Grow It or Buy It?

Last weekend I visited the biggest farmer's market in the Big City.  I was in search of large quantities of roma tomatoes for more spaghetti sauce.  I quickly bought forty pounds of them for $24.  As my husband carried them back to the car, my husband asked, "Why grow them if you can buy them?"
It's a legitimate question.
There are some things that are better off bought.  Forty pounds of tomatoes is an example. 
I'll still grow romas.  I can process sauce and chopped tomatoes in small batches with the few pounds I can harvest every couple of days.  I'll grow many more "Jaune Flamme" tomatoes.  They were so tasty roasted in the oven.  I must always have a handful of little cherry tomatoes for salads and snacking.
Large bunches of cucumbers should be bought for pickling and I'll stick to slicers for my own garden.  My dad and I agree that there is no sense in either of us growing our own okra.  Both cucs and okra need more space than we are willing to give them.
I'll skip storage onions in favor of scallions until I can better grow my own onions.  I think I need to do something different with my soil.
These purple beans are a big hit.  And beans are easy to grow and process in small batches.  I don't know about peas.  It seems too hard to grow enough.  Still, I love them so.
Basically, my home garden is for food to eat immediately.  The market is for large scale productions that require lots of one thing (cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, corn, etc.)  Pick your own establishments are a better bet than trying to meet all my fruit needs outside my back door, with the exception of my brother's fabulous raspberries.  They can keep me happy all season long and I'll have enough to make jam as well.
Farmer's markets are nice.  They encourage diversification and a local food economy.  The prices are good and the food is better than anything to be found in the grocery store.  The grocery store can't support these local farmers, but I can.
Anyone with a market nearby can process their own tomatoes or make their own cucumbers.  Apartment dwellers can place a potted herb in a sunny window and enjoy their own harvest of thyme for a homemade salad dressing.
Stepping off the big box food chain is good for us in so many ways.  The spaghetti sauce I have bubbling on the stove top has no high fructose corn syrup in it.  The farmer that grew those tomatoes is able to make a living on her terms, with no pesticides or herbicides being sprayed on the crops or her family as they work together to bring their vegetables to market.  These tomatoes were grown nearby and didn't require a bunch of gas to transport them.  These tomatoes are part of a food chain, an ecology, a family history, and so many more things that I'd rather support.
I grow for fun, but I vote with my dollars for the local, small farmer and it's good for everyone.

A (Purple) Green Bean Worth Saving

Last Spring, I picked up a bean seed on a whim.  Thinking I wouldn’t have enough seeds to fill my bean beds, I picked up a packet of “Royal Burgundy Bush Bean” seeds from High Mowing Seeds at the local co-op.

The plants seemed more of a climber than a bush bean, so I had to quickly put in a trellis system and train the beans up it.  Unless I picked the beans very early, they tended to be pretty tough.  The plants were beautiful, but I wasn’t planning to try this bean variety again next year.

Then I tried freezing them.

Beans cannot be canned in a water bath canner because of their low acidity.  They must be processed in a pressure cooker.  And I wasn’t ready to go there last year.  So I chose to freeze them.

I didn’t like the beans that I had frozen last year.  They were limp and chewy.

These beans seem like they’ll hold up to freezing. Once thawed, the beans can be quickly steamed and served.

I think that these would even be nice cooked the way my mother did.  She cooked bacon and removed it from the pan, then fried diced onions in the bacon fat.  She drained off the excess bacon grease, added green beans to the onions, and crumbled the bacon into the beans.  Once the beans were warm, she salt and peppered and served them.

These beans just may stand up to the test.

And I plan to save the seeds from these interesting beans, a really easy thing to do with bean seeds.  I’ll leave them on the bush until the pods dry, them bring them in to dry further.

