Bittersweet bounty

This week was the last week for our vegetable csa pick up. If you remember last year, I am always very sad when it ends. My csa takes away the planning of veggies in my house. For a blissful five months, I barely have to buy veggies at all. Or think about what veggies I should buy. All I have to do is pick them up! Or pick them from the garden. :-)

Anyway, for the last few weeks (I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier! File under 'definitely will do next year!'), I have been buying the seconds from the farmer. And canning them! It has been so much work- overwhelming at times, depressing at others- but oh, so worth it!! And what a blessing.

My goal is to can 50 quarts of tomatoes every year. And every year I fall dissmally short. Last year, I may have gotten to 25 or thirty. The year before, I don't think I even broke twenty.

I haven't counted yet this year, but it is a lot. A.lot.

But Saturday I picked up the last of the season's seconds for a very reasonable price, and now I am throws of the last canning of the season. It is a blessing. And sad, too, knowing there won't be fresh tomatoes again until next july.

So here are some pictures of my kitchen and my tomatoes. And now, back to my regularly scheduled programming: canning.

:-)

Tomato paste

I got three (three!) Cases of seconds tomatoes from the farmer in charge of our csa. I have been branching out from my usual crushed tomatoes since I have so many tomatoes this year. :-)

I made salsa (with plans for another double batch), crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, and now tomato paste.

I have to admit, it was benjamin's idea. And I am so glad he thought of it! I cooked a 8 quart pot of tomatoes down to about three or four cups. It was chris' idea to put the paste in ice cube trays and freeze them. Also, I had three half cup jars, so I put those three in a water bath. Now I have a bunch of tomato paste cubes just waiting to be put into a soup or chili or sloppy joes or... whatever!

Ben cuts a tomato

This was so cute--

Ben has been wanting to cut everything himself recently.  I have been letting him, within reason and of course, supervision!

Today we had soup for lunch, and he wanted to put a tomato in his.
"I put tomato in the soup while it was cooking"
"But I can't taste the tomato taste"
"Okay, go ahead"

And you know what?  He cut the whole tomato, put it all in his bowl, and ate every last bite.  :-)

Tomato sandwich.

My favorite summertime lunch. A big slab of tomato on a sandwich with a generous helping of mayo.  Yum.  Please notice that the above tomato fills my bread entirely. And look at all the wrinkles!  It is a really great heirloom variety that we got this year.  And did I mention that tomato slice FILLS MY SANDWICH?  amazing.  :-)

Garden Bounty

Why I love summer:

Okay, well one of the reasons I love summer anyway.  :-)  Most of this was picked tonight from our garden.  There are a few tomatoes from our CSA thrown in there (maybe four), but other than that, it's all homegrown!

ps. see that cute, tiny potato right out in front?!

Roasted Tomatoes with Garlic Butter Spaghetti

This is one of our favorite summer meals.

The roasted cherry tomatoes come from our garden.  Some came from our CSA this time.  It is simple and easy to prepare, and filling for those summer nights when you have been outside all day and come in ravenous for dinner.  :-)

I roasted the tomatoes on a cookie sheet for about 1 hour at 250*. I only put salt and pepper on them, although sometimes I drizzle with olive oil and even some crushed red pepper spices it up a bit.

I cooked one pound of whole wheat spaghetti.

I melted one stick of butter and sauteed three cloves of garlic, although I would do six next time-- it hardly tasted of garlic.

I tossed it all together with 2 TBS of fresh chopped basil from my back porch and brought it to the table.

So easy, and so delicious.

Another variation of this meal is to make alfredo sauce to go with everything.  I personally love this!

Produce... from our garden

I grabbed some quick pictures of veggies that we picked out of our garden the other day. 

We filled a whole basket! Green peppers, tomatoes and even a habenero, a seven pot and a jalapeno.

Has anyone ever seen this happen to a pepper?  We haven't.  We think it might be lack of water?  We have been watering our tomatoes but not our peppers because the nursery where we got them said we should not water them much.

Look at this beautiful heirloom tomato we have this year!  Do you notice the evil bunny teeth right in the middle of the side.  The first time we saw the bunny in our garden, it was only palm sized.  Now it's probably twice as big. 

After we were done picking peppers and tomatoes, the boys dug our potatoes!  I think we got about 10lbs.  (but I didn't weigh them) This is a much better yeild that last year, when we only got about three too-small-to-eat potatoes.  This year, instead of buying seed potatoes from the internet, we bought real, organic potatoes from the store and planted them! 

Finally, here is some tomatillo salsa that Chris made.  It is fermenting on our counter. Remember when I talked about adding fermented food to our diet (Kombucha is fermented!)?  We are trying new ways.  I also made a fermented green pepper and zucchini relish earlier this summer.

Well, I am going to try to add posts more often; maybe just take a quick picture and post a little blurb about it.  I know the pictures I take aren't the greatest, but they are what I have to work with now.  I don't have a great phone camera, but I also would never post another picture if I had to take them with my camera and upload them to the site.  So, for now I am going with low quality pictures over none at all.  :-) 

Have a blessed day!

Tomato Update!

Well, I finished canning my forty pounds of tomatoes, and I got:

14 quarts
1 pint
and leftover sauce to make lasagna

Yay!

I used one of the quarts today (it didn't seal) to make a zucchini-beef bake that was supposed to be like lasagna but just turned out more like a casserole instead.

Tomatoes!

I just bought 40+ lbs of tomatoes for $10!!! 

So excited-- tomato sauce is in my future. 

Will update with the end result of quarts made and total cost breakdown.  :-)