Canning Tomato Sauce

What could be more satisfying than making your own tomato sauce from fresh, organic, local tomatoes, and preserving it to use all winter? The pride of eating local, being more self-sufficient,avoiding pesticides and genetically modified food..... Well, after today, I can think of several thousand things I'd rather do. But perhaps I learned some things to make this work better if I do it again...

Yesterday I spent $30 on 15 pounds of tomatoes from a market gardener and the Farmer's Market and picked about another 5 pounds from my own plants. I used several types of tomatoes. Here's what some of them looked like:

The next morning, after my coffee, I put my jars in the dishwasher, set up my SauceMaster, and began rinsing tomatoes, cutting them, and putting them in my enormous stockpot.
I started heating them to a boil by about 9:30. It wasn't easy keeping them at the right temperature so that they would simmer down but not scald. I waited and stirred and waited and stirred. I read my kids some books. I stirred. I worked on math with my 6 year old. I stirred. I worked on reading with my 4 year old. I stirred. I put my . I stirred. After several hours, I figured it must be cooked down enough to put into the sauce master.




"Time to crank!" I called to the two kids who were still awake. Having been waiting all day to turn the crank on the SauceMaster, they came running. When the crank was turned, the sauce came out like water. I had to dump it back in the pot, cook it down some more. Then we sauced the whole batch, but I decided it was still too thin, and had to cook it down some more.

The kids went out to play with the neighbors when they arrived on the school bus. I cooked the sauce down some more.
Finally, it got down to the right consistency, and I had enough to fill 7 pint jars. That's it. $30. 20 pounds of tomatoes. Seven measly little jars. Enough to make seven batches of spaghetti. For 20 pounds of tomatoes, cooked for six hours made seven little jars.

Simple Summer

Finally, now that it's almost over, summer has arrived. The beans, climbing up stalks of corn, have finally produced enough for me to eat. The cherry tomatoes just keep coming. We've been enjoying fresh cucumbers. The zucchini has not been as prolific as usual, but satisfies our needs. We had one solitary cantaloupe, about the size of a softball, which we split into 8 slices to share amongst our family and with the visiting neighbor kids. It's finally that time of year where I can literally eat out of the garden all day long.

zucchini bread, garden harvest, weather

The weather hasn't been at all summer-like this past week, and forecasts for the coming week aren't any better. For the weekend, we have a reprieve from the rain. My garden certainly doesn't know it's the end of August. However, we do have some romaine lettuce, a few zucchini, some small sweet onions, a few cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and one smallish tomato from an heirloom variety tomato. My mother was kind enough to provide me with 4 huge boxes of gravenstein apples from her orchard. I'll be canning applesauce this weekend.
With cool temperatures anticipated in the coming week, and a zucchini just a bit to large to eat as-is, it seems the perfect time to bake my first batch of zucchini bread this year. I am told I make the best zucchini bread in the world. For the greater good, I will share the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 good sized zucchini, about 8-9 inches long. Of course larger ones can be used if you want to make a bigger batch zucchini and freeze some for later or share it with others. The zucchini must be from your garden or from your neighbor's garden. it is against the rules to buy zucchini.

1 c vegetable oil

3 eggs from your own chickens if you have some, or from your neighbors. From the store if you really don't know anyone with a chicken.


2 teaspoons vanilla. Use the real kind, not the imitation. You want this to taste good.

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 cups flour. Works well with 1/2 whole and 1/2 white wheat.

1/2 teaspoon baking POWDER

2 teaspoons baking SODA

1 Tablespoon cinnamon. Don't skimp on the cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg. You can leave this out if you don't like nutmeg or if you don't have any. Do not run to the store just for this. It will be good either way, just a little bit more fun with it. But don't sweat it.

1 teaspoon salt


Directions:
Shred the zucchini. Measure it to make sure you have about 2 cups.

Use your hands to wring the liquid out into your compost container.




Preheat the oven to 350.
Mix the dry ingredients, except the sugar, in one bowl.


Mix the oil, sugar and eggs in another bowl.


Then mix them together.
Mix in the shredded zucchini last.


Mix it together very well. Pour into lightly greased loaf pan. Depending on the size of your pan, you may have enough batter for two loaves. I always get enough for one loaf and then some left over, but not enough for another full loaf. I use the rest to make muffins.



For loaves, bake about 60 minutes, for muffins about 12. Maybe longer. Of course, check with a toothpick or fork to make sure they're cooked through.



Have some for a snack before dinner. Have some for dessert later. Save a little to accompany your coffee in the morning.

Finally Summer

Is 3 months too long in between posts? Oh well. I've been waiting for something to actually grow in the garden so I could blog about it. Now that it's the middle of August, I'm actually eating what I grow.

