Loading the Freezer

I spent some time in the kitchen today doing a bit of rearranging. I put all the jars and bags of frozen food into the chest freezer, leaving mostly meat and some other odds and ends in the fridge freezer. It took 3 pictures of the freezer to get in all that I have preserved this summer. Keep in mind that I've already supplied several friends with food from the freezer and have used some of the tomato sauce and diced tomatoes now to cook with.

On the left, you'll see the bottom area of jars are stacked about two deep; the tray to the right of it slides over the top.

In the second picture, you see the more recent foods preserved (I want to make sure I eat the oldest first, moving to the most recent last). Some of the jars are stacked 4 high. I couldn't stack all of them that high, because in some of the smaller jars, I didn't leave enough head space, which caused the metal lids to puff up. When I use those jars, I'll toss the old lid and use some of the Ball plastic lids I picked up at Rural King.

Next to the jars, you'll see I have some of the shredded zucchini. I still have a LOT of bags of zuke shred, slices, and chopped pieces for winter soups and breads. Oh, yeah--and you'll see some chapati (whole wheat) flour I bought at the Indian grocery store. Reasonably priced and much healthier than white flour.

The last picture shows the freezer section that contains more chopped zucchini, the 5 lbs. of onion I chopped earlier in the summer (I've used a bit of that already, too), several bags full of 1/2-cup packs of chopped green, yellow, red, orange, and gypsy peppers, a pack of sauteed button mushrooms and a pack of sauteed portobello mushrooms. I picked up a couple of packages of oyster mushrooms on manager's special yesterday that I need to sautee and add to these.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this summer's preservation efforts. We won't have enough food to keep us through the winter, but we'll certainly have enough to supplement what we have to buy at the store. Cooking is much easier, too, when you don't have to take the time to saute mushrooms or chop onions--just open a bag and dump them in!

Next year, I need to get more organized about preserving. That will give me something to blog about this winter: changes I'm going to make to simplify or make more efficient the food preservation process.

Warm Applesauce for a Chilly Day

Thankfully, the cloud cover once again kept the temperature from going low enough to frost. But it has been chilly and rainy off and on today, a dreary fall day.

Which made it a good day to take the Gala and Golden Supreme apples I got from Country Mist Orchard and turn them into applesauce. I started the endeavor a bit late, and finished up about midnight.

I made two batches: one with the Gala apples, using brown sugar; the other with the Golden Supreme, using granulated sugar. They both have a very nice flavor, with the Golden Supreme being slightly sweeter, yet mild. I made triple batches of the recipe for each of the two varieties, and ended up with 4 1/2 pints of each sauce. The recipe comes from the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I leave the skins on my apples for extra fiber and leave the apples somewhat chunky. I don't care for the completely smooth applesauce; it reminds me too much of baby food.

APPLESAUCE

4 med. apples
1/2 c. water
1/2 c. packed brown sugar or 1/3 to 1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

Heat apples and water to boiling over medium heat; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally to break up apples, until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients. Heat to boiling; boil and stir one minute. About 3 cups.

In addition to the two batches of applesauce, I sliced up most of the recently picked okra and started the dehydrator. By tomorrow, I'll have lots of dehydrated okra slices for soups and stews this winter. I already have half a jar full (shown on top of the dehydrator). And no, I don't run my dehydrator with the jar sitting on top.

I'm also baking a loaf of 9-grain bread, which should be done by 2 a.m., about the time hubby gets home from his rock band gig. The kitchen is fully of that wonderful yeasty bread smell right now and is making me quite hungry!

I Hope There's Chili Sauce in Heaven

Tonight I cleaned the now-ripe tomatoes from the window sill, took the previously washed tomatoes out of the refrigerator, and cored, peeled, and diced them for--you guessed it--another batch of freezer chili sauce! (The recipe for this scrumptious sauce is provided in my previous chili sauce post.)

I took a picture of the diced tomatoes before I added any of the other ingredients. I wanted to show the variations in the coloring from the different heirloom varieties that combine to make this sauce. I like knowing that my chili sauce is special, created from tomatoes that have been grown for years, perhaps even centuries, the seeds passed from one farmer to another. Who knows how old some of these varieties are! The combined flavors make the chili sauce different every time, which adds to its specialness.

After adding the remaining ingredients, I brought the mixture to a boil at about 8:30 p.m., which means I'll be periodically stirring to keep the sauce from burning on the bottom (although the nonstick surface of the pan is a tremendous boon in that regard). That means I'll be up until about 11:30 this evening stirring chili sauce, but oh my, it is definitely worth it! I did take a nap today, so I'm good to go.

The pungent smell, a mixture of cider vinegar, tomatoes, and the sweet odors of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and more, are already wafting in from the kitchen as I write this, and I think Heaven can only be heaven if there's chili sauce.

