Tomato Overload

 The once green tomatoes in the studio went from barely ripe to "do something now" in what seemed like overnight. Granted, I was out of town for 5 days, but still! So the last 2 days have been about salvaging what is left and making things. We have enough salsa and spaghetti sauce for the year, and then some, plus the peppers are gone...so more creative things were I order.

Four more quarts of canned whole tomatoes, not creative but uses lots of the smaller rounds. Plus four pans of roasted tomatoes for the freezer.  An online search revealed new items such as bruchetta topping and tomato jam.  SO...5 pints and 2 half pints of bruschetta and two batches of tomato jam - 12 jars in all. One has ginger, the other cinnamon and I added some hot pepper mash. Both are sweet.A double batch of tomato bisque soup to finish out the two day marathon on tomato putting up...and there are still four flats left!

Still, there is noting like a heritage tomato fresh from the garden.  I am forever a spoiled tomato consumer snob!

Help arrives!

October 12 - Sara's parents paid a visit and "relaxed" by working around our home and garden.  Elvin trimmed the hedges and attached the last board from the front porch re-hab project.  All 4 porches were power washed and re-stained this summer. The front getting a new kick plate board.  The squirrels did more than kick it - they ate it!

Sara and Carol finished putting mulch around the plants in the side garden (out the living room window).  Sara continues to try to get rid of the snow on the mountain that takes over each year.  This year she got more serious, with a a hand tiller tool and all!

Then all three proceeded to rake up the pine needles and take them over to Nammah's garden for her paths. Years of "research" with different path material has found that 4 out of 5 paths prefer pine needs to any other material (straw, leaves, wood chips, plastic, newspaper, cardboard, etc.)  In order to put them down, they needed to de-brush the "there used to be a path there" next to the road. There were small trees growing amidst the weeds that we just avoided this summer.  The Thomsen family took them down!

Meanwhile, back at the house, I got caught up in the kitchen.  I DID take an outside break to empty the water barrels and hydrate the parched trees and bushes in the yard and roll the barrels to their winter home alongside the garage. Otherwise, I cooked a roast with garden vegies, plus roasted brussel sprouts and beets for dinner. There were some tomatoes on the way out so Carol cleaned out the bad spots and I ended up making 10 jars of salsa and 12 jars of hot pepper jelly (half with raspberries).  That ended the hot peppers that were getting a bit rubbery.  Still lots of tomatoes reddening in the studio.  I roasted a pan tonight. We'll need to get creative with them this year in order to use them all.

p.s. one month since the green tomatoes were brought in for ripening.  Looking more like the colors of Christmas now as Carol Thomsen picks her favorites! Who needs the supermarket anyway?

October 1, 2012

The oven and stove ran all day. My lasagna took the bulk of that.  Starts with the sauce, a stock pot filled with tomatoes that completed their ripening in the living room.  Also carrots, zucchini, garlic and herbs from the garden – the onions and red wine were purchased.  It simmers for about 5-6 hours on the stove and reduces in half.  A rich tangy sauce that is WAY more work than reasonable for what it produces.  This is slow food at its best!  In addition to the base and top layer of the lasagna, this batch yielded 4 additional pints for the pantry.

In the meantime, 2 cookie sheets with sliced tomatoes roasting in the oven, an hour or two longer process than the sauce.  After roasting they go into the freezer for future pizza topping!

The lasagna…two layers of filling, one with roasted vegetables from the garden.  This one has peppers, brussel sprouts, carrots, garlic, a few remaining green beans and more of those purchased onions (gotta figure out how to grow onions!) This is my third lasagna for the season (last time there was a pesto layer).  Perhaps I need to branch out but it’s a nice way to use a lot of garden goodies and lasts the week and more! The second layer for this one was squash.  

The remaining delicata squash that were a little underdeveloped and then a little frost bit.  They won’t store long so we are cooking them up. They are a little starchy which is not like delicata at all. It must be related to one of the less than ideal conditions mentioned above.  The baked squash is mixed with ricotta cheese I made from farmer Ed’s milk.  We had extra again, Dottie has been working overtime! Between the sauce, the cheese and all of the baking and roasting, this lasagna is priceless!

