Dehydrated Tomatoes

I love shopping at the local Farmer’s Market and on Thursday bought a peck of Roma tomatoes with the plan to use the food dehydrator to preserve them.  We don’t have a large freezer and I don’t have a pressure canner so drying seems a good choice.  I cut out the cores and laid the quarter inch slices on the 8 trays – and still have some left so have some sauce started on the stove.  I plan to try this recipe for dried tomatoes with basil in oil.  
  
Olive Oil Packed Sun Dried Tomatoes with Basil

4 cups dried tomatoes (from about 12-16 cups fresh tomatoes)
1/4 - 1/2 cup olive oil
1 pint canning jar with air tight lid
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
Step One:
Sterilize a pint jar by washing with soapy water and then pouring boiling water over the inside and outside of the jar.  Boil the screw band and lid in hot water. 
Step Two:
Once the jar is dry begin placing the dried tomatoes into the bottom.  Use a clean skewer or spoon to pack the tomatoes together.  Then add a couple sprigs of basil.  Continue layering tomatoes and basil until the jar is full.  Then pour olive oil slowly over the top.
Step Three: 
Insert the skewer or the handle of the spoon down along the sides of the jar five to six times to force any air pockets out.  Make sure the oil completely cover the tomatoes.  Seal with the sterilized lid and band and refrigerate up to one month.
The bonus with packing in olive oil is you get both tomatoes and olive oil flavored with the dried tomatoes. The oil is great for salad dressing, dipping bread or making pasta.

And the Farmers That Grew It!

We have a friend who ends each table grace with thanksgiving for "the farmers that grew it!"  He's been involved in agriculture since college - probably before that, since that's what he studied in college.  So he's especially aware of what it takes to be a farmer.  Tonight I thought of Terry as I ate my first bowl of lettuce from my garden this year.  In other years I've grown enough spring lettuce that I could hardly give it all away.  Not so the last couple years - just can't seem to get it going.  My Simpson Elite sprouts but won't grow - maybe I need to water a little more carefully?  Perhaps it's been too hot?? I have a single square foot of mixed greens and one of arugula - both are doing well, and I harvested enough tonight for two bowls.  Mmmmm!  The spicy taste of arugula and the peppery mustard greens -  Delicious!  Sorry, Wegmans - your produce department just can't compare!

So I'm saying a prayer of thanksgiving for farmers, knowing that if I relied on myself to FEED myself, I'd quickly grow hungry!  (Or more serious about gardening!) The Auburn Farmer's Market opens this Saturday and I hope to be one of the early customers.  Will there be lettuce for sale?  (My little bed of mixed greens isn't going to fully satisfy my desire for salads.) What about spinach or garlic scapes - a new culinary discovery from last year!

I thank God for the farmers that grow our food!

Green Tomato Pickles

If you can't give them away, and they don't ripen, and you've eaten all the fried green tomatoes you care to, what else is there to do but pickle the green tomatoes?

So I Googled 'pickled green tomatoes' and made a jar based on the following recipe.  Similar to the refrigerator dill pickles I've made for several years, these were easy and surprisingly tasty.  And they don't have that green tomato taste that I really don't care for!  They just taste like - pickles!

Pickled Green Tomatoes

Ingredients:
2 pounds green tomatoes, about 4 or 5, thinly sliced
1 jalapeno chile, stems removed, cut in half lengthwise
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon peppercorns
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon dill seed
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup water
1 Tablespoon canning salt

2 wide-mouth pint jars or 1 wide mouth quart jar, sterilized

Evenly distribute the sliced green tomatoes, sliced jalapenos, cumin seeds, peppercorns, celery seed, dill seed and garlic in jars. In a saucepan, bring to a boil, the vinegar, water and salt. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture into the jars leaving a bit of headspace. Cover with lid and fasten with rings. Allow to cool and refrigerate. They will be ready after 4 hours and will last for 1 month in the refrigerator.

