Last big canning day of the year, I hope

Yesterday was a crazy day again. Loris and I went for a 29-mile bike ride, which was absolutely beautiful despite the fact that it was already starting to get pretty hot. We drove a few miles out of Davis and parked because I wanted to stop by a produce stand on the way back.

I don’t think it was local produce, considering they had everything from iceberg lettuce to broccoli to peppers and eggplant. But no heirloom tomatoes =(

We bought two 20-pound boxes of roma tomatoes to make up for the sorry supply in our garden, and I spent the afternoon making tomato sauce (and trying to make juice). By the end of the afternoon, I think I got my method down pretty well. I sliced the tomatoes at least in half (the bigger ones were cut into thirds or quarters), and cooked them on the stove for about 30-40 minutes. Then I used a ladle to scoop out the solids and strain them in my mesh strainer (NOT a fine-mesh strainer), then passed the solids through my juice/sauce machine. This made for a nice thick sauce, to which I added some salt and chopped basil. I strained the remaining liquid into a couple of pots, and I’m hoping to cook it down today to make some tomato juice. I think I’ll get a quite a few quarts of juice.

Loris used one jar of sauce with a jar of olives we bought at the market to make some fantastic pasta for dinner. We’re so spoiled.

Tonight I’m hoping to make eggplant parmesan for dinner and an extra one or two to freeze.

So the tally for the weekend:

6 jars of peach jam (4 small ones, 2 pints)
3 quarts of canned peaches
19 pints of tomato sauce (13 canned, one for dinner, 5 frozen)
Tomato juice (not finished yet)
3 loaves of French bread
Chocolate gelato (yum yum)

Just had a really long day followed by a fantastic homemade dinner. This is my big, final weekend of food preservation (I hope). I made and canned peach jam and several jars of quartered peaches in syrup. I also baked some bread and made dark chocolate gelato.

For dinner tonight, I made scallops from the farmer's market stuffed with a basil and garlic paste (pictures coming!). Loris made bruschetta with my homemade honey-whole-wheat bread, lardo from Italy, honey from the farmer's market, and grilled shallots from our garden. He also made a salad of potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, anchovies, capers, and basil.

Lists

I went to the garden after work yesterday.

I picked:

- A couple dozen tomatoes
- 3-4 eggplants
- 6-10 peppers
- Several LARGE zucchini/yellow squash
- A few handfuls of green beans
- One large bag of basil
- One large bag of parsley
- 3-4 leeks

I noticed:

- I killed the butternut squash plant when I accidentally pulled it up while weeding last week
- The last melon isn’t going to make it
- The lima beans have tons of flat pods, but no actual beans inside yet
- The green beans are really drying out and not producing much more
- The zucchini is probably almost done for the season
- Only one heirloom tomato plant is even trying anymore

I wondered:

- When I would have time to get my fall seeds in the ground
- What I would do with all that basil
- What I should have done differently with the tomato plants

Tonight I plan to:

- Make vegetable soup to freeze (still need to chop green beans and carrots)
- Make a summer vegetable risotto for dinner (and to freeze)
- Make bread for dinner and breakfast (and extra to freeze)
- Make pesto (to freeze?)
- Chop zucchini to freeze for later soup-making

By mid-September I plan to:

- Finish making and canning tomato sauce
- Finish making all the liquors I have going right now
- Plant my fall vegetable garden
- Get started on some craft projects that I’ve been putting off forever

Freezing

I'm not actually freezing, considering that it's been over 100 degrees these last few days and sleeping is even difficult because it's so hot. I walked to the Amtrak station before 10am to pick up my pass for September, and it was already hot - really nice for a summer afternoon, not such a great thing when there are still many hours to go before the hottest part of the day. Last night around 6:45, in the car with the windows down on the freeway, sweat was trickling down my legs as we drove to Woodland to get our new ... freezer!

We begged the guy at Sears to give it to us even though we arrived 5 minutes after they closed, loaded the hulky thing into our car, and made a stop at Home Depot for a board to put under it since it will be sitting on carpet. We got home, started to unpack it, and discovered ... a wooden stake jammed into the vent on the side of the freezer. I was so disappointed. A call to customer service revealed that we could of course return it to the store where we purchased it, but they would not come pick it up nor deliver a replacement. We'd have to order it again and wait for it to arrive again and make another trip to Woodland.

After a few hours of me grumping about the situation, Loris discovered that the stake probably hadn't caused any damage besides the obvious bent metal of the vent - we could see into the back of the engine unit and it looked like it had missed damaging anything inside. We're not supposed to turn it on until 24 horus after we set it upright inside, so we'll find out tonight or tomorrow if it's ok.