To freeze beans, I trim them and blanch them REALLY quickly by the handful.  Then I transfer them to a bowl of ice water until all the beans have been blanched.  I drain them and spread them on a towel to dry.  Once dry, I spread them on a cookie sheet and place it in the freezer.  Once frozen, I vacuum seal them in serving size bags.
To try some "Royal Burgundy Bush Beans" for yourself, check out High Mowing's site at http://www.highmowingseeds.com/organic-seeds-royal-burgundy-bean.html.

Use the Full Bounty of Your Yard

The leaves are beginning to fall.  Why not put them to their full use in your yard?  They are great soil builders.

The key is that they must be mowed to put them to their best use.  Intact leaves encourage run off.  Chopped up leaves can trap water more easily.

This bothers my husband to no end.  He claims, rightly so, that the dust kicked up by mowing leaves dirties the carburetor.  Keep this in mind, if no one in the household can clean a carburetor, the mower may need to be taken to have a tune up.  It’s a reasonable price to pay for a good garden additive.

Mowed leaves can go right on the cleared beds in the fall, layered in 3 to 4 inches in the following order.

• shredded leaves
• grass clippings
• garden compost (preferably from your own garden)
• composted manure
• oat straw

Mowed leaves can also be stored over the winter in heavy duty lawn bags, tied shut with a clip and stored in the garden in a sheltered spot.  If the bags are stored on their sides, the stored leaves should still be dry when the snow melts and the leaves can be used for mulching vegetable beds.

Stored leaves can also be used to build up the compost pile, layered in the pile in the following order:

"Brown" Material:

• mowed fall leaves
• straw
• corn, sunflower, and amaranth stalks, cut up into pieces

"Green" Material:

• plant material (weeds)
• grass clippings
• kitchen scraps
• coffee grounds and egg shells (both VERY good for building compost)

Soil:

• “Starter” for compost, with all the bugs and microbes needed to begin the composting process.

Lastly, leaves make good bedding for chicken coops.

Don’t send those leaves off to the city landfill.  Feed your own soil with those leaves.

Spaghetti Sauce, Refined

Earlier this summer, I made a spaghetti sauce from a recipe I found on Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” website. I was finding the recipe a little contradictory to what I usually like in a pasta sauce, but I decided to go for it anyway. And I tweaked it a bit (mistake). My family wasn’t too excited by it.  They'll eat it anyway, it will taste great in lasagna.
I was disappointed. I was looking forward to an easy meal alternative for my family. My boys are playing football and they need to eat about seven meals a day. I am willing to cook only two of them.
So I looked through the “Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving” for another recipe to try. I tweaked that one too and it worked out nicely this time.
So I went to the farmer’s market, bought a ton of tomatoes, and I’ll do it again next week. And I am going to process some of it in half pint jars so the boys can come home, cook up some pasta, and pop open a can of sauce.

Tomato and Basil Sauce with a Kick

• About 40# of roma tomatoes, processed (I blanched them in hot water, pulverized them in the Cuisinart, and processed them through a food mill) into 35 c. of tomato sauce
• 2 large yellow onions, diced and minced in the Cuisinart
• 2 heads of garlic, diced and minced in the Cuisinart
• ½ c. chopped basil
• 3 T. canning salt
• ¼ t. pepper
• ½ c. sugar
• 2 t. cinnamon (my nod to Barbara)
• ½ t. allspice (my own favorite secret spice)
• lemon juice
• sterilized jars
• 2-part lids

1. It’s not a great idea to can cooked onions and garlic in oil, so I cooked mine, top on the pot, with a tablespoon of water until they were soft and translucent.
2. Add tomatoes, basil, and spices.
3. Cook, uncovered, on low until the sauce reaches the desired consistency.
4. To ensure proper acidity, add lemon juice to sterilized jars

• 2 T. to each quart
• 1 T. to each pint
• ½ T. to each half pint

Cover jars with 2-part lids and process in a water bath canner for 35 minutes.

