Harvest
Today I finally feel back to normal after my acquaintance with the bug we brought home from vacation last week. I haven’t been in my studio since early august and today would have been a great day to get some art done but it’s fall, which means harvest time.
I planted 30 tomato plants this year. I’m not sure what I was thinking but that’s a lot of tomatoes. I froze 16 quarts of pureed tomatoes for making spaghetti sauce and chile and canned 9 pints of homemade salsa today. As you can see there are still more tomatoes on the counter and the plants are just warming up. I’ve probably got another 6 weeks to go. What the heck am I going to do with all of these?
I also have more cucumbers and squash than I know what to do with. I’ll make zuchinni bread with the zukes but does anyone have any idea what to do with those flying saucer looking squash in the bowl in the back of the picture (called patty pan I believe)? They seem to be multiplying rapidly.
To stem the tide of the cucumbers I yanked 2 of the plants out of the ground this weekend. Their fruit wasn’t the best, they had a 1 day shelf life and they were in the way. The squash better behave or they’re next.
My green beans had stopped producing before I left on vacation but now they are back again making more. So today I canned 2 pints of dilly beans (this isn’t actually the recipe I use but close). These are the best - spicy dill pickled green beans - yum!
I also made my second huge pot of vegetable soup this evening from my garden veggies and froze most of it for a nice treat this winter.
I also picked (and ate) and froze (and then ate in smoothies) 2-3 quarts of raspberries. The raspberries are just getting going so I’ll probably get 4-5 quarts a week until we have a hard frost. I’m looking forward to some raspberry pies and lots of smoothies this winter.
And with my free time I went to the farmer’s market and bought a box of western slope peaches (grown near Grand Junction Colorado). I cut up and froze a few (a gallon bag) for smoothies but it barely made a dent. They will only last a week so I need to make some jam and freeze a bunch more before they go bad.
Tomorrow I hope to return to the studio although I suspect I’ll be back to freezing and canning again next weekend. I feel like a squirrel hiding nuts.
Posted by Lisa in: Diversions
Martha Marshall said,
August 28, 2006 @ 1:44 am
Lisa, brings back memories of the time when we had jars of pickles and canned green beans under all our beds! It wasn’t from our garden — didn’t have one at the time — but from cucumbers and green beans that we bought from local farmers, because we wanted to share the canning experience with the kids.
Lori Witzel said,
August 28, 2006 @ 4:27 am
Patty pan squash thoughts — roasting/grilling then freezing (for a nice add to winter stews and soups), baked hollowed out a bit and stuffed with surplus tomatoes/croutons/cheese or apples/nuts/dried berries.
Thank you for letting me live vicariously in your garden overflow, I haven’t had anything in our veggie beds for two years now.
Melody Johnson said,
August 28, 2006 @ 5:30 am
Lisa, I will be right over!
I wish…
But as for the squash, yes, roast them in chunks with a bit of olive oil and then take off the peel and mash them with garlic and butter or conversely with brown sugar butter and cinnamon. The mashed stuff freezes beautifully.
Our favorite is squash soup with is mashed roasted squash, with chicken broth and heavy cream, garlic of course… Nothing low cal about any of it, but then it is all comfort food, guaranteed to fix the flu or a broken heart.
marti plager said,
August 28, 2006 @ 6:55 am
I’m right there with you Lisa. I too am messing with tomatoes and making marinara sauce for the freezer. Have already canned salsa, chutney and soup. I like doing this but often get annoyed when I feel I should be in the studio. So I sympathize with your wanting to be in the studio instead of the kitchen. I guess the trick is to remember this harvest time next winter.
Lesly said,
August 29, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
Hi Lisa
Nice to see you back, but sorry you caught a bug. This post is just mouth watering! The thought of all those home grown veggies …. MMMM! We are making a new garden and so haven’t got a veggie patch started yet (although we have planted a grapevine and a mini-orchard).
In any case it is still winter here in New Zealand so your post was extra drool-worthy!. And I am highly impressed with all your preserving and freezing effort!!
If your squash are similar to the pumpkin and kumara that we have here (?) then warming winter soups to freeze (with curry flavouring or nutmeg) are favourite. But I don’t know how else one would preserve them.
And raspberries are just my favourite fruit! Did you know that if you make ice-cream with pureed raspberries (or strawberries) + equal quanitities of double and single cream (beaten together) + a little lemon juice and icing sugar to taste, you don’t have to keep taking it out the freezer and beating it? You just freeze the mixture ‘as is’ and leave it!
I won’t vouch for all that cholesterol but it makes the most divine ice cream!
Karoda said,
August 30, 2006 @ 7:41 am
I envy you having such a dilema…the veggies are just as lush as the fabrics! Some zucchini walnut bread…yum, yum~
Charmaine said,
August 30, 2006 @ 11:25 am
Look at you go! Our tomatoes are gearing up but we still don’t have a kitchen and all our canning supplies unpacked. I’m SO BUMMED. This will be the second season in a row that we haven’t canned tomatoes and pizza sauce.
Omega said,
August 31, 2006 @ 3:09 am
If you really have piles of surplus tomatoes, you could always start a US equivalent of La Tomatina! http://www.donquijote.org/culture/spain/fiestas/tomatina.asp
Tracy Helgeson said,
September 1, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
Glad you’re back Lisa, and hope you’re feeling better. Actually you must be to be doing all of this work! I am very impressed that you are canning. I am WAY too lazy to do that-and so we are just eating tomatoes and squash at every meal. Tomatoes don’t go with oatmeal:-)
Chole said,
September 1, 2006 @ 8:12 pm
I just happened upon this blog, but was wondering if you by chance have seen the book “preserving the harvest”. It is chuck full of hundreds of canning, freezing recipes for every food under the sun. Choices are always good when it comes to an over abundance of tomatoes
Lisa Call said,
September 4, 2006 @ 9:06 am
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I’ve caught up with the squash and while I was thinking I wouldn’t plant the patty pans again I’ve discovered I love them roasted, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with garlic salt. Very simple but I can munch down a squash a day cooked like this. Yum.
I’ve also made them into a cream based soup like Melody suggested and they were delicious.
Thanks for all the great suggestions!
Lesly I’m going to try that raspberry ice cream suggestion next. Sounds great.
Jerrad Pullum said,
September 8, 2006 @ 5:22 pm
Do you have a receipe you can share. My wife and I have more tomatoes than we know what to do with from our garden. We are looking for a marinara sauce receipe and salsa receipe. Can you help?