of tea.  He still had fun building a fort for ants and rolling old berries down a gopher hole.  He did finally concede to taste one.  He was sure that he was a dyed in the wool blueberry hater.  He was wrong.  He loved them, and every berry he picked after that went straight in his mouth.  “See,” said one of the pickiest eaters of our crowd, “I told you that you should try new foods!”

The nine year old was the berry picking convert of the group.  He pronounced it The Most Fun Thing he’d done all Summer.  “This is how real people get their food,” I heard him tell the others.

On the way home, he told me that his favorite part was the talking.  He said that the picking gave him a chance to talk to people.  He spent most of his picking time talking to my sixteen year old son.  He told me that sometimes he is too busy doing other things to be able to talk with his friends, but when he was picking berries, there was nothing to do but talk to his fellow pickers.

I love going to the berry patch to pick with friends.  We get a chance to catch up with each other’s lives and families.  I love to see elderly parents picking with their grown children because I can eavesdrop on their family stories.    I tell my own children stories about the berry picking trips we took as children.  My children talk about different berry picking trips they have made.  Their uncle tells them about picking wild berries at fishing camp.  Their dad and my dad tell stories of picking berries with bears in Northern Wisconsin.

In the end, the kids had enough berries in their buckets for the night’s dessert.  I had enough for a pie and another couple weeks of snacking.    It was a great recompense for two hours of kid entertainment.  The trip up to the patch included an ELO sing-along, the trip home was occupied with a game of “Make Me Laugh”.  At least one kid said it was The Best Thing.  The picky eater learned that he liked blueberries.  The nine year old and the sixteen year old got a chance to bond.  Everyone got some Vitamin D and no one was a slave to a screen.  The moms who stayed home got two hours of kid free time.  We all ate our fill of blueberries.

In the end, it’s about more than good food.  It’s about life.

Growing Vertical

Cucumbers on my Trellis!

For the first time, I have cucumbers in my garden.

I’ve never been able to grow them because I haven’t had the space.

When I tore out my old flower beds and converted them to vegetable beds, I set aside a spot for some trellises.  It took me a while to get them finished.  I dug the post holes early in spring, but I wasn’t sure how to level them and attach the trellis.  My attention was diverted to other issues.

Then the universe sent me a sign to get on it, I found a roll of free rabbit fencing wide enough to span the posts.  It was a Scrounger’s Dream Come True and a sign… time to get serious about those trellises.

The cucumbers and squash had been in the ground for weeks, but they weren’t doing much.  Once I started training them up the trellis, they really started to take off.  Growing vertically enabled my plants to take full advantage of the morning sun and their growth is nearly visible to the naked eye.

I couldn’t have cucumbers and squash in this small space if I didn’t grow them vertically.  Many seed companies offer compact varieties that do well in containers.  One pot with a bushy variety of squash or cucumbers growing on the balcony could keep a condo dweller happy.

For more information on growing vertically in a small space, check out Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work.

The Great Freezer Eat Down

It’s time to begin The Great Freezer Eat Down, a time honored mid summer tradition meant to make more room for the produce that will soon be rolling down the hills, ready to be processed and save for winter, I hope.

It also coincides with my kids’ constant cries of, “I’m hungry.”  I hear it in my sleep.  With football practices running nearly all day long, it seems that they only come home long enough to eat and make a new mess.

We cleared out the freezer yearly, but there are always a few mysteries in there.  This morning I found a very large bag of raspberries.  Those will make another batch of raspberry jam.  Score!  I swear my dad slips in extra packets of game every time he visits.  They are rarely marked, so my boys are never sure if they’ll get venison burgers or loin steaks (the filet mignon of the venison world).  Meat, vegetable, or fruit, it’s all vacuum-sealed and as fresh as when it went into the freezer.

There are a few dogs in there (not literally).  That experimental stuffing recipe that I tried last Thanksgiving wasn’t good then and I’ll probably sacrifice that to the chickens.  There are the banana popsicles that no one liked.  Those will go straight to the garbage.  Thankfully, tomorrow is garbage day.

But there are some jewels in there too, like the extra turkey that my husband bought and promptly forgot.  We’ll grill that this weekend, eat what we can, and use the rest for lunch meat.  We still have the ribs left over from the half a pig we ordered last year.  Those will go on the grill too.  Leftover packages of corn and edamame will become succotash.  I think there is a package of green peppers in there too.