Alternatively, you can place the covered jars in a canning pot or stockpot, cover the jars with water, bring to a boil and then cook on high for 10 minutes. Remove the jars with tongs and then allow to cool. These jars will not require refrigeration until after opening.

After the success of the first jar, I decided to can some for more long term preservation.  A successful venture, except that the half pint jars really only used one small tomato each - not much help in the quest to deal with the bounty.  Many of the others have actually ripened, so I made still another batch of tomato sauce for the freezer last weekend.  A few tomatoes succumbed to decay and were tossed into the compost bucket.  We're down to one tray of green tomatoes. I'm almost finished with the garden for this season - ready to turn to the blessing of indoor domestic pursuits for the cold weather. 

Fried Green Tomatoes

They’re not my favorite vegetable, but when you have three large trays full of green tomatoes, picked in fear of a frost, and it’s the end of the season, and you hate to waste the food you’ve so carefully grown, you consider them a blessing. I posted a note about the green veggies on Facebook and one coworker offered to take some off my hands – once I took some to her, a couple others wanted some too. Then I really went to town on the vines, pulling them down off the fence to discard for the winter, and found another large bowl full. So I pretty much still have three trays of green tomatoes even though I made my brother take some too.

My hope is that many of them will ripen, and that the coworkers might want a few more (bags). The rest will likely end up in the compost pile. It’s been a good year for tomatoes I guess – my six plants grew well over my head – I needed to use a step ladder to tie them up to the fence and then reversed the process when I cleaned things up on Saturday. I wish I could remember what variety they were as they were so productive – somehow in my gardening efforts of spring I failed to either hang onto the tag or record the genus and species!

I have some strong memories of helping Mom can tomatoes grown in the backyard on Standart Avenue. Apparently, there used to be chickens back there, and the garden was quite productive. I was frequently sentenced, or so it seemed at the time, to weed a row or two of green beans. One of my all time favorite vegetables, I remember taking the colander out to pick the beans, or cut Swiss Chard for dinner. At the end of summer, the extra tomatoes lined the glassed in back porch, ripening on the windowsills. We dipped the tomatoes into hot water and then plunged them into cold water to get the skins to loosen – we felt really fortunate to have a garbage disposal, as that made the slippery, messy job of cleaning up so much easier.  There's nothing more satisfying than hearing the jar lids seal after boiling them in the canner.

My Dad read my Facebook posting (I still find it hard to believe he friended me - but he’s always been a somewhat early adopter of all things technological) and responded with the following about green tomatoes:

As a child; Don’t you remember having fried green ‘maters at home?

Dipped in egg, flour, salt and pepper, fried in hot grease until golden brown – favorite of your Grandfather Peck and mine.

On Grant Ave; We had some how gotten a whole bunch of green tomatoes at the end of the season. We wrapped individual tomatoes in newspaper and put them up in the attic and they ripened…. Didn’t taste like fresh but we enjoyed for quite a long time.

I imagine the tomatoes ripening in the attic on Grant Ave. were a great blessing to my folks at the time. We had only recently moved here and they were on a strict enough budget that we didn’t have a telephone, relying on the pay phone down at the corner, or the landlord’s phone for important incoming calls. Our family lived on a policy of “Eat what’s on your plate,” and Dad was known to say, more than a few times, “It’s not what you like in this world that makes you fat, it’s what you get.” A pragmatic approach to food and life.

Guess I’ll go fry some more green tomatoes - yesterday's blessing, and tomorrow's and the next day's!

Zinnias

Zinnias are a blessing that keep turning up in my life. My most profound memory of them is years ago, the first time I served on a team to lead a three day retreat inside the prison. One of the guys, Ronald, reached over and gently touched the scarlet zinnia in the vase at the table. He looked at me and asked, “Are these real?” I wondered how long it had been since this man, incarcerate within high stone walls, had seen a fresh flower. We just held the retreat again a couple weeks ago, and another man seemed especially appreciative of the flowers. For years, a farmer friend of one of our team members has grown fields of zinnias and offers us all we want for the retreat. A bit of sacrificial love, shown to prisoners he’ll never meet.
Last summer, while helping to build a house in the Dominican Republic for a family, I saw some beautiful tropical flowers, but was most amazed at the zinnias growing near “our” house – along a rusting barbed wire fence. In a haunting way, they were beautiful with the shadow of barbed wire against the stucco house, .