Canning With Friends

Canning is a great thing to do with a friend.
One of my good friends is back from Europe with a box full of great recipes to share.  My kids loved her tomato sauce (recipe straight from Sicily).  I have tomatoes and basil galore.  For the first time in our 15 year friendship, we both have all our kids in school at the same time!
So we plan to spend a day this week reducing tomatoes to a Sicilian sauce to put up for winter.  We'll have the day over tomatoes to catch up with each others' lives.
My friend pointed out that there are plenty of canning set ups at the garage sales.  Those who aren't as lucky could easily pick up some starting supplies at a local hardware store or online.
PLEASE NOTE:
I am having a tough time connecting to Amazon.  My intent was to show readers what the following items look like so they can be on the lookout.
Canning supplies are popping up everywhere.  Check grocery stores, big box and local hardware stores, or department stores.
I wish I could attach some pictures here, but blogger.com isn't being very cooperative.
Most effective and simple canning happens in a water bath canner. See http://www.amazon.com/Columbian-Home-0707-1-Porcelain-Water-Bath/dp/B0001UZL8A/ref=sr_1_2?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1316444406&sr=1-2
The tools needed are cheap.  See http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-286-5-Piece-Canning/dp/B0002BF1WY/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1316444406&sr=1-1
And the most comprehensive how-to manual is chock full of information and instructions.  See http://www.amazon.com/Jarden-Home-Brands-21400-Ball/dp/B001DIXG9A/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1316399244&sr=1-1
It's a great way to spend a day with a friend, especially one new to canning.
Are you both new to canning?  It's not hard and the Blue Book Guide to Preserving is instructive and informative and OH-SO-CHEAP.
Honestly, the stuff needed to put away food is right at your fingertips.  If you see some of it at a garage sale, chances are there is more there than meets the eye, INCLUDING a former canner who may give you plenty of advice and as much gear as you can carry.
Grab a friend, grab some gear, grab some produce, and put up some food.
Then tell us how things are going!

Applesauce, Make Your Kids Happy

My daughter is so happy, she can take homemade applesauce to school tomorrow.
My friend took me out to her parents' farm to pick apples.  We grabbed a couple of bags of apples for eating and baking.
I made a couple of apple crisps and put the nicest of the apples on the side porch to save for eating.
There were plenty of apples on the ground for sauce and all those came home with me.  There were some very small ones and most were brown and a couple were a little wormy.  No problems, I quartered them all and dropped them into a stockpot.  Those worms all floated to the top of the boiling pot, d-e-a-d.  I picked them out easily.
The brown spots of the apple crisp apples went into the stockpot of apple stuff.  The peelings went in there too.
I added a couple of quarts of water and simmered the pot for an hour an a half, until the apples softened.
I drained the apple mush and put it through the food mill.
Once I had sauced all the apples, I measured the sauce back into a stockpot.
My recipe calls for 1/4 cup of sugar for each cup of sauce.
My sauce was so naturally sweet that I used a fraction of that, about one and a half cups of sugar for fourteen cups of sauce.  I like a spiced applesauce, so I added two teaspoons of cinnamon, one teaspoon of cloves, and a half a teaspoon of allspice.  I heated the sauce and tested it.  It was perfect.
I spooned the hot sauce into pint jars and sealed them with 2-part lids and processed them in a water bath canner for 20 minutes.
It's delicious sauce, full of apple flavor, nothing like the stuff found at the grocery store.  And it's made from cast off apples, a little sugar, and some spice.

A Cool Catalog, A Couple of Problems Solved

I was really happy to receive one of my favorite catalogs in the mail today.  The Penzey’s Spices catalog not only has good spices, but it also comes with some great recipes.  I was intrigued by a couple of products.

The first was a Buttermilk Ranch Dressing mix with ingredients that I can pronounce!  That will keep the five year old happy.  Salad dressing isn’t hard to make, now it just got easier.

The second was the Italian Sausage Seasoning, again, with ingredients that I can pronounce!  I should be getting half a hog soon and I don’t want all my ground pork seasoned Italian style.  And there is a really tasty sounding lasagna recipe in this season’s catalog.

The whole catalog is online and can be found at http://www.penzeys.com/.

