Planting time?

Even as most of the vegetable crops are wrapping up for the year and this is considered the end of garden season, it’s also planting time on the hill. These new plantings are all for our fall harvest, attempting to keep produce coming in for as much as the year as possible.

In the past two weeks, Jay has planted 200 broccoli, 175 cauliflower, and 700 row feet of green beans. In the next few weeks, we need to plant napa cabbage, bok choy, arugula, brussel sprouts, more cauliflower and broccoli, radishes, carrots, beets, haikuri turnips, green onions, kolorabi, totsoi, lettuce, and spinach. What makes this goal even more challenging is Jay starts back to work as a teacher today and I start school full-time the following week. Most of this will need to be done in the nights and weekends. In other words, this year our Labor Day Weekend will have lots of labor and not much weekend.

Planting time?

A Picture to Make You Cry

Okay, so maybe these pictures will only make you cry if you are the cutting these vegetables and don’t have an open flame nearby. (Learned that trick from Alton Brown!)

Jay just harvested the last of the onions for this year. We were happy with the onion crop, both in size and quality of onions. Of the 1800 onion sets planted, we sold all but probably 35 of them. Those 35, I chopped and froze for our use later this winter. We probably threw out less than 50 onions for the year, because they rotted before we sold them or got them froze.

I guess that means next year I can’t scoff at the idea of planting 1800 onion sets. And that is enough to make me cry!

A Picture to Make You Cry

Friday's Featured Foods: Grape Juice

With just a few days left before school starts, we have spent the last week or so trying to get done all those summer projects, those activities that are too time consuming to accomplish in the evening or too dreaded to wrap up earlier in the summer. For me, that means canning.

Today's canning

I love canned vegetables... in the winter. In the summer, canning veggies means a hot kitchen and a day at the stove. But, it is worth it in the long run. Last week, I chopped and froze onions and potatoes. Today, I made Italian tomato sauce, pizza sauce, pickled okra, and sweet and sour pickles. I also processed grapes for jelly, which is the actual feature of tonight's post. No, I'm not going to share our Top Secret Grape Jelly recipe, but I'll show you the steps we go through to make the juice that eventually becomes the jelly.

 The grapes used in our jelly come from my parents' vine near Wichita, Kansas. It's not a fancy fruit farm; they just happen to have a fence of grape vines that my dad planted when I was Maggie's age. For the last few years, we've gone down to visit around the time of grape harvest and came back home with a cooler full of grapes. Grapes and grape vines are as full of metaphors as they are of insects; no wonder the Bible has so many references to them!

So, we came home with about 40 pounds of grapes. Maggie, Lainie and I spent a couple hours separating the grapes from the stems and tossing any bad grapes. Lainie was so proud to get to help and have a task that she could do well.

Next, I rinsed the grapes and removed any floating debris or bad fruit.

I then mashed the grapes with a potato masher, just enough to break some of them.

Next, add 1/2 cup of water for every quart of prepared fruit. I had four saucepans, each with 6-8 quarts of fruit.

Bring to a boil, the reduce to simmer for at least 15 minutes. I think getting the juice out was easier when I let them simmer for 30 minutes or more.

Here's my juice extraction set-up: cheese cloth on a strainer that just fits into my stock pot. I pour the grape mash onto the cheese cloth; the stock pot catches the juice and the strainer catches any grape pulp that makes its way out of the cheese cloth.

The juice then got poured into the measuring cup, then pour into quart jars.

The end result: 10 quarts of grape juice into the freezer. Once these freeze solid, I will move them to the deep freeze, for better storage.

My mom always says that clean-up is part of the recipe. And there were LOTS of little spills like this one. My kitchen had a bit of a purple splash to it tonight.

And last but not least, the cook gets to taste the product first. (Yes, the picture is sideways, but it's 1:14 a.m... it can stay sideways.) The little remaining grape juice tasted delicious! If grape jelly sells are down this winter, we could always thaw this juice and have it for breakfast. It doesn't need any sugar, thanks to the natural sweetness of the grapes.

Next on the list: chop and freeze bell peppers (the ugly ones our customers don't want to buy) and make and freeze some fajita and stir fry kits. Oh, and a Farmers Market in... six hours.

Friday's Featured Foods: Grape Juice

Glowing

I love how the sunset makes the mobile high tunnels glow.

This isn't the typical view from our porch for the first of August. We have had a tremendous amount of rain, in just the right amounts, at just the right time. Our neighbors the north (too much) and west (too much) and east (too much) and south (not enough) haven't been so lucky.

But up on the hill, this year's view is looking spectacular.

Glowing

Quick and Easy Summer Time Recipes

In the summer there is never alot of time to cook. With a healthy variety of produce available, here are two quick, easy and one pan meals. If this guy can make them then anyone can!

Sausage and Zucchini

1 pound Fully cooked pork Sausage (you could use ground pork)
4 cups cubed zucchini (1 medium sized)
2 cups Fresh chopped tomatoes (two small/medium)
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce, (optional) adds lots of good flavor!
1 teaspoon flour, (I added a little more)
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Cook sausage in a skillet and drain. Add the cooked sausage, zucchini, tomatoes, onion, lemon juice, oregano, salt and hot pepper sauce, Cook for 15 minutes or until the zucchini is crisp tender. Sprinkle with flour, toss to coat. Bring to a boil and stir for 2 minutes. Sprinkle with cheese. Remove from the heat; cover and let stand until the cheese is melted.

I think this recipe was for a smoke sausage not ground sausage, but it tasted great to us! If you are short on one ingredient and long on another it is ok. Finally, I added a bit more cheese, but it was yummy locally grown/made cheese but who is counting!


Zucchini, Okra & Tomato Medley

1 small zucchini
vegetable cooking spray
1 1/2 cups of sliced fresh okra
2 tablespoons of chopped onion
1 cup of chopped fresh tomato
1/8 teaspoon of dried basil
a dash of freshly ground pepper

Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise, cut into 1/4 inch thick slices. Coat a nonstick skillet with cooking spray, place over medium high heat until hot. Add the zucchini, okra, and onion, sauté for 4 minutes. Stir in he tomato and remaining ingredients. Cover and cook over low heat for 5 minutes or until thoroughly heated, stirring frequently. Makes four 1/2 cup servings

Enjoy!

Quick and Easy Summer Time Recipes