Early this spring when I decided to start some seeds indoors for my garden – something I had never done before – among the seeds I chose were zinnias. Much to my amazement, they sprouted and I transplanted the plants near the fronts of two of the raised beds. They’ve done extraordinarily well – I’ve cut numerous bunches, which only encourages branching and more flowers. I expect to have zinnias until the frost unless the deer eat them.  Some of the plants are protected with a chicken wire cage, but the other bunch, in front of the tomatoes which have grown over my head against the back fence, are not covered.  I guess if I had a choice I'd tell the deer to eat those zinnias and leave my veggies alone!

My mother-in-law (see the “Gordon, Stop the Car!” entry on 6/21/10) has been painting flowers for weeks, in preparation for a sale at church. We made packaged sets of flower notecards, and my brother-in-law matted some of the paintings for sale. Paul helped set up a canopy tent and sat with her during the sale, which was quite successful. Apparently she’s turning in more than $200 to support her church. I bought one of her paintings – of zinnias!

Smuckers, Move Over!

I made strawberry jam this week, and I don't think there are many sounds more satisfying than the "doink" of jar lids popping after you've canned something.  It didn't happen immediately - I was washing things up and finally heard one.  All the rest were sealed by bedtime except one, which did its thing by morning - so we didn't have to eat that jar right away.  The extra that wouldn't fit in the jars is in a bowl in the refrigerator - delicious on my morning toast!

I can't remember the last time we made strawberry jam - we did some blueberry a couple years ago.  I had forgotten how much effort it seems to be for 8- 8 ounce jars.  Or how much it costs!  This home cooking project is not saving money - berries seem pricey this year at 2 quarts for $4.50, pectin for $2.79, and 7 cups of sugar - I don't know how much a bag costs, so can't factor that in.  But the aroma of strawberries bubbling on the stove, like a lot of things done from scratch, is priceless. 

We enjoyed a new pizza this week using Swiss Chard from the garden - I'm studying gardening blogs and will add this recipe to the repertoire.  I'm not sure how much just plain steamed Swiss Chard I'd want to consume this summer - and the four foot long row seems prepared to keep us in greens all season. 

The Farmer's Market has started up and I've purchased scallions, asparagus, strawberries and green beans.  I quite happily walked right on by the lettuce the other day - selling for $2 a bunch.  We're eating lettuce frequently in salads and Paul puts it on his sandwich every day.  I 've lost count of the number of bags I've given away, though when I offered some to our neighbor he smiled, and said, "I'm no rabbit!"  Even so, I've saved multiple two dollars's already this summer!  It's a blessing how God can take a tiny seed, add water and sunshine and make things grow.

Who Has Time to Blog - I've Been Gardening!

Well, the lettuce is by far my greatest gardening success - ever!  I gave away three bags Tuesday morning to my breakfast friends - and that was after eating salad Monday evening and saving some leaves for Paul's sandwiches this week.  My brother dashed over this noon to get lettuce for BLT's, we ate salad for dinner, and I sent him home with a bagful after that.  There's still more - and I planted a lettuce mix in another raised bed this week, expecting the current crop to bolt any day, and leave me lettuce-less for a while.  While I don't think the lettuce has paid for the entire gardening project, it's certainly redeeming the expenditures.   And I'm already planning to grow more in the cold frame in the fall and next winter. 

We made two more raised beds, bringing my gardening space to 64 square feet.  The zinnias, collards, dill, chives and cilantro I started from seed survived the transplanting, but the sunflowers look pathetic, so I think I"ll have to buy a few of them to add to the tomato and zucchini plants I got at the nursery. 