Some of the apples are ready! Of course we've been eating them right off the tree, but I also made a quick and easy dessert with a couple of them. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 package refrigerated crescent rolls, like the doughboy makes, or the store brand(yeah, yeah, the trans fats. But they are so good)
1 large or 2 small apples, peeled and sliced thin
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

What to do with all of it:
Mix the apples, brown sugar and cinnamon together, of course. You could've guessed that. Open up the crescent rolls, lay them out flat on a cookie sheet. On each crescent, lay 2 or 3 slices of apple, then roll the pointy part of the crescent over the top. Bake according to crescent roll directions. Not required, but a scoop of vanilla ice cream is an obvious addition. If you're feeling indulgent, have one for breakfast.

What else?
We've had one measly lemon cuke, few cherry tomatoes, and some Romaine lettuce which my husband says tastes weird, and seems a little thick to me.

Yesterday I picked a small zuke, a yellow crookneck, and a few tiny side shoots of broccoli (most of the main heads flowered before I cut them. Bad gardener. Bad.) I also pulled up a sweet onion, which the slugs had eaten the green top off of. I cut up these items, tossed them in some oil in a hot pan, then added some leftover rice and a bit of leftover salmon. I cooked it till the zuke was tender, then added some soy sauce. Yum.


OK, as for the gardening aspect, I have learned to appreciate the humble, often griped about, mole. He does no harm, other than enticing the dog to dig in all the wrong places. Other than that, they push up fresh dirt in a garden that's not rototilled. This can be used to top potatoes, encouraging tuber growth, or to add to the base of corn plants, strengthening them, or simply as a place to plant in between the green mulch. That's why, in my garden you won't find many rows, as many things are just planted where my mole has made a spot for me to plant. The only creature in my garden I haven't found an appreciation for is the slimy, crop devouring slug.

slugs and snakes

A garden is a mini-ecosystem, and I want mine to include as many different kinds of life as possible. I let "weeds" like dandelions, clover, and various wildflowers run rampant, wild and free between my cultivated vegetables. I love the earthworms, ants, beetles, centipedes, ladybugs, creepy crawly bugs of all shapes and sizes, garter snakes, occasional frogs and other little creatures I have found living in the lush mix of grass, clover, and weeds. A tilled garden with neat rows cannot provide a home for so many little creatures, most of which are beneficial.
One creature which seems to find my garden a comfortable place to live is the slug. My garden is home to several species of them, all of which I detest. I have laid out cardboard where I want to plant vegetables, to kill the weeds growing there, and thereunder lie thousands of slugs which I have been almost daily collecting and destroying. Sometimes I cut them in half with a trowel, sometimes I poke them with a stick, sometimes they are too tough to kill this way so I collect them in a container where they die slowly. I don't feel guilty. If I let them live, they would slowly take over the world. I don't think they have brains, so I doubt they care that they are dying slowly.
Knowing that I can't possibly control the slug population on my own, I have gone to great lengths to make my garden an attractive home for garter snakes, which are supposed to be a predator to slugs. I dug a hole in a random place, put some sticks, dry leaves, and large rocks in the bottom of it, then covered the hole with a pallet to keep out precipitation and to keep my kids from falling in it. This is supposed to make a nice home for snakes to hibernate in or go to when it's too cold or wet to be out. I also piled all the stones I could find in random places throughout the garden, to make a nice spot for the snakes to rest to keep warm when they need to. I've also found that they like to hide under the same cardboard that the slugs collect on. I've found fewer slugs on the cardboard that I've found snakes under.

Potatoes!!!

With the costs of other staple foods such as wheat and rice skyrocketing, many people throughout the world are eating more potatoes, which have not seen the dramatic increases many foods have in the past year. The good news about potatoes is that they can grow almost anywhere, so they can be produced locally without concern for transportation costs. . Potatoes are one of the few foods crops that can be grown in the home garden. They can be grown in any sunny location, even on an apartment deck in a five gallon bucket filled with light soil or straw. This year we are planting lots of potatoes in our garden. The kids have helped me plant some already and will be helping me dig them up when they are ready to be eaten.
I can think of enough potato recipes that we could eat potatoes at every meal and not get tired of them because the dishes are so different- creamed with garlic butter, cold in potato salad, baked and topped with broccoli and cheese, with leeks in a soup, shredded and served with eggs for breakfast, cubed and fried and sprinkled with cheese, sliced and sprinkled with oil and dipped in ketchup, mashed with butter, roasted with carrots and rutabegas.....

GMO's and petri dish bacon

I read in Popular Science the other day that scientists have GROWN bacon using pig stem cells in glucose (the stem cells feed on the glucose and grow into bacon). Science creeps me out.
Perhaps there's no logical reason to fear bacon grown in a petri dish- it is probably the same basic substance as bacon grown on a live pig, but it just doesn't seem right. Nor does the idea of all these genetically modified crops we are eating. Can we really be sure that combining dna from one organism with that of a completely different organism will not cause... I don't know... but it's weird, and I want to drop out of the modern world.

