My
cupboards and freezer are starting to fill with garden bounty – and I’m LOVING
the sight!
The
past few weeks have been very tumultuous – as a family, we have not only been
dealing with the sudden and shocking death of my Grandfather, but also the
clean-up of his house – which has not been a small job. While I haven’t been able to be there to help
with the major week-day efforts, I have been down on weekends as much as
possible (since he fell and ended up in the hospital) and as a result, the
garden has been largely ignored.
With
the exception of watering, I’ve done very little other than pick things, here
and there, until this week. Last Sunday I came home from Mum & Dad’s house
with a plethora of tomatoes. I then picked all of what was ripe in my yard and
last Monday I really got into the guts of starting to process some harvest. First things first, I made up some roasted
tomato sauce – SUPER easy – the recipe was found and piloted by my Mum and can
be seen on her blog about Roasted Tomato Pasta Sauce - Mum's blog is called The Messy Gardener.
I
had long booked today (Monday the 18th of August) as a vacation day –
and so was looking forward to a three-day weekend that would allow me to get
some things that I have been neglecting around the house taken care of. Friday night after work, I picked all of my
pears. They are now divided up – half (the
larger ones) are in a paper bag (with a couple of apples to help speed the
ripening process) on my kitchen table and the other half is in a basket, also
ripening, but at a slightly slower rate.
The second set will be made into pear butter a recipe for which, I found
online, and the first set will be for fresh eating (YUMMY!) and canning – I’m
going to make light syrup for the canning ones, and I’m going to try out
another recipe I saw on line for that one…
Friday
I also got to meet up with my Mum & Dad for lunch – and they supplied me
with more tomatoes (yay!) as well as a HUGE bag of green beans and a couple of
ears of corn! After I picked the pears, I cut up all of the cherry tomatoes
(for drying) and got the dehydrator going.
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| Getting the Dehydrator Loaded |
Saturday
morning I got straight to it! First, I
checked on the tomatoes in the dehydrator…
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| Overnight's Work - Still Some Work to Go |
Then
I made up another batch of roasted tomato sauce
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| Plum Tomatoes |
 |
| Ready to Roast! |
And
canned it all.
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| Two Kinds of Tomato Sauce |
While
the tomato sauce was cooling, I turned off the dehydrator and packaged up the
dried tomatoes…
 |
| All Ready to Make Sundried Tomato Pesto! |
I also stewed up the previously frozen Damson Plums and got
them all stone and skin free… After that I quit for the day.
 |
| Frozen Plums |
 |
| Cooking Down the Plums |
Yesterday
I had an out of town chore to look after in the morning…
Once
home, though, I opted to get at the beans and look after the plums.
I
chopped, blanched and froze two colanders’ worth of the beans – the third colanders-worth
I decided to try my hand at dehydrating (for consumption in soups and stews
through the winter. One colander is equal to about two cookie-sheets in the
freezer – a cookie sheet vacuum sealed and frozen is 3 - 4 meals’ worth of
beans (as a side dish)
 |
| Beany Madness in the Kitchen |
 |
| In the Freezer |
 |
| Dried Green Beans |
Then
back to the plums. I tried (a couple of
years ago) to make plum jam… I was using powdered Certo and it never did set,
but it made this delightfully tart syrup that was amazing on pancakes and
waffles… this time I didn’t even bother trying to make jelly – this time I went
straight for the syrup.
 |
| Plum Syrup - 2014 |
Quite
a haul!
Last
night, before bed, I took out all of the rest of the applesauce from last year
that I bagged and froze… I thawed it out overnight, added cinnamon, nutmeg and
ginger to it and canned it up today…
On
to the beans. Pulled them out of the
freezer, bagged and vacuum sealed them – they are now in my chest freezer
waiting for winter dinners!
 |
| Frozen and Vacuum Sealed |
In
and amongst all of this activity this weekend, I also managed to mow the lawn, get
the kitchen and bathroom floors washed, three loads of laundry done, pick the
next small bunch of nearly ready-to-make-sauce-out-of tomatoes, and a *very*
little bit of tidying and organizing taken care of. All in all, I’m very
pleased with what was accomplished this weekend! The next major harvest activities will be more beans and tomato sauce... and the apple tree...
Oh... the apple tree...
 |
Apple Tree 2014 - So Heavy With Fruit
That the Branch is Touching the Ground! |
With
love across the waters…
Whew! What a lot of work you got done! But with all the winter benefits, it won't seem like work at all. Tapping the inner domestic goddess!
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