Peaches, Salsa, and Chili Sauce...Oh, My!

I've been trying to get peaches for about a month of farmer's markets, but every time I get in line, they run out of peaches before I can get any! The farmer only has apples left.

Of course, last Saturday when I went to the farmer's market for Gala apples, they were out of apples and only had peaches! Mildly disappointed that apparently Gala season is over, I bought a bag of peaches and let them ripen for a few days on the counter. Then I peeled and sliced them, added a small amount of sugar, and froze them. Hubby and I ate some of them tonight over pound cake, and they were delicious! Canned peaches (from the store) have nothing on these peaches...a little bit of heaven!

I also made another batch of salsa, ending up with 5 1/2 pints. I have enough salsa now, so I'll have to turn my tomatoes to other endeavors. Like tonight's chili sauce.

I don't know why I thought of making chili sauce, but when it crossed my mind, I knew I was going to make it, no matter how much trouble it was.

For a while--I don't know whether it was one season or more than that--Mom was into canning. I remember her making dill pickles, canned green beans, maybe some other things. Mostly, though, I remember the delicious chili sauce she canned from our garden tomatoes. We used to eat the chili sauce on hot dogs primarily, and I would always spoon it on the hot dog liberally. I don't eat hot dogs today, but I bet it would taste good with bratwurst!

Unfortunately, I don't have her recipe, so I went hunting online for a freezer recipe. I found one on a site that claimed to be from The Joy of Cooking. I own that recipe book, but never looked to see if it is indeed the same recipe. I followed the online recipe, but cut it down to a more manageable size. The original recipe called for 20 pounds of tomatoes, but since I do not yet have a food scale, that wasn't going to work. Plus, I was pretty sure I didn't have 20 pounds of tomatoes. I cut it down to 8 cups of tomatoes (that's after they are cored, skinned, and diced, mind you), and it made a reasonable amount: 4 pints.

As I was reading through the recipe, alarm bells went off. When I think of chili sauce, I think of a slightly warm, tomato-y mixture with perhaps some onions and green peppers in it. This recipe called for those ingredients and other ingredients one would expect. But then it called for a whole host of weird ingredients--at least they seemed weird to put into chili sauce: brown sugar, allspice, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I looked at a couple of other chili sauce recipes, and these ingredients showed up there, too. So I thought what the heck, I'll give it a try. The worst that could happen is the batch turns out nasty and I dump it out and have wasted some produce and 4 hours of my time.

Once the concoction started cooking, though, I was back in my childhood, savoring those chili-sauce smothered hot dogs. And when the batch was finished, it was delicious! So, I share that recipe with you here.

CHILI SAUCE

8 cups tomatoes (after coring, skinning, and dicing)
1 1/2 green peppers, seeded
3/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 1/2 large white onions (I used sweet walla walla onions I had previously chopped and frozen)
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup cider vinegar
2 1/4 tsp. coarse salt (I don't know what this means, so I used my salt grinder salt)
3/4 tsp. black pepper (ground that, too, since I was using grinder salt-lol)
3/4 tsp. ground allspice
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. celery seed
1 1/2 tsp. dry mustard

1. Core, peel, and dice tomatoes.
2. Dump tomatoes into a nonstick or enamel-coated pan (you don't want the tomatoes to react with metal).
3. Add the remaining ingredients.
4. Bring the mixture to a boil and then simmer on low, stirring occasionally to keep from burning on the bottom.
5. Continue simmering until mixture is thick, about 3 hours.
6. Place the pan in a bowl of ice water to cool the mixture quickly.
7. When cool, transfer to freezer-safe containers (I prefer freezer-safe canning jars) and freeze.

Using Up My Tomato Stash

I washed up my tomatoes from the last few harvests, tossed a couple that had gone bad, and then peeled them all. At first, I thought I might turn them all into salsa, but then I worried that the salsa might not turn out, and I would hate to waste all those tomatoes on nasty salsa. So I split the batch, turning half of them into tomato sauce and the other half into salsa. I was very happy with the flavor of the salsa after refrigerating it for about an hour, so I went ahead and put it into freezer jars (although one of the pint jars ended up in the refrigerator for tomorrow night...I just have to get some chips to eat it with). I ended up with 3 1/2 pints of tomato sauce and 3 1/2 pints of salsa.

I still have some tomatoes left over, ripening fully on the window sill, so I may go ahead and make another batch of salsa in a few days, adding to it any other sizable tomatoes from the garden.

Now, if I could only figure out some way to freeze the overabundant sun sugar tomatoes without going through the peeling process...

Freezing Frenzy

One of the hardest parts of this experiment called "Playing in the Dirt" is finding the time and energy to cook, process, and put away the harvest food before it goes bad.