Look, the winter is past,
and the rains are over and gone.
The flowers are springing up,
the season of singing birds has come,
and the cooing of turtledoves fills the air.
The fig trees are forming young fruit,
and the fragrant grapevines are blossoming...

Song of Solomon 2:11-13 NLT

Dwindling world food supply- GROW YOUR OWN

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/business/13wheat.html?_r=2&ref=business&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

http://www.theindependent.com/stories/02242008/new_grain24.shtml

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/17/europe/food.php

Most of us regular working folk do not have the influence to to change the trend toward global food crisis. The best we can do for the rest of the world is to give to organizations that help local farmers to be more productive, or help food insecure people in poor nations to become more self sufficient (ideally through permaculture innovations), and to buy American grown FOOD. Do not encourage the government in its attempt to grow our own oil and import our food!!!! Buy the most locally grown food you can. Eating lettuce from your backyard instead of lettuce shipped from California. Eat rice grown in California instead of rice from India. Don’t price the people of India out of their own rice by buying rice imported from India! Don’t turn California rice farms into housing developments by buying Indian rice! Washingtonians, eat apples not bananas! When you eat local (I mean that in the very broad sense described previously, not in the 100-mile sense), you support American farmers feeding Americans, and you also support farmers in poorer countries feeding people in their countries.

Oh, here is another article about eating insects- the UN is researching it! Another way for humans to live sustainably with sustainable forests!

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=25662&Cr=insects&Cr1=food

Steven Cobert read my blog!

Steven Cobert must have read my blog. Tonight on the Cobert Report, his guest was David Gracer, expert on bug cuisine. Gracer encourages us to eat bugs to save the planet!

I feel spring coming....

Potting soil lining storefronts
Veggie seeds on sale
A few hours of sunlight
No frost on my skin when I venture outside
I bought some pea seeds today will plant them on Friday! I can't wait

Anyone know how I can make sure the seeds I buy aren't genetically modified? I'm OK with hybrids, but I don't want to eat peas with pig DNA you know?

February Garden

Here in Western Washington, it's been raining nearly daily for five months and there's still no end in sight. And it's been cold, almost cold enough to snow, but usually the temperature hovers just above freezing and drops ice cold rain drops on those brave souls who venture out of their homes.

In February most of my gardening happens in my imagination (not unlike the rest of my life), on graph paper, and staring out the kitchen window. On graph paper, I plan out every square inch of garden space, marking where I will plant each vegetable and fruit. Of course, when the time comes to actually plant the garden, I will not use any of the maps I've been drawing out all winter. Once I get out to the garden in spring, I plant wherever I get the feeling something ought to be, which results in what appears to anyone else to be a mess, but to me it is a work of art. Looking out the kitchen window, I can almost feel the summer sun warming my shoulders as I meander around reaping the fruits of my labor, watching my three sons chasing each other through the clover.

I look forward to planting peas as soon as I have a sunny day. I planted them in mid-February last year, sure that I was making a foolish mistake, but unable to control my compulsion to plant during a sunny week. A few weeks after my boys and I planted them, we had snow and sub freezing temperatures for several days. Shockingly, nearly all the peas we planted sprouted and produced sweet pea pod treats by late March!

In the kitchen, I haven't been using anything fresh from the garden since I haven't wanted to be outside any longer than it takes me to take out the trash.

Introduction

This blog is about what I'm growing and what I'm eating, which are ideally one and the same.

I live in Western Washington with my husband and three young sons. I grew up with a passionate need for writing and an idyllic life I took for granted. The daughter of a farmer, I had 400 acres of field, forest and creek to roam with my two younger brothers. We raised cows for meat and raised fruits and vegetables in a large garden which was always finely tilled. I walked barefoot in the soft soil to feel its softness between my toes.

Stereotypically, I couldn't wait to leave the farm and the small town of my origins, to find excitement in the big city. I went to college for a few years and then got married. That spring, in a hanging basket on the patio of our tiny apartment, I grew a strawberry plant which produced two strawberries. It had cost me $10 for materials and the strawberry plant, but growing my own food felt so good. I found my self, stereotypically, missing the country life and my parents' vegetable garden.

After the birth of our first son, my husband and I moved to a home with a large garden area, my first real vegetable garden as an adult. All spring and summer I spent in that garden, carrying my son in a sling. I became obsessed with self sufficiency for a time. We now live in another home, with an even bigger garden area, and two more little boys. We are by no means self-sufficient, but I love to grow as much as I can and find new ways to enjoy the flavors of the fresh foods that my garden produces.

From time to time, I will probably some things off topic that are on my mind.