Full Disclosure

In the interests of full disclosure (this is for you, Friko,) most of the tomatoes I showed yesterday came from Justin's and Claui's amazing garden.  They have around 200 plants and were happy for me to come pick. (My thirty-some plants have been hard hit by blight and wild turkeys.)

And continuing in the disclosure mode -- when I process tomatoes, whether to can or to cook into sauce that will go into the freezer -- I don't blanch and peel my tomatoes.

If I were entering a competition at the county fair, I would.  But this is food for my family and none of us are put off by bits of tomato peel from our unsprayed tomatoes.  And I save enormous chunks of time and energy.
 

The way I prepare eggplant for the freezer is simplicity itself. Wash, slice, put on baking sheets with olive oil and seasoned salt, bake at 350 F till softened. I put these slices into freezer bags to resurrect for a moussaka or eggplant parmesan.  I can also chop them and add to pasta sauce. Or blend up with garlic and tahini into baba ganoush. Yum!

The Apple Dryer

We had an abundance of apples last year, prompting John to build a solar food dryer so we could have another way of preserving the bounty.

So, according to The Law of Natural Perversity -- what, you never learned this one in school? The L of NP says: If you drop an open-face peanut butter sandwich, it will land face down.

As a corollary to this law, we have this: If a handy man builds a cider press and a solar food dryer one year and purchases a handy-dandy apple peeler/slicer/corer, there will be no apples on his trees that same year.

There weren't. Not on our trees. But there were local apples for sale at a good price and John has been busy drying apples.

The handy-dandy gadget is really pretty nifty -- it makes quick work of turning an apple into nice, thin, dryer-ready slices.

And the solar dryer (which can be aided by a light bulb at night or on cloudy days) produces lovely leathery dried apples -- full of concentrated sweetness and perfect for snacking or fried pies or maybe Clytie's Apple Stack Cake.

What I find amazing is that five pounds of apples, once cut and dried, can fit into two of these quart size bags. One needs to remember that as one keeps dipping into that bag for one more sweet slice.

As Corny As . . .

The squirrels and raccoons have decided that our corn is ready for harvest and have been shamelessly working away at it.

The silks haven't dried up yet, meaning that the ears are not fully mature but the critters don't care about that. "Good enough," they say and every morning finds a few more stalks downed.

So, in a preemptive strike, I've been harvesting the ears that are nearest ripe -- and I have to agree with the critters -- good enough.

I sit in a rocking chair on the front porch and shuck the haul of the day. This is 'natural' grown corn -- no sprays, but that does pretty much insure a corn worm at the tip of each ear.

For those of you not grossed out by caterpillars and such, click on the picture to 'biggify' it and marvel at the intricate coloring and pattern of this guy. I think he's gorgeous.

But that doesn't stop me from dropping him (and all the others,) along with the broken off, munched-on tips of the corn, into a bucket for the delectation of the chickens.

A few of the ears of corn have little undeveloped ears attached. You know those tiny little ears of corn in Chinese cooking? That's what these seem to be. ( I added them to stir-fry for supper and they were delicious.)

All this corn . . . I imagine a taste of summer in the winter -- corn chowder, vegetable soup, corn sauteed in sweet butter, corn fritters, and, of course, those delicious corn pancakes from Sam's Carolina Kitchen.

"There's a job done!" as the old folks around here used to say. A whole lot of sweet corn, blanched, cut off the cob, and bagged up to go to the freezer.

Where, I think I can say with confidence, it will be safe from squirrels and coons.

Of Beans and Blogs . . . and Zucchini Too

Oh, dear, the beans are in. I picked on Sunday and somehow there were twice as many on Monday.

The slender tender beans on the right got steamed briefly and marinated with red onion slices, to accompany John's homemade pizza. The bigger ones got a three-minute blanching and went into the freezer.

And then there' was the zucchini -- the chickens got the biggest one; I grated two more to freeze for zucchini bread; and blanched some more to freeze for minestrone come winter.

And now, re blogs: Margie, of Margie's Crafts recently gave me the One Lovely Blog award. Check out her blog for great pictures of Ireland . . . and possible the cutest car I've ever seen. And thanks, Margie -- I love this kind of travel!

Closer to home, Sam of My Carolina Kitchen just presented this blog with the SPLASH award. Sam is a foodie and you should avoid her blog if you don't want to be stricken with immediate hunger. Right now she's got a recipe for seared tuna and Asian slaw that has me drooling. And the previous post is of a BLT that is as close to the Platonic ideal as they come. And the corn cakes a while back-- I've made them multiple times now . . . oh boy! Thanks, Sam, for the award and the calories!

And one last thing -- I had an email from 'a leading broker of internet advertising.' They would like, in exchange for an annual fee, to place an advertisement on my blog.

Yikes! I wonder what that annual fee might be? And what they'd be advertising? But I just replied that I wasn't interested. It would feel a bit like tattooing a big logo on my forehead.

Last night's pizza . . . with beans on the side.