It’s an ideal time to have a freezer eat down.  I could go for days without major trips to the grocery store and all the money we save can go to school supplies and new shoes.

Everyone seems to need new shoes and multiple pairs.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I found shoes in the back of the freezer.  I found a football shirt my son had put in the freezer to cool it down for a hot summer day.  The same son throws his clothes into the warm dryer while he eats his breakfast on cold days.

Maybe some sweet elf will put a new pair of shoes in there, or a Rep. Jefferson stash of cold, hard cash.  Either would be helpful.

Pruning Raspberries

Raspberry season is over.  There is a general lull in the garden, so I took this morning to prune my raspberries.

Most wait until winter to do this, but I do mine right away.  For starters, with all the new growth of spring, my raspberry patch has become a jungle.  I order to get a better look at what I’ve got going on there, I prune.

First, let me clarify.  My canes are summer bearing.  I get only one crop of raspberries each year.  This makes my job a little easier when it comes to pruning.  I simply cut away the canes that have already produced fruit.  I do it after harvest because it is easiest for me to see what canes have fruited and what canes have not.  Next year’s crop will grow on the new shoots of this year.

I remember the raspberry pruning mantra, “If it’s brown, cut it down.”  Into the yard waste bag those canes go.  I don’t like to compost thorny things.  I ran into a not yet decomposed rose trunk in a compost pile once and cut myself badly.  I’ll let the city and their heavy machinery compost my canes for me.

Once everything brown is cleared, I check for anything growing outside my raspberry patch domain.  Raspberries multiply by sending out suckers and I am pretty sure that they would take over the planet, given half the chance.  I dig up any suckers that are out of line and pass them on to a friend in need of a raspberry patch.  There’s no need to be stingy with raspberries.  There will always be more coming up in the path, in the rhubarb, in the tomatoes.  Those canes will get dug up and will go to my daughter’s own raspberry patch so she and her friends can eat until their bellies bust.

For more information on pruning raspberries, check out this site.  http://www.tallcloverfarm.com/3366/pruning-raspberries-gardenings-whos-on-first

Midsummer, Take Stock

Now is the time to take a deep breath, evaluate, and take notes.

There’s not much else to do in my garden right now.  Nothing is in need of picking.  The vegetable beds are pretty weed free, thanks to a thick layer of newspapers and grass clippings.  The woodchips could use refreshing, but much of the stuff at the dump has leaves in it that will quickly break down into something that resembles soil for weeds to germinate.  That mulching can wait for spring.

Right now I need to take stock of what is working and what is not working. 

It’s time to note which tomato varieties are most susceptible to blight so that I can avoid those varieties next year.

It’s time to evaluate the pea production (NOT ENOUGH!) and note other possible pea locations and possible varieties.  Yesterday I spent my fifteen minute union approved break with a cup of coffee and some seed catalogs, noting varieties that do well in summer heat for pea possibilities along the garage.

It’s also time to honestly critique my upper beds and how I might best deal with my rabbit problem.  Since importing coyotes seems excessive, it may not be a bad idea to thin the surrounding foliage to eliminate bunny hiding places.

All these observations need to go into a notebook so that I may remember them this Winter.  In Winter, every spot is sunny, weed-free, and vermin proof.  It’s important for me to remember all of the small failures of my gardening year so that I may not repeat them the following season.  Written down, used as information for another season, these are not failures.  They are valuable learning experiences.

But, only if they are written down!  I so need to work on that. 

Salad From the Garden, Not a Bag

Bagged salad was a wonderful invention.  Michael Polan writes of it’s creation in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.  Thanks to bagged salad, no one need ever eat a tasteless, nutrionally void, iceberg lettuce salad ever again.

But salad, straight from the garden has ruined me on bagged and boxed salad for good.

Lettuce and other greens, warm from the garden, are a plate full of heaven.  My salads are complex dishes mixed with whatever I can find in the garden, including some highly nutritious and very delicious weeds, purslane http://www.wisebread.com/free-food-in-your-yard-edible-weeds and lamb’s quarters http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/surprising-lambs-quarters/.  I pick small beet leaves and add them for color and flavor.  I throw in some edible flowers (nasturtium and viola).  All get rinsed and spun in my salad spinner and the kids do most of that work.  It’s everyone’s favorite job and I gladly delegate it.

I thin the onions and chop them into the mix.  I thin the beets, boil them, and dice them into the salad.

