Monthly Archives: August 2010

On a quick end to the canning season

Posted on August 30, 2010 | 23 Comments

Look at all that empty space!  It makes me so happy!

For the first time ever, I have all my major canning* done before 1 September.

And even more importantly, I have done less of it than in years past.  What is up with that?  Shouldn’t I be, you know, squirreling away as many canned goodies as I am able for the future?  The answer I am coming up with is “No, not necessarily.”

I suppose a bit of background needed for this seemingly contrary stand.  One, I have assessed with the years what it is exactly we eat out of the canned goods and have adjusted accordingly.  Pickles are virtually nonexistent, for one example, and I will never again can beet greens for myself, as I ate them only grudgingly.  Two, I began to do a lot more root cellaring of certain vegetables, but even that has waned in the last couple of years to just potatoes, apples and onions.  And three, most importantly, I am now growing food year-round.  And considering the nutritional superiority of fresh produce over the canned stuff, I feel less compelled to run to the basement for a jar than to grab a basket and go harvest something for dinner.

The majority of the jars you see on those shelves above, then, are convenience items needed to put together a quick meal.  The bottom shelf holds stocks and beans and bean soups.  The next shelf up holds salsas, chutneys, and mustards:  these will continue to be filled as I find the time.  All of the second shelf down from the top is tomatoes and tomato products, from juices on the left progressing to sauce to sauce with stuff to ratatouille and glut sauce to barbecue sauce and ketchup.  The top shelf is fruits to butters to jam.

And the holes in the shelves?  It’s not apple season yet so one of those shelves is destined to hold apple sauce.  And, hah, the bottom-most shelf is either going to hold bottles of home-bottled wine(!) or a rack for cheese-curing later this fall.  Whee!

*I only use a pressure canner, which is how I can get away with having chicken stock and bean salsas and the like. And, produce-wise, the freezer only holds fruits, chevre and meat now, no veggies at all.

→ 23 Comments

Posted in food, sweat

On a certain kind of crazy

Posted on August 23, 2010 | 16 Comments

Dent corn, she sure do grow tall:  the girl is 4′-2″…these now-tasseling stalks are easily three times her height.

But the calico and blues top out at 5′ or so.

This time of year, I think having something like A.D.D. or O.C.D. is actually helpful.

I have a dear friend who’s a shrink…a good friend to have, incidentally, much like friends who make their own food or like to repair cars or computer glitches.   Our discussions of certain-things-wrong-with-brains include many “disorders” that actually serve some purpose.  And it’s at this time of the year when I have exactly eight food-processing functions going on in the kitchen right now that I think having a piece of crazy might be helpful.  (I haven’t held up a mirror to myself lately so maybe I am already a bit nuts, and it’s already working.)

Looking for another five-pound weight to throw down on top of the parmesan cheese I am pressing, I realize the half-gallon jar of fermenting beets, sitting nobly off by itself, would do the job.  So on it goes, fitting snugly into the press, and lo, those other weights set nicely on its top.

Funky smells, sticky floors, bubbling pots, a full counter of canned jars and a sink full of drying dishes:  It’s August all right.  Every morning and evening is taken up, somehow, with some form of food preparation.  There’s other preparation that is happening daily too:  the freezer birds (turkey and chicken) need twice daily care, the egg birds need love, the goat needs milking, the weeds need pulling…and then there’s the harvests.  It’s a bit maddening.

For those of you who think I somehow squeeze more in my days than most:  I don’t quite know if I do.  I know I don’t sit down much except during working hours!   And I do go to bed really early (mainly to read) wherein I am in bed by 9:00, then up by 6.

Boundless energy?  I doubt it.  Just a serious seasonal case of put-it-away-for-later-itis!

→ 16 Comments

Posted in food

On working vacations

Posted on August 16, 2010 | 15 Comments

The Mother of All Colanders is holding four pounds of elderberries.  Fortuitously, the wine recipe I used had called for exactly four pounds of berries.  And yes, it is necessary to wear gloves when harvesting and destemming them; they are messy!

When you read this, my one full week of vacation will have ended and my heinie will be warming my work seat.  Sigh.

Of course my vacations involve no vacating, nor really any sitting at all.  And I almost never do take a whole week off:  I just usually dribble the two-week allotment out over the course of the year, granting myself a three- or four-day weekend here and there or as Tom’s art junkets require.  This year was different.  We did some structural work to one of our outbuildings and needed a full week to do it.

Pictured with some of its victims

It’s been years since I got out my Sawzall (reciprocating saw).  Nothing satisfies more than the polite buzz of that saw tearing through something:  without the plaintive whine of the cordless saw, the zip-zip of the chop saw or the quasi-authoritative whir of the table saw, the Sawzall just gets the job done, quietly, with spooky effectiveness.  Now I am wondering if it will again be years before it’s put to use.

Structural crap aside, I did practically wear out the knees of my work pants while weeding the garden paths.  It’s been such a year (you know the ones) wherein one must shuck all unnecessary nonsense in order to simply keep the cogs of the machine well-oiled and turning, and this summer it meant I couldn’t attend to the garden paths as I would like. (Of course, had I had the 25 yards of woodchips required to cover those paths, weeds would not be a problem, but, well, it’s an off-year for the tree-cutting crews around here.)  The garden beds themselves, though, of course are weed-free; a girl needs her standards.