Besides those two interesting items, I can find all the obscure spices and herbs I need for Armenian recipes, which makes my family happy.

Get What You Need

I have two beds that need some serious soil ammendments.  The first bed is around the cherry tree.  I didn't dig it too aggressively because I didn't want to disturb the tree.  I just planted it a couple of seasons ago.  The second bed is a new one along the side of the garage.  This one I will double dig to the best of my ability to loosen the soil.  Both need top dressing.  I have a great recipe for building soil that I got at a class I took last Fall.  It calls for 3 to 4 inches of the following, layered in this order:

• shredded leaves
• grass clippings
• garden compost (keep it local)
• composted manure
• oat straw

I did this last year and the soil in those beds was wonderful this season.  The only problem is the fact that I don't have leaves.
I try not to take it personally that all the trees in our yard died after we bought our house.  They were all old trees.  We have plenty of new trees, but they just don't shower us with tons of leaves yet.
So I have been checking around.  Some of the maples in the neighborhood have begun to drop their leaves.  I just haven't figured out how to ask strangers if I can rake up their leaves and cart them away, dump them in my yard, cut them up with the lawn mower, and sprinkle them in my garden.
I'm set for oak leaves though!  My son has a lawn job and there are five 100+ year old oak trees in the yard.  His employer was more than happy to hear that I wanted her leaves.
I guess the key is to be bold, and ask for what I need-- LEAVES!

First Frost?! This Early?!?

Why should I be surprised?
After a slow start and incredibly hot stretches, why should I be surprised by anything like an early frost?  It was 90 degrees just two days ago!
So this evening, I'll be pulling out all the plastic and bedsheets that I can find to cover all that I can.  My beans are little babies.  My peppers are teeny tiny.  My tomato plants are loaded with gorgeous, GREEN tomatoes.  The cucumber vines are still pumping out fruit.  The basil is still gorgeous.
Really, we should be getting another three weeks of growing time here in Zone 4.  But, as my sister says, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit."
But check the weather daily.  Be prepared to throw some tarps over things.  Go to the farmer's market and buy up what you can.
My peppers may never make it to red, but I can probably buy a whole crate of them for $5 in the next three weeks.  I'll roast the red ones and chop my green ones.  All will be frozen for good meals this winter.

Preparing Onions for Winter Storage

It’s time to bring in the onions.  Their tops have fallen over and withered away to brownness.  I doubt that I’ll even have to pull them, just pick them off the ground where they were planted.

I can tell that I am not going to have a crop of huge bulbs, not nearly enough oniony goodness to get me through the Winter.  Maybe my soil wasn’t quite right for them.  Perhaps they didn’t get enough sun.  Yesterday I resolved myself to an onion free garden.  After reading this nice site on growing onions from seed, I was having second thoughts.  Maybe I’d try them again….

Leslie Clapp wrote a very nice article for KitchenGardener magazine in 1999.  The pictures are beautiful and the directions are very concise.

Today I will pull out my onions and cure them for a couple of weeks on screens in the driveway, being sure that they stay dry, until the get a couple of layers of thick, dry skin.  Then they will be ready to be hung along the stairs to the cellar in bags for winter.  It will be interesting to see how many pounds I actually harvest.

The two types of onions that I will be sure to have in next year’s garden are scallions and Egyptian Walking Onions.  The first I planted from seed this spring and I have been enjoying fresh scallions in nearly every salad from the garden.  The second was gift from a neighbor and I happily pass them on to friends.  They produce little shallot-like onions on the top of their long, sturdy stems.  They can be harvested earlier than many other onions and taste more like a shallot.  The onion bulbs can also be spread on the ground to grow more onions the following Spring.  Bulbs can be purchased now from http://www.burpee.com/vegetables/onions/onion-egyptian-walking-onion-prod002386.html?cid=PPC.

For more information about growing onions from seed to storing them for Winter, see http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/4076/how-to-grow-onions-from-seed.