I make my own salad dressing!  It’s much tastier than anything I buy and I can pronounce all of ingredients.  My first attempt was a recipe I got from the South Beach Diet cookbook ages ago.  Then I bought salad dressing bottle with recipes on the bottle.  The recipes make more salad dressing than we can generally use, but it isn’t difficult to cut the recipes in half.  Last night we tried the Creamy Cesar and it was a huge hit with everyone.  As I said, the recipe makes more than we can use at one meal, so we are having Cesar Salad with homemade dressing again tonight.

Of course, everyone has his or her own favorite dressing recipe, so I am culling out all the bottles of dressing no one really likes, washing them, and using them for my own concoctions.

 The herbs and greens needed for fresh salad can be grown nearly anywhere.  Lettuce greens do great in shade during the hot summer months.  Greens and herbs can be grown in pots on a balcony.

My salad spinner and dressing jar have saved me much money and made me some truly delicious summer salads.  The dressing jar (Norpro 809 Salad Dressing Maker) doesn’t cost much more than a bottle of dressing, though any jar with a top and a recipe will do.  The spinner (OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner) was more expensive, but no more expensive than a few bags of salad greens and I use it to clean parsley and cilantro purchased out of season.  It's also easier to use than my father's spin handle spinner from Tupperware.  It doubles as kitchen entertainment for a very helpful five year old, which makes it worth its weight in gold.

Best of all, the response to last night’s Cesar salad from said five year old was this, “That’s the BEST salad and the BEST dressing I ever tasted.”

Who am I to argue with that?

What's for Breakfast?

I know that some of my friends find this odd, but I don’t buy cereal anymore.

I stopped buying cereal when I realized that my kids could eat a box of it a day.  They weren’t just eating it for breakfast, they ate it all day long.  Sometimes I wondered if they ate anything BUT cereal.  I know my brother lived on it for many years.

Cereal companies seem to know this.  Cereal prices are rarely cheap.  I could find a favorite variety on sale now and then, but never consistently.

Then, one day, I looked at the ingredients.  Those that were lower in sugar were packed with artificial sugars with names too complex to pronounce.  Those high in fiber were packed with sugars (real and created).  Anything that was marginally healthy was NEVER cheap or appealing to my kids.  My kids were becoming cereal junkies before my very eyes.

So I quit buying it.

“What do your kids eat for breakfast?!” asked many that heard the shocking news.

Actually, my kids eat great breakfasts, many of them quickly made (and I mean quickly, less than 15 minutes) and much cheaper than a box of cereal: pancakes, bacon, fried potatoes, eggs and sausage, oatmeal, and French toast, to name a few.  If I get up earlier, they get biscuits and gravy, homemade waffles, blueberry muffins, or Egg’s Benedict.  If we are in a big hurry, it’s peanut butter toast on homemade bread, some of those extra waffles reheated in the toaster, or yogurt and granola.

My granola recipe is probably forty years old, handed down from my mother, acquired from her good friend Kay, with some modern day modifications.

I stir fry my granola in a 14” cast iron skillet over medium heat.  It’s one of those processes that requires full attention or you get burnt granola.  It’s not difficult, I just have to be prepared and have all ingredients at hand.  If I have to step away, I remove the pan fully from the heat, rather than turn off the burner.

Kay’s Granola

3 c. thick cut oats

1 c. flax seeds

1 c. wheat germ (I use raw wheat germ)

1 c. unsweetened coconut (Bob’s Red Mill sells this.  I have used sweetened coconut and reduced the sugar)

1 c. finely chopped nuts (I use walnuts or pecans)

½ c. canola oil

¾ c. brown sugar

1 T. vanilla

Combine the first five ingredients in a bowl.

Heat a large fry pan over high heat.

Reduce the heat to medium and add oil.

Pour dry ingredients from the bowl into the fry pan and stir fry, stirring constantly.

Watch to be sure that the heat is not too high.  The flax seeds should be popping.

When the mixture has toasted to a light brown, stir in the sugar until it is completely incorporated.

Add the vanilla and continue to toast the ingredients until the vanilla has evaporated.

Allow the granola to cool completely before storing it in an airtight container. 

Served with yogurt and some berries, it hits all four food groups and gives a kid (or a parent) plenty of fuel for the day.

Saving Pea Seeds, Part 2

I admit.  I yelled.  I swore.  I scared my visiting in-laws.  What sort of witch had their brother married?!  Is she yelling about peas?

I was.