I planted okra which sprouted quickly - but it looks kind of straggly.  Since I've never ever seen it growing I don't know quite what to expect, but I don't think this is it.  But hey, how much okra can a couple of Yankees eat, anyway!  The collards seem prolific - I'll have to figure out how Miss Idella Rawls, from the Baptist Church in Pearlington, Mississippi fixed them for the meal she served to volunteers and neighbors alike when we were there a year ago.  I probably can't even comprehend how much grease it took to make them so yummy. But we like them sauted them with a little olive oil and garlic, and I have a meatloaf recipe that uses the leaves as a wrapper like pigs in the blanket and cooks in the crockpot.  So I should be able to keep up with the collard greens. 

My brother brought over a barrel, went to the hardware store for the plumbing fixtures needed, and even drilled the hole and installed the spigot for a rain barrel by the back of our house.  A couple days later, it started to rain and I hurried home at lunch time to look in the barrel - it was nearly full!  I almost emptied it onto my plants and seeds by the time it rained again on Monday, filling it to overflowingn once again.  God is an on-time God! 

Are we saving any money?  Doubtful - but the satisfaction of digging in the dirt and even playing in the water from the rain barrel are great blessings to me these days.

The $64 Tomato, or the $138 Bowl of Lettuce

We had a small garden last year for the first time in quite a while. I had a pretty good harvest of snow peas, some leaf lettuce, tomatoes and basil, and I even managed to grow some zucchini (I seemed to be the only person I know who failed to produce zucchini in previous years)  I had a lot of trouble growing anything in one area by the driveway and attributed that to the nearby Black Walnut tree.  So I persuaded Paul to build me a few raised beds, and we got started in the fall so I'd be ready to go come spring.

I dug out a couple old books from my stash - The Victory Garden, and Square Foot Gardening, and even  borrowed a few others from the library, including a great garden read titled, The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden.  That gem tells of a man's numerous expenditures - buying loads of dirt (I did that too), fencing to keep out the rabbits (I did that too) and hiring a backhoe (I didn't do that!) to create a garden.  He calculated the cost per tomato at $64.  His conclusion was, that despite the cost, the value and satisfaction of picking a perfect tomato was incalculable. 

I can say that about the lettuce I ate for dinner tonight - surely my blessing for today.  In addition to raised beds, Paul made me a cold frame, and in the fall, I sowed lettuce seeds, eagerly anticipating harvesting lettuce all winter.  Since it was right by the driveway - I planned to shovel right over to it, lift off the glass, and pick a bowl of lettuce whenever I wanted.  Well, it sprouted slowly, and the last time I looked at it was Christmas - I was hoping to treat my daughter, home from Mississippi, to fresh lettuce for dinner.  At that point it looked like very small lettuce plants, so I was excited about that, but was fairly sure they were frozen - and would turn to green slime the minute I picked them and brought them into the house.  So I left it alone for the rest of the winter. 

In March, right after the last snow melted, I wandered over, and peeked into the cold frame - I was ecstatic - there was lettuce growing!  It hadn't frozen after all.  So I harvested a few of the lower leaves and topped off the spring greens I'd purchased at the store with my own fresh lettuce!  A week later, I did it again, and we've now had lettuce several times.  Tonight I didn't need the store greens and even had some leftover for tomorrow.  Seeds I've planted seeds in another area of the cold frame have sprouted so when these plants die off, I can continue my salad harvest.

Since the fall, I have spent $138 for boards for the raised beds, dirt and cow manure (seems I ought to be able to find that for free somewhere!) fencing to keep out rabbits and the neighbr cats, who think the nice raised beds are lovely litter boxes.  I could buy a lot of lettuce for $138 but my price per bowl will continue to decline - and I won't need to buy the boards or fence again.  (May even find a source for free manure!)

I feel like the Master Card commercial, when the tag line says, "The satisfacton of eating your own home grown lettuce in March and April - priceless!"