Princess of Pigweed, I would say to myself while creeping on those knees.  Professor of Plantain, Duchess of Dandelion.  Shepherdess of Sheep’s Sorrel, Priestess of Purslane, Lady of Lambs’ Quarters:  the irony that the majority of the weeds I was pulling were edible was not lost on me.  Bursar of Burdock, Contessa of (inedible) Crabgrass.   Luckily, the week had been a wet one, and the weeds came out in clumps, few tools required.  And as I pulled, I marveled yet again at how strong my old arms and back remain.  I can do this for another fifty years, I thought, which would bring me to 95, sweaty and muddy and happy; more wrinkled, more gray.  I am sure lifting beams and wrangling posts and heaving rafters won’t be in my future fifty years from now, but…milking a goat and pulling some path weeds?  Not a problem, no sir.

→ 15 Comments

Posted in sweat

On almost-tomato-season plus the masonry oven

Posted on August 9, 2010 | 15 Comments

The makings of Glut sauce*(including the first ripe extremely cat-faced Brandywine) plus a bit more for peach salsa

It’s not quite full season yet with the tomatoes: we’ve mostly got the little guys going (I frankly no longer bother with cherry tomatoes) and some plums…but it’s COMING.  Goodness is it ever.

Strangely, I am way ahead of the game with the peppers, eggplant and okra.  Tomatoes are usually the herald of the family solanaceae, they’re the first ones reddening up and driving me crazy but this is a great year for the peppers and, especially, eggplant.  I am beginning to wonder if it’s just a good year all around or if it’s because all of these plants are ones that I have saved from good-looking parent plants over the last couple of years.  A mystery.

I wake up ridiculously early on Thursdays (4:00!).  Thursdays have become my Cook Everything Possible In Loven And Then Eat It All Until Next Thursday day.  It’s a bit of a marathon, but then again, I am cooking for (potentially) a week, and cooking bread loaves to sell…of course it’s arduous.  But in the oven, in order of its hotness, goes

  1. Caramelization session in the hot coals:  2 cast-iron skillets with some chopped veg like onions in one pan, zucchini in the other; this requires some frequent stirring.  It cooks from the top and the bottom.  The veg go into bread salads, or frittatas, or on pasta; whatever, it’s cooked! and with a woodsy flavor punch!
  2. Push the coals back and then bake pizzas/focaccias (2 per session, turned around 3x in front of the hot flames)
  3. The fire burns way down.  Tom scrapes it out, mops the floor, closes the door to equalize the oven’s hot spots.  About an hour later, I now fill the oven with the massive bread and roast chicken baking (bread takes 1/2 hour, chicken closer to an hour)
  4. Remove the bread, leave the chicken in there and set a skillet full of frittata, individual potatoes (pierced with a fork, set on the floor), soaked/parboiled beans and/or rice and baked dessert (custard, souffle, etc.) and start on roasting things overnight like the glut sauce or juicy peaches.  Later in the season I will have 2-3 steam table pans* full of tomatoes cooking overnight (the temp. goes from about 200 down to 150 or so)
  5. Dinner happens (if we’re not too stuffed with pizza) when we pull the chicken out.  I made a cold veg salad the day before.
  6. Remove things by doneness, check temperature, and leave the glut sauce and peaches in there to cook overnight.  Also overnight, in goes a glass casserole filled with a cultured milk product (buttermilk, kefir) that…cooks all night to become quark or kefir cheese.  The heat separates the curds from the whey; this lovely sweet tasting caramelized grainy cheese, then, becomes one of my favorite things to spread on my morning toast.

It’s fun!  And…exhausting!  But heck, no cooking the rest of the week…unless we’d like to, of course.

* don’t waste your money on buying a spendy turkey roasting pan this year; 4″ or 6″ deep stainless steel steamer pans will work quite well.  Buy them thick enough and they completely take the heat of my oven, too.  Lasagna, dehydrating veggies, etc. etc. etc.!

→ 15 Comments

Posted in masonry oven

On doing what you can, canning what you do

Posted on August 2, 2010 | 17 Comments

The jam convention thusfar:  roasted garlic, apricot, strawberry, three berry (strawberry, cherry, raspberry), and some culturing buttermilk on the kitchen counter

Gosh:  who knew taxes were the third rail of garden blogging?  What social scab shall I pick next:   Capital punishment?  Religion, maybe?

In all seriousness, these last two posts have been fun? something for me to think about, and I enjoyed your responses to them.  All I am really trying to say in both is “do what you can, can what you do,” and hopefully others can benefit from your home-grown goodness too.  So many of our problems are beyond our control.  Our weeds (mostly) and our own small steps toward self-sufficiency and teaching and wide-eyed learning are definitely in our control.  So, in the Hebrew then, amen:  meaning, so be it.  Do what you can.

And it is with wide-eyed wonderment that my old eyes see things when I go through the gardens or henyard accompanied by a small-ish child.  Even without such a companion, the garden world is plenty inspiring.  Add a goat in milk and the process of changing that milk into food and I am agog, and pleased.  Pleased, and worried, as there is so much!  This brand-new month of August hangs heavy with the fecundity of the farm:  the babies, the leaves, the weeds, some bugs and all that food!!  Do you have enough time to deal with it all and still sleep at night?

There’s wide-eyed, and there’s wild eyed.  Unbelievably, our flightiest chicken, Pauline, is now a mom.  Her chick brings the chick total to 38 for the year.

Mama Pauline with Jellybean

Granted, it’s new for us, Tomato Season.  It’s only Sunday that there were enough tomatoes to harvest for dinner.  Most of gardening and farm-type living is doing this exact thing:  treading water until the deluge.  The weeds can be attended to now, but soon, they can wait.   And then, all that canning.  And then, it ends.

Amen.  And let us feast.

The first tomato dish is probably also the easiest:  dump hot pasta atop finely chopped garlic, onions, tomatoes and torn basil.  Add olive oil and salt and pepper, splash of Balsamic, then mangia.

→ 17 Comments

Posted in sweat