The heat and humidity are back, the lull in garden harvesting and food preparation is also back.
Today we went to the grocery store. In my life, this is now a very big event. I found some Ontario yellow peaches, and some Quebec Cortland apples that were less than half the price of all the other bagged apples in the store. Cortland’s, so Attila tells me, are an early variety that are sweet, soft, and very nice tasting. They do not store well.
A project was created from our shopping trip, Apple Butter. I am starting the peeled and diced Cortlands in the crockpot, with a cup of apple juice and a few tablespoons of ACV. Later will come the sugar and cinnamon. It should be ready to can by tomorrow morning.
Other projects:
- 1 loaf of bread baked
- 11 quarts of freshly picked garden jalapeno, banana, and green peppers – roasted and in the dehydrator
- 1 quart of freshly picked celery – leaves in the dehydrator, stems to be diced, blanched and frozen
- two bags of frozen diced garden green pepper vacuum sealed for long term storage
- 4 pounds of Cortland apples peeled, cored, and diced to make Apple Butter
- 1 large Sicilian Saucer tomato prepared for tonight’s dinner – bacon and tomato sandwiches
I am too busy to take pictures!
Tomorrow we pickle more peppers, it is a good year for peppers in our garden.
Treat alert! Attila just brought in a handful of ripe juicy ground cherries for me, from the garden. Yum!
We relate to the Ants in the Aesop’s Fable The Ants and the Grasshopper. Not nearly as much fun in the short term right now, or is it!
Worldly
Weather
Updated on Sat, Aug 20, 3:15 PM
32 °C
FEELS LIKE 37
Partly cloudy
Wind 13 S km/h
Humidity 36%
Visibility 36 km
Sunrise 6:16 AM
Wind gust 20 km/h
Pressure 101.7 kPa
Ceiling 9100 m
Sunset 8:05 PM
Quote
“The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit.”
Mark Twain
1835 – 1910
Perhaps not so few, just so few made much of.
Well, Maggie that quote just describes you both perfectly. Your perseverance and determination always inspire me. I am in the midst of food preservation now too. It’s hard to know what to do next, the list is so long! I just finished dehydrating 100 yellow plums and freezing another 15 lbs. Our peppers are good this year too but I’ve just been chucking them whole into freezer bags. No time to do anything with them.
Sandra, thank you for your kind words! Preservation season is so intense isn’t it. Wow, that is a lot of plums, and dehydrating takes so long too. And having 15 pounds more to freeze, what a wealth of plums! We do not have fruit trees, I miss them. Aren’t freezers just the grandest thing to have? Throwing the green peppers in whole until you can deal with them is ideal under the circumstances, it will keep them at their peak until you are ready for them. I love the intensity of preservation season, but by October I’ll begin to feel “oh no” every time more produce comes in from the garden. Happy preserving!
I love cherries, too. You’ll enjoy your industrious efforts in months to come!
Joan, cherries are wonderful, we grew them on our farm when I was growing up, and summer days would find all of us climbing the trees like monkeys, reaching for that perfect sweet cherry. Ground cherries are bit different, they are of the nightshade family, grow on an annual plant, and have a paperlike shell. https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/ground-cherries
I like to eat them fresh, Attila doesn’t care for them. I’ve baked muffins and squares with them, but since Attila doesn’t favour them I eat all of them fresh from the garden as they come in. We are hoping that we have put enough produce by to get us through to next June when the garden starts up again!
We’re still waiting for almost any kind of non-weed in our yard. We do, however, now have a hackberry tree in front of the house. From what I’ve read, hackberries are edible – though I dont think they’re anything special. Apparently, indians and traders used to dry and grind them, then mix them with meat.
We still don’t even have topsoil, though the houses behind us do now have topsoil in their front yards. It’s amazing and disheartening how long it’s taking to get a yard, here.
Teri, that is a long wait for a yard to be landscaped! Attila has a theory that these long delays are due to the exodus of young people from jobs that require physical labour, or working for companies with less then humane infrastructures. Where he works there are a lot of people either retiring, or simply quitting because there are better working conditions elsewhere. Only a theory, but it makes sense. We are seeing all kinds of delays on just about everything we are doing, that involves labour, and or materials from outside the household.
The Hackberry sounds like an excellent tree to have! Drought resistant, a good shade tree, and the berries are edible. They sound like a lot of work to process into anything though, large pits. I haven’t tried them, but now I will be on the lookout!