Sauce Time!

I've gotten two batches of sauce so far this year.
Tried a new way of cooking the mess - roasting in the oven.
Much, much easier than stove top and a lot tastier!

Chopped and ready for the oven:


All roasted (425 for 1 hour, then 400 for another 3 to 4):


After being run through the food mill (You can just stick it in the blender, but the pickies at my house hate any skin or seed at ALL in their sauce):


Is really yummy. Or so the family says - I hate tomato sauce, so I wouldn't know! lol.

There isn't much left in the garden to harvest or get in the freezer.
I froze 6 cabbages and some more beans, including pole.
Blue Moon pumpkins are still going along well. I'll have a few of those to freeze for pies and bread.
Still waiting on the Ruby Queen sweet corn, brussel sprouts and popcorn.
Oh! The potatoes are fantastic this year. Woohoo!

The flowers have pretty much exhausted themselves, but there are still a few going strong. And i definitely have to save some seed from our "Christmas Tree Sunflower". How weirdly beautiful is this:



Random last of the flowers pics:



















Happy growing! (what's left of the season, anyway)

Flipped Off

I guess even the veg get a bit disgusted with the neglect they begin to suffer around this time of year. How not cool is it for them to flip you the bird?

Of course, my oldest daughter just couldn't resist messing with it :)
I think that even our pond residents are a little disgusted that our daily conversations have become a lot shorter these days. Then again, maybe they're as depressed as I am that fall is here - which means winter can only be closer than we'd like it to be.

The tomato sauce is cooking.

:)

I'll end up being able to freeze about eight gallons. Not bad! I was finally able to get ahold of some vinegar, so I'll be able to put up a few quarts of pickles tomorrow. Yay! The only things left to get into the freezer are the brussel sprouts and we're still waiting on the corn from having to wait on the weather and getting the seed in the ground late. Zucchini are still coming in at the rate of a couple a day.

Oh, and the popcorn is still to come!

The flowers are trucking along as if it'll be 80 F forever. Now that it's fall, we've finally arrived at summer. Stupid weather! We ended up only getting three very small Moon and Stars watermelons. It was just too cold for them to grow worth a crap. On the bright side - for some reason, my son's hot peppers produced great! Go figure. My green peppers didn't do crap.

I'm at that early fall 'don't give a crap' point. It'll pass. It always does.

The Beginnings Of A Glorious Harvest

It's that time already!

Huh, this is the first year I've ever started harvesting and freezing veg before we've had a ripe tomato. The plants are huge, hanging heavy with toms and every single one of them is still green. I am not amused. We usually have cherries ripening way before now and a few weeks ahead of any other variety, but not this year. It's ok though. It just means I won't have to be making gallons of spaghetti sauce to freeze in the middle of trying to harvest everything else!

Anyway, I've frozen a gallon of green beans (and we've already eaten at least that many) with another gallons worth in the fridge and Lord knows how many gallons left to pick out there. We'll get to 'em.

5 heads of cabbage in the freezer.

A gallon of cauliflower.

No broccoli in the freezer. :( They ate it all! lol.

8 loaves of zucchini bread in the freezer, many more to bake. (My grateful thanks to Kim for sending me the seeds, that Black Beauty zucchini is awesome!!)

I've yet to get to the onions or peppers. They can wait a while and I'm still picking lots for cooking daily.

The corn is slowly getting there. A friend stopped up that I haven't seen in a while and asked, "Just what are you going to do with all that corn?" With the way she asked it, I'm not sure if she was just asking for the asking or was curious if we'd have any extra to give her, thus asking for some without really asking for it outright. lol.

When I told her it was going in the freezer right on the cob, she wanted to know how we were going to cram all those zip-lock bags in there.

Interesting. I've never, ever frozen my corn in bags. My grandparents never did either. It was always prepared by picking, peeling back the tops of the husks, cutting off the top and removing as much silk as you could (cause if you don't see any silk worms, more than likely there are eggs in there), replacing the husks tightly, sealing the top of the husks with a rubber band (tie with yarn was the old way) , throwing in the freezer and walking away. All done as quickly as possible from field to freezer. No husking, no blanching, no cutting off or freezing on cookie sheets.

And never have I had a bad ear of corn this way. The flavor has always been 'just picked' and the kernels wonderfully sweet and juicy. Sometimes I worry about not blanching, but I'm more in the 'don't fix what ain't broke' camp.

I'd forgotten how much work there is come harvest...but with a big old smile on my face.