Salsa
We did it! We used the rest of our tomatoes to make 8 jars of salsa. 4 hot, 4 mild. We’ve had a tiny taste but won’t know for sure until we pick up some chips.
Category Archives: Cooking
Tomato Sauce
This weekend we thawed out all of the processed tomatoes that we froze over the summer. It ended up being around 20-something jars. Our first project was to make tomato sauce with 7 lbs. of tomatoes. We even had some basil we had frozen from the garden to use as seasoning.
Some of the jars
Cooking down the tomatoes
Final sauce jars
We didn’t use a recipe specifically for canning, so we poured the sauce into old pasta jars and froze them for later. The remaining 10 lbs. of tomatoes will be made into salsa! Good activity for a cold Sunday.
Kale Crop
We harvested our first bunch of kale today. Most of the other kale plants aren’t doing very well, especially the ones in pots. I’m making a note to plant more kale and only put them in the raised beds.
I used the kale to make a spicy chicken sausage soup. The kale actually gave it a really nice crunch.
Raspberry Jam
We’ve been collecting and freezing raspberries all summer long. Last night, we finally had five cups of raspberries and were able to try our hand at making jam. Drew mashed all the berries and mixed them with sugar.
We then took turns stirring for the next half hour.
Willis was not much help at this time.
Once it started to gel, we put it in our jars and processed them in the water bath. Drew and I snuck a taste off the stirring spoon and it was quite delicious!
Gumbo
Today was the day to use the okra we harvested. Gumbo seemed like a good choice. It ended up being a very long process, but I wanted to try to make an authentic version.
First I made the roux, which entailed stirring this for half an hour straight.
Then I got the main broth, veggies (including a couple of our very own green peppers), and meat boiling.
Time to cook the okra. This stuff is a gooey mess.
And a few hours later we ate.
Although it was tasty, I’m not sure I’ll take the time to make it very often. I’ll have to find a short cut version.
Zuta Peppers
We harvested a nice variety of goodies this weekend; tomatoes, okra, peppers, hot peppers, and cherry tomatoes.
The Zuta peppers stole the show. I think they turned such a beautiful color. To use them, we made a deconstructed stuffed pepper and a vegetable quesadilla. They had an even better flavor than bell peppers, which works out well since my bell peppers are doing miserably.
Botinecka Zuta Peppers
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Blossom End Rot and Fried Green Tomatoes
Fried Green Tomatoes
Our latest issue has been with our tomatoes. First, some of them are getting blossom end rot. The ends start to turn dark and leathery and will eventually start to rot the whole tomato. We found this with several of the green tomatoes on our plant last weekend and, in order to save the fruit, we went ahead and picked the tomatoes, cut away the bad areas, and made fried green tomatoes. I had never tried fried green tomatoes before since I’m not a big tomato fan, but these were great. Thanks Drew!
Apparently, one way to quickly stop blossom end rot is to dissolve Tums in the water that you pour over the plants. This condition is caused by a lack of calcium which is exactly what Tums are made of. We’ll see if it works.
The other issue is that we have some sort of critter starting to eat our tomatoes before they ripen. We’ve harvested a few and are trying to ripen them in brown paper bags. If that seems to work we will go ahead and take them all.
Mini Eggplant Parmesan
To use my eggplant I decided on Eggplant Parmesan. I’ve never actually tried the dish before and I realized, while looking through recipes, that it consists of a TON of red sauce and cheese. I went with a mini version to fit the scale of our eggplants. The eggplants were sliced, dredged in egg, then panko flakes, and baked in the oven. Once they were done, I added a dollop of tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese on top and broiled them for another minute or two. They tasted a bit like pizza bites.
A pic of our recent stash.
Veggie Rolls
The other night we had a couple of vegan guests over which really stretched my cooking abilities. Every time I thought I had a great idea for a dish, I would later realize it had cheese, eggs, or butter in it. Ugh, being a vegan is no fun! I eventually decided on making veggie spring rolls using some of our cucumbers and basil.
I started by chopping the cucumbers, red pepper, carrots, lettuce, green onion , and basil.
Then you dip the rice paper in warm water to loosen up, lay it out on a damp dish cloth, and fill it with the vegetables.
You roll it up…
And serve. It was actually much easier than I expected. I made a peanut dipping sauce and bought a sweet Thai chili sauce to go with it. Food just tastes better when it’s from your own garden.
Spaghetti Squash
We picked and ate our spaghetti squash last night. It was really fun to be able to grab dinner from the back yard. We baked it, scrapped out the innards, and cooked it in a skillet with some butter, garlic, and parsley (also from the garden).
Spaghetti squash
Now what to do with our two eggplants here. We’ve tried roasted and grilled so far, but neither of us were too impressed. Maybe Eggplant Parmesan or Babaganoush is in our future.
Eggplants