An unplanned addition was the wild mushroom and rice soup. I had a small bag of honey mushrooms from my class this past weekend.  I had planned to put them I in the lasagna but was afraid they would get lost in with everything else.  The foraging experts recommended soup, since they need to cook 15 minutes in order to be palatable.  These are a variety of mushroom I would not put on the table on my own.  There are too many look alikes, including the little brown mushroom that can kill a grown adult single handedly! The wild rice in the panty, along with the left over bacon in the fridge, and more whole milk from Dottie, made for a lovely soup. Again, the herbs; oregano, garlic, celery and rosemary – all from Nammah’s garden!

For dinner I picked a beet and some arugala (still standing!) and added goat cheese and walnuts for one of my favorite fall salads!  In the kitchen all day!  No wonder my legs and back are tired. How did grandma do it?

Frost Time-September 14

With Paula on work assignment in England, Sara was abandoned in the time of Nammah’s greatest need (one of them anyway).  The frost threatened earlier in the month, Sara covered more than once, all the while harvesting more than usual to prepare for the end. The end finally came with a hard frost on September 14, same day as last year, but three nights with a headlamp and she harvested it all.  Squash, tomatoes, basil, peppers, other herbs – the brasica’s can stay for a while – she even potted some lettuce to keep in in fresh greens a bit longer!

New to the larder, thanks to Sara and her time in charge, roasted tomatillo salsa (salsa verde) and V8 (aka bloody mary mix)!  A perfect use for the celery, peppers, garlic, tomatoes and herbs!

Early September

The garden has kept us so busy that Nammah’s Blog has been left behind.  The best we could do was to take pictures, whether by phone, camera or ipad, and jot down the daily harvest in the old fashioned (though I am preferring it right now) phrenology journal on my nightstand!


The daily harvest, in the earlier summer and spring, is so special and worth documenting.  Not that the larger harvests are any less special, but for some reason the miracle of it all can fade into a burden at times.  Perhaps we plant too much – but between canning, freezing, cooking, eating, we use it all - with even enough to give to the neighbor or friend who stops by.

September 2: Applesauce day with the Flotten-Wood family.  Thanks to an investment in pruning (Arborist Louise Levy) and a year off – the trees in the back yard are back in decent production. 39 quarts of applesauce this year split between the two families. We also cooked and ate lot – coleslaw, veggie lasagna, roasted beet/arugula salad, and brats.

The tradition continues and Ben and Aliya are becoming quite the helpers!

September 3: 4 pints of salsa, roasted tomatoes for the freezer, nice salad for dinner with Rigotzke salmon.

September 5: Full dehydrator of cherry tomatoes and basil, roasted beets for eating, made super salad with edemame, kale, onions and carrots from garden. Canned 2 quarts of tomatoes in their own juice and made 7 jelly jars of jalapeno jello.  Sara harvested a large jar of hazelnuts from the circle trail!  Foraging too!!

 September 8: Arugula/beet salad and edemame for dinner. That is the last of the edemame.  We could probably plant more next year if we wanted to freeze any. I finally cooked the 2 zucchini that got two big.  One was halved and stuffed – the other became the “noodles” for a vegetable lasagna.  A pesto layer, a roasted red pepper lay (from jar) and various other vegetables.

September, 9: 4 quarts of spaghetti sauce, 2 meals of roasted tomato, dehydrator full of cherry tomatoes, 3 bags of basil pesto.  We also got the cider press out – just us this time.  Last year was fun to invite everything who chipped in to give it to us for our wedding two years ago. They each brought a bag of apples and a jug to take some home.  The cider was amazing!  But I didn’t even get to really see how it worked (hosting and making food).  This year we wanted to have the experience of the cider making, instead of the experience of the community making cider (both nice in different ways).  Not enough apples left so we only got 3 partial bottles (2 half gallon and a liter bottle ¾ way full to allow for expansion in the freezer).  AND, with only our couple of varieties of apple, it’s not really cider and not that good!  The lesson, variety is the spice of life...and cider!

September 10-11:  Roasted 2 meals of tomatoes, froze 4 meals of brussel sprouts, and made 6 pints of HOT salsa – finishing the morning I left for England for two weeks.  A difficult time to leave Nammah!

The exciting news is that the garden/solar shed has siding!  The tar paper shack has been transformed by Kenny and his men into a space worthy of Nammah’s grace and beauty.