This is kind of
mish mash post. We've been really busy in the kitchen of late. Then I picked up Salmonella from something (still not sure what exactly... but something outside..) and that took me out of commission for some time. Let me tell you , Salmonella is NO fun. I wanted to die. And I think I had a pretty mild case actually with none of the usual symptoms except possible hurling my guts out.
ANYway, moving on, I am better, several pounds lighter and willing to look at food again. I've had enough energy to do things for a few days then I overdue it and have to crash for a few days. But it is so good to be able to DO something when I can that maybe I get carried away. Anyway, I'm thankful for whatever I get.
Isn't this weird? I thought the leaf coming out of one was weird but this is definitely weirder... is that a word?
I'm not sure what variety these are because they don't look like anything I planted. Except for the one on the right which is a Poona
Kheera.
Blueberry ice cream. It looked very strange. But it tasted very good. Now we have no more blueberries because I used them all up.
A Hillbilly. A fat one. I was very proud.
TWO Fat Hillbillies.
They are going to bury us soon ...
But we are fighting back by sucking the life out of them in the dehydrator .
Fermenting
apple juice .
This tastes better..
Well look what we have here.
I was just leaving....
Pardon me...
I love red. Well, when it is on tomatoes and stuff.... I can't wear it.
More squash.... Elly May chops it up for pickles. I think we canned 19 pints of stuff that day.... I didn't get a picture because it got put away before that happened. And by then I was too sick to care about anything.
Still not enough for ketchup though...
But we did make tomato soup.
Then I made Minnesota Chili Sauce which is some old tomato relish type recipe I got a long time ago. It is really good on meat . First you have to scald and peel tomatoes though. Not my favorite job. So Elly May did it. ;-)
And I chopped.
Pretty.....
On to the beans. We've been saving them up for days til we had enough to do to make it worthwhile to heat the kitchen up with the
canner.
I wish the purple ones staid purple after they got cooked... It would look so much nicer...
One batch down...
For the next batch we actually had flowering dill heads .. FINally....
And I put some of our yellow peppers in.. just because they looked cute.
Voila.... Phew! I feel very accomplished. And tired. There are still more tomatoes... More squash... but they can wait. Especially since we have a major heat wave hitting us now with some triple digits. The pool is very nice about now.
I think this one is a Pineapple... it is kind of hard to tell because it looks so much like a Hillbilly ...but Elly May said she picked it down where the Pineapples are so I guess it must be that..
THIS ... is a Hillbilly. Over a pound and a half. Not bad. These have got to be some of the most beautiful tomatoes... they look like rainbows.
See? No longer piddling.... This is pretty hefty. So now of course... me and my big mouth... we have to do something with it all and fast because they are ripe .
And oh so pretty....
Until I get a hold of them.... You see... I hate peeling tomatoes. It is a messy, tedious chore. You have to scald them in boiling water until the skins split , then dump them into ice water to cool them off then slip the skins off. Of course they've had to stay in the boiling water for over a minute (at least it always seems that way) so they are pretty mushy and cooked. And we had 60lbs of these suckers to do and I was not looking forward to that part of the game. But then last night I had a brilliant idea. Back a couple weeks ago when we had a brown widow spider hiding out on top of one of my tomatoes... we torched it like we usually do those things. Since it was on the tomato ... the tomato got kind of torched too ... and the skin just shriveled up.... What if I just laid all the tomatoes out on a tray and hit them with the blow torch? Then we'd have flame roasted tomatoes. So... early this morning I got my brother to get the torch for me and Elly May and I got all our beauties ready and went to work . I've never had so much fun peeling tomatoes. Mom made us move our operation outside as she said it smelled like pot burning.... hmmm.... I didn't notice anything but she said it was strong... Anyway... so we moved outside.
The only thing I would change..... if I had a flame thrower.... it would speed things up a bit.....Maybe next year.
After we hit them on both sides with the flame, the skins just slip off in our hands and we rinse the whole thing off. Elly May then diced them up and we put them on to heat so we could can them.
We had a lot going here...
The days work.... 23 quarts... not bad. Some of it ended up being just tomato juice as I didn't want to waste anything... but we got a decent amount overall.
Phew!!! That was exhausting. But very fun. I shall look forward to peeling tomatoes from now on. Fire makes everything better. ;-) So if you have no patience like me.... a propane torch is a great way to go.