I managed tonight to process the tomatoes into tomato sauce (8 pints) and also ended up with 4 pints more of diced tomatoes. The Best Boy tomatoes seem to work best for dicing, while the meaty Beefsteak tomatoes work really well for the tomato sauce. I threw into the tomato sauce this time the few Costoluto Genovese tomatoes I had as well as several Orange Banana tomatoes, which are very sweet and meaty. Interestingly, the flavor of the tomato sauce is very different this time--definitely sweet. I think when I make tomato soup this fall, I'll use this particular batch of tomato sauce. I think it will make very tasty soup to accompany my grilled cheese sandwich! The round dots on top of each jar are labels that I've scribbled the contents, month, and year on so I can identify the frozen foods and also know which to use first.

I also put up most of the rest of the bread and butter pickles, which have been curing in the refrigerator for about a week. Unfortunately, I ran out of jars before I could get all of them put up, so I moved the rest into a smaller container until I can pick up more freezer jars. I did have one marinated artichokes jar on hand that I had just washed, so I used that for some pickles for the refrigerator--I'm not certain that the jar is freezer safe like the canning jars.

I'm pretty happy so far with what I've put away in the freezer for winter. I feel a bit like a squirrel preparing for the cold, foodless months, but at least I know where I hid my food.

So Many Tomatoes, So Little Time...

Today is "do something with all these veggies that are sitting out on the counters, the freezer, the table, and in baskets" day. It would be nice to eat at the table without having to shove zucchini or other vegetables to the side, and we haven't been able to get into our chest freezer for some time now--and I will definitely need to to move things from the refrigerator's freezer into the chest freezer this evening. I did manage to remove the rotting cucumbers from the table and haul them out to the compost bin. I just can't keep up with the produce right now! Next year, I'll definitely cut down on the number of zucchini plants I put in, and perhaps even reduce the number of cucumber plants. I'm happy with the number of tomato plants. At least for now.

After throwing out the rotten cukes and washing the rest, I decided to start my preserving endeavors with the tomatoes. I skinned them and made a double batch of tomato sauce--and this time, left the seeds in since I discovered they are actually good for you (high in protein). I did dice up some of the smaller Best Boy, since they seem to be a little drier than the Beefsteak tomatoes. I ended up with 8 1/2 pints of tomato sauce and 2 half-pints of diced tomatoes.

I also did a bit more harvesting, ending up with 2 more zucchini and 6 more cucumbers. More of the heirlooms were pickable this time, and I managed to scavenge 3 Brandywine, 1 Peach Tom, 4 Sungold Select, 1 Orange Banana, and 2 Costoluto Genovese. In addition, I harvested 6 more Best Boy, 7 Beefsteak, and 115 sun sugar tomatoes. I also harvested a beautiful blushing yellow tomato, but I'm not sure what kind it is. It appeared to be growing on a sun sugar plant, but it is very difficult to tell because many of the branches of the plants are tangled due to the severe rain storms we had. It is hard to untangle them or move them enough to follow them to the right plant for fear of breaking the branches. For now, I'm listing it as a "Not Sure" tomato; hopefully I'll get to harvest another one that is easier to track.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 105
Cucumbers: 175
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 2
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 801
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 46
Best Boy Tomatoes: 41
Cosmonaut Volkov Tomatoes: 1
Sungold Select Tomatoes: 7
Peach Tom: 2
Brandywine Tomatoes: 3
Orange Banana Tomatoes: 1
Costoluto Genovese Tomatoes: 2
Not sure Tomatoes: 1
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill

Freezer Applesauce

I was planning to make some Hungarian plum dumplings last night, and so to clear off the counter a bit to give me room to work, I decided to turn the farmer's market apples into applesauce. I started with 14 medium-sized apples (I forget what kind--they are crisp and tart and green with a bit of yellow, not Granny Smith) and ended up with 4 pints of applesauce, plus a little left over to eat. I like chunky, skin-on applesauce, so that's what I made. It will be interesting to see what the consistency is like when I thaw some to eat later in the season.

As for the plum dumplings, well, some of them still need a day or two to ripen before I turn them into dumplings. So I washed them all and laid them out. Tomorrow afternoon I'll make dumplings of them.

Freezer Tomato Sauce, Newbie Style

I made my first batch of freezer tomato sauce, using the recipe at http://www.dianaskitchen.com/page/sauce/ftomato.htm. I tasted the sauce today (I was too tired last night to do the last step before pouring into the jars: throwing the cooked mix in a food processor and blend.

The recipe says it makes 6 to 8 cups of tomato sauce. I ended up with 4 pints total from one batch. I'm not sure how that equates to cups, and I'm too lazy to look it up in my cookbook or Google the answer online. If you're planning on making your own tomato sauce, at least now you have two measurements you can use.

The process is pretty simple, really. The most time consuming part is the peeling and de-seeding of the tomatoes. The peeling part is easy:

1. Wash the tomatoes you