Corn for Winter

One of the best summer tastes is fresh corn on the cob.  Now is the time to out it away for the winter.
This weekend, I struck it big.  My husband overestimated the corn serving for a party and we have it coming out our ears.
No worries,  I cut it off the cob, spread it on a cookie sheet, then pop it in the freezer.  I used to use a knife, but I bought a cool tool last summer, a Kuhn Rikon Corn Zipper which was more efficient about removing the kernels from the cobs.  Once frozen, it gets vacuum sealed in portion sized bags to go back in the freezer for meals later.  I use it in enchilladas, puddings, and chowders.  When I'm really missing summer, it makes a good side dish.
Frozen corn holds lots of moisture, so I'll defrost it in a sieve to drain some of the water from the kernels.  It's not such a big deal in enchilladas, but that extra moisture can make a corn pudding runny.
Usually, the cobs go out to the chickens.  They LOVE them.  But recently, I saw an interesting article about corn "stock".  I can't find it anymore, but the author recommended boiling cleaned cobs with a little fresh thyme in a pot of water.  The resulting "stock" will serve as a rich addition to chowders that call for a liquid.  Sounds good to me!

Tomato Puree, Any Day of the Week

Slowly, but surely, my tomatoes are beginning to ripen.
Sure, we have been eating tomatoes off the indeterminate vines for a couple of months now and we love them, but it's the roma tomatoes that I have been waiting for, not so patiently.
I begged and bought a few bags of tomatoes for pasta sauce and salsa.  I happily cut up and canned Di's guy's little round tomatoes for chili.  But this year, I'd really like to put up a good supply of tomato puree.
My family's favorite meal is chicken Parmesan and part of the draw is the sauce.  I hate buying canned sauce and last year's attempt was just too runny.  I realized I have to cook those beauties down a bit.
I tried this method this week and it was as slick as snot.  Since it's not too hot outside, I don't mind putting the heat on the big kettle of water to can a few jars of sauce.
Note: About eight roma tomatoes puree down into one pint.  Ideally, you'd like to process at least four pints of puree.  To get really nice puree, it should be cooked down to half its original volume.  I collect my ripening tomatoes and bring them in every morning.  They congregate on the screen porch table until I have at least 64, then it's time to get down to business.
No worries, this is a quick process.  You'll have plenty of time to get on with the rest of the day.

Equipment needed:

• 4 qt. saucepan of boiling water
• colander
• food processor
• food mill Mirro Foley 2-Quart Stainless Steel Food Mill
• 8-cup measuring cup
• sterilized pint jars
• 2-part canning lids, sanitized in boiling water
• water bath canner Granite Ware 11-1/2 Quart Covered Preserving Canner with Rack 
• large nonreactive sauce pan
• measuring spoons
• lemon concentrate

Process:

1. Wash eight roma tomatoes and place them in boiling water.  When the skins break, transfer them to the food processor.
2. Pulverize the tomatoes in the food processor.
3. Transfer the tomato mash to the food mill placed over the measuring cup and process them to remove seeds and skins.
4. Pour tomato puree into the sauce pan and tomato refuse into the compost or chicken bucket.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until all the tomatoes have been process.
6. Reduce the tomato puree to half its original volume on low heat, stirring occasionally.
7. Pour 1 T. lemon concentrate into each pint jar then ladle tomato puree into jars, leaving 1/2" headspace.
8. Fit each pint with a sterilized 2-part lid.
9. Process in water bath canner for 35 minutes.
10. Cool and mark.

Repeat this process for the rest of the growing season and you'll feed your family happy food all winter long.

A Little Peace, A Little Apple Butter

Just in the nick of time, I got a chance to make some apple butter.  I had scraped the last bits of it onto my toast last month and I was really missing it.

Apple butter was one of my mom's favorites and I was pleased as punch when she pronounced mine as good as her mother's apple butter.  My grandmother died shortly after my own parents married, so I only knew her through my mother stories about her.  It seemed to me that she was a tireless homemaker, skilled in all areas except sewing.  Her inability to whip up a dress from a feedsack made her more human to me.  Though I can quilt and knit, sewing patterns elude me and frustrate me to no end.