And then ... ice cream, frozen peppers (chopped and roasted), grass-fed meat, loaves of bread, soup, zucchini, green beans ... it's going to be crazy few weeks while I can and freeze stuff.

Crazy days of summer

Last night was busy again. I baked bread, made simple syrup and started filtering the basil liquor, made two crostate (with my "new" tart pan - 50 cents from the thrift store), and chopped up peppers to freeze. And walked to the store to get milk for the crostata.

Loris and I ordered a small (I hope) chest freezer, and it's available for pick-up today. I'm really excited, in a nerdy sort of way. My fridge is full of eggplant, zucchini, carrots, and green beans. I'll probably make some eggplant parmesan to freeze, and chop up a few more bags of vegetables for soup. I also plan to occasional freeze a loaf of bread, so we won't go without so often. I'll be freezing some soft bread for my morning toast. Maybe some ice cream to have on hand. And some soup. Maybe I'll also chop up and freeze some butternut squash, so I have it on hand when I need it.

The possibilities are endless.

Tomato lessons

This year was not a good tomato year for me, and I don't expect much from the rest of the season. I hope when I look back, I can say that I learned a lot from this year. I grew enough other vegetables that we didn't really feel the lack of tomatoes, but I have to say that I did miss the overabundance, the beauty of the glowing yellow varieties, the colorful stripes, the deep, dark scarlet color that indicated perfect ripeness.

Out of all the varieties I planted this year, the watermelon beefsteak was a stellar performer, producing 10-15 huge, beautiful heirlooms within a couple weeks. The costoluto genovese also produced beautiful lobed red tomatoes, more gradually over the course of the summer. We got a few tomatoes here and there from our purple/black varieties, and no yellow ones whatsoever. It was a disappointment.

My system for growing the 24 roma tomato plants consisted of staking each plant with its own stake, pinching off side shoots and letting two main shoots grow up the stake. That would have worked well for the tall, vine-like heirloom tomatoes, which I couldn't keep contained in their cages, but it didn't work so well for the short, bushy romas.

This year I had 30 tomato plants - 24 romas for sauce, and 6 heirlooms for salads. Next year, I'll grow 12-18 romas for sauce, and 12-18 heirlooms for sauce and slicing, still for a total of 30. Having heirlooms fill both requirements will also give me flexibility - if I don't need more sauce, I will have delicious, juicy heirlooms for other things. If I do need more sauce, I'll have some hefty toamtoes to bulk up my supplies - the romas are heavy producers, but the fruits are pretty small.

The romas I'll grow like last year - one stake every three plants, held up by twine strung horizontally from stake to stake, trying to limit the number of side shoots, but not being religious about it. Heirlooms I'll stake individually, limiting the main vines to two per plant.

I'll also be growing them in a different spot in the garden, which may work well, as it's a bit wider. I think the tomatoes can use the extra space.

One of the nicest things about the end of a season is thinking ahead to next year. While I'm picking the last of the tomatoes, waiting for the weather to (finally) cool off and the leaves to change, I'll be dreaming of next year's crop - always thinking about how much better it will be. A gardener is forever an optimist.

Busy, busy days

Yesterday I spent 2 HOURS weeding the garden. It's crazy, but I'm learning lessons. Like, no matter how much I love sunflowers, I should never let volunteers grow anywhere they want to in my garden. They turn into minitature trees that are a huge pain to remove. And I really need to weed around the zucchini when it's small. And the green beans, too, because it's so hard to weed when they get bigger.

So yesterday, I almost completely cleaned one section of my garden - the only things left are the melon, butternut squash (which I planted too late, I guess), a few carrots, and a wall of basil. I'm going to start planting winter veggies there as soon as I can get to the store to buy some seedlings and compost. Here it is, the end of August, and we are suffering 103 degree heat. It's hard to think about planting fall and winter vegetables.

The early and mid summer vegetables are tapering off. We certainly didn't have much luck with tomatoes in general this year, and especially the heirlooms. One plant, the watermelon beefsteak, did especially well, and the costoluto genovese did, too. The others all pretty much sucked. The zucchini and yellow squash are definitely slowing down, and so are the green beans. The peppers, on the other hand, are still going strong, along with the eggplant, and the lima beans are full of pods, just waiting to fatten up.

Pretty soon I'll be planting carrot and turnip seeds, and maybe some leeks, and some cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. In a few months, it will be time for the garlic and shallots, which we are immensely enjoying from last year's crop. Fall is just around the corner - and I have to get ready, even if it is sweltering outside.