My husband has a bad habit of “cleaning” the messes of others before he attends to his own mess.  He’s pretty sure that whatever I have left on the back porch is garbage and he’s more than happy to pitch it for me.  We’ve discussed it.  He apologizes.  I try not to raise my voice when I point out that he COULD begin cleaning the back porch by starting with his OWN messes.  In twenty plus years of marriage, we’ve had this discussion often, yet I refrain from lacing his morning cup of coffee with strychnine.  He thinks that I am overreacting.  I think he’s lucky to still be living.

My husband threw out the peas I’d been saving for next year’s seed.  A plate of drying peas on the back porch just looked like junk, so he tossed them.

“But you still have peas growing in the garden.  You can save more,” defended youngest brother.

But those peas were the best and the brightest of my crop, nice pods from prolific vines, with eight or nine peas in each pod.  I was raising a super race of peas.  It was my Darwinian experiment of the season.  I was selecting seed from the most productive of peas.

“You could just buy new seeds in the Spring,” sighed middle brother.

Of course I could.  But that wasn’t the point.  I was enjoying my role of Earth Mother-Crazy Survivalist, living self sufficiently from my little corner of the world.  Buying seeds wouldn’t have been nearly as fun as saving my own from my favorite vines.

So I took a deep breath, refrained from doing bodily harm to my husband or his brothers, and started over.

I kept all the peas that had begun to “go to seed”, that is, pods that were beginning to wrinkle, pods that held peas too big to be tasty, and pods that had begun to dry.  Pea season was over.  We had lived through a week of record-breaking heat.

All pea pods went back to the back porch to dry on plates.  Once a gain, I BEGGED my husband to leave my stuff alone, not matter how junky it looked.  The pea pods dried.

This morning I popped the peas from their pods and sorted them.  I threw out all that looked underdeveloped or moldy.  I also threw out pods that held only one pea.  I sorted peas into bowls, according to how many peas were in each pod.  Most had four or five peas, but I am pushing for perfection here, I was most interested in the pods that had six to nine peas in them.

I tossed the pods and the reject peas and returned the pea seeds to plates.  They’ll dry further for a week on the back porch.  Pea seeds from the higher producing pods are separate from the ones with fewer peas per pod and marked to distinguish between the two groups.  There aren’t a lot of seeds, but I may have enough 6-9 peas per pod seeds to plant my short peas for the bottom bed of the garden.

Next year, my Darwinian experiment will continue.  I am hoping to find a tall variety of peas I like as much as my “Early Frosty” peas.  Pouring over seed catalogs is a great way to entertain myself in Winter.  It calms my nerves, makes me less likely to growl at my husband.

Blender, Restored

 

My blender, restored by the miracle of of ebay.

Cue the angel choir.

Raspberry Jam with Frozen Berries

My raspberries are finished, but I had such fun with them this year.

Every day I picked a cookie sheet or more of gorgeous berries, straight from my own yard.  They were truly gorgeous.  My daughter and her friends picked to their hearts content as well.  My daughter also went out in the mornings to pick fresh berries for her visiting grandmother’s breakfast yogurt.

All totaled, I froze twelve single cup servings for winter.  I’ll use these berries in coffeecakes, scones, and sauces.  They are even really good in pancakes if the blueberries don’t last.

I had only one predicament.  My husband’s favorite jam is raspberry, but I couldn’t pick enough berries on any one day to make jam.  I had enough frozen berries, and we’d eaten fresh berries to our hearts’ content.  I had two or three cookie sheets of frozen berries.  I could have vacuum sealed them, but I couldn’t see myself using all of them before next year.  I decided to try making jam from frozen berries.

I knew that I’d make freezer jam.  I prefer freezer jam to cooked jam for strawberries and raspberries.  My recipe for raspberry freezer jam (the one inside the Sure-Jel box) calls for three cups of crushed raspberries.  I filled an empty yogurt container with four cups of frozen berries, snapped on the top, and put it in the fridge for a day.  The berries slowly melted.  The next day, I filled the container to the top again and returned it to the refrigerator.  By the third day, I had about three cups of melted berries.  A quick stir with a fork made them “crushed”.  I had to add a half dozen frozen berries to top of my three cups, no problem.  I pulled them from the freezer.

Stir in the sugar.

Cook the pectin.

Add the pectin to the berries and sugar.

Jam is made.

I love my raspberry patch.  For the price of some sugar and pectin, I have jam.  I have frozen berries for winter.  My kids spent the last couple weeks, grazing in the yard, eating until they couldn’t eat anymore.

I love my raspberry patch!