I have been working on this apple butter recipe for nearly twenty years.  It was the first thing I ever canned and I go a little crazy when I get the chance to make it.  I make so much that I don't have to make it yearly, so the recipe and the method gets a little foggy in my mind.

This year my oldest and youngest have developed a taste for apple butter so I had better make lots of it.  Luckily, this is a good year for my neighbor's tree.  Her yard is littered with apples and bees.  I have sorted through the grass under her trees twice now and you can barely tell.

 The apples one uses for apple butter aren't the same type of apples used for pie or crisp.  The apples I used were ones I found under the tree.  My criteria was this:

• more than half rotten went in the chuck bucket,
• less than half rotten went to the butter bucket, and
• dirty but whole went to the bucket for the neighbor's pie.

 I then spent a nice hour, watching the bird feeder, listening to Charles Frazier read Cold Mountain, trimming away soft spots on a five gallon bucket of apples.  His voice is wonderful and it's one of my best loved audio books.  Sissy Spacek's reading of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is another personal favorite.

My apple butter is baked down in the oven.  I don't know how my grandmother made it, but I do remember tales of the church ladies making it every fall in the church yard, over a fire.  They took turns stirring the pot and feeding the fire, just like the witches of Macbeth.

I like the way this recipe has evolved over my twenty years with it.  I have refined it to portions to accommodate any amount.

Apple Butter Recipe

Place 12 pounds apples, quartered, in a large stockpot with 2 quarts of water.  Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook for one to two hours, until the apples are mushy.

First strain the apples in a mesh colander, and then use a food mill to extract the sauce.  The remaining skins and seeds can go to the chickens or the compost.

For every one cup of sauce, add:

½ cup sugar

¼ t. cinnamon

¼ t. fresh lemon zest

1/8 t. cloves

1/16 t. allspice

Bake in an ovenproof dish (or two) at 300 degrees, stirring occassionally, until the apple butter reaches the desired consistency.  When dolloped on a plate, the butter should retain its shape.

Don't get scared by the math here and I know that you don't have a 1/16 teaspoon measure.  If you have 14 cups of sauce, as I did with my first batch, add 14/16ths of a teaspoon of allspice to the sauce.

Remember that math?  14/16=7/8.  If you don't have an eighth measure, round up to a full teaspoon if you like allspice.  Round down to 3/4 of a teaspoon if you are not so fond of it.

Process the apple butter in sterilized jars with sealed 2 part caps in a water bath for 10 minutes.

And be glad I revised this recipe.  My initial one stated that the pot should have enough water to COVER the apples.  Well, try as I might, I couldn't cover them.  Apples float.  I turned on the heat, and walked away from the pot.  When I returned, I saw this!

Action shot: Note the apples beginning to cascade over the side of the pot!

Apple mess everywhere!  Man, it took a long time to clean up after that cooking experience.

Scour your own 'hood for an apple tree.  Our neighbor's tree was the last of a triplet planted in the 1970s by a former owner who worked at a nursery.  He was glad to see one still standing.

My neighbor, industrious as she is, will never get up all those apples on her own.  She kindly offers some to me and she is looking for other apple pickers to lighten her load.  If you know of a neighbor who needs help with their own apple crop, trade yard cleaning services (aka. apple picking up) in exchange for apples.  Leave a couple of jars of apple butter on their doorstep to seal the deal.

Save Your Faves

I harvested my first potatoes today, I dumped that bin over and sorted out all the potatoes.
I prepared them the way my mother always did with little, tender potatoes.  I halved them, dotted them with butter, sprinkled them with salt, pepper, paprika, and dill weed and baked them at 350 degrees for an hour.
But I saved my favorites of the bunch for seed for next year's potatoes.  I saved the nicest looking ones.  After all, this IS Darwinian evolution that I am pursuing.  I'll pass on the nicest looking, tastiest potato genes I can find.  Those "seed" potatoes will go in a paper bag marked "SEED POTATOES" to rest in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator until next Spring.
If you happen upon a tasty potato at the farmer's market, you can do the same thing.  As long as it is organically grown (NOT sprayed with an agent that retards sprouting), that potato can be saved and used for seed in your own garden next spring.  Just put a nice example (or three) of that potato in a paper bag, mark it as "seed", put it in the bottom drawer of your refrigerator, and wait for Spring.

Save the Best.  Eat the rest.  Welcome to Gardening.

Start Somewhere, Save Something

Everyone has to start somewhere, right?
You don't need to start saving for the Second Coming, Global Food Crisis, or Locust Infestation now.  Just save something.
Go to the farmer's market and buy something that looks and tastes good.  Give your money to someone who grew it nearby and grew it consistent with your own food values.
Take it home, clean it, cut it, blanch it, flash freeze it (spread it out on a cookie sheet in the freezer), and vacuum seal it.  Label it.  Put it in the deep freeze.
This winter, take it out and eat it.  It will still be local food, grown well, and picked at its peak of freshness.  It will be cheaper than the food in the grocery store and better for you too.

It doesn't take much work or fancy equipment.  I REALLY recommend the vacuum sealer and it doesn't have to be expensive or fancy, see FoodSaver V2244 Advanced Design Vacuum Sealer.

Today, I bought carrots.  I can't grow enough of them.  I got two trays for $3.  They are gorgeous.  Now go get some for yourself!

A Postcard from Canning Camp

I am pretty sure that my family believes me to be crazy.
I have been working at canning tomatoes for about sixteen hours, taking a few hours to make and serve dinner for some portion of 100 high school football players.
At nearly the end of the day, I have five more quarts of whole tomatoes and seven quarts of tomato sauce.  I used the recipe and directions from Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.  I added some brown sugar and I think it will be very nice with meatballs.
The recipe can be found at Kingsolver's website http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/.
All the rest of the tomatoes are not yet ripe and I guess I'll get a week off to catch up with laundry and housecleaning.  My husband is tired of canning and he hasn't stirred a pot.  My boys complain that it is too hot to can, as if I can wait to winter to do it.  Clearly, they don't get it.
It is hot and long work.  I do just fine as long as I stay on task.  Every time I'd try to get in a load of laundry, I'd overcook the tomatoes.  But the tomatoes too soft for whole tomatoes were fine for the puree needed for the tomato sauce.  It reminds me to focus on the task at hand.  The shelves are filling with tomatoes for the long winter.  It's a calming sight.  I can imagine all the dinners to come until ripe tomatoes return next summer.
Tonight, an unusually hot one, my bed will feel cool compared to the kitchen and I will sleep well, dreaming of tomatoes.

Salsa!

Tomato processing week continues in earnest.  I stayed up late last night, finishing the salsa, perfecting my recipe.
One standard meal at our home is enchiladas.  I like it best with my own salsa.

Basic Salsa Recipe (makes about 12 pints of salsa)

• 8# Italian tomatoes, skinned, seeded, and chopped, about 14 cups
• 2# onions, chopped, 6 cups 
• 2 heads of garlic, minced, 1/2 cup
• 3 large green bell peppers, chopped, 4 cups
• 8-12 jalapenos, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 c. red wine vinegar
• 4 c. cilantro, chopped
• 6 t. cumin
• 8 t. sugar
• 6 t. pickling salt
• 1/2 t./pint jar of lime juice from concentrate

1. Combine all of the above ingredients, with the exception of the lime juice, in a nonreactive saucepan.  Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce and boil gently for 25 minutes, stirring frequently.
2. Ladle salsa into sterilized jars, leaving 1/2" from the top of the rim.  
3. Add 1/2 T. of concentrated lime juice to each jar.
4. Wipe the rims of the jars and seal with 2 part tops.
5. Process for 20 minutes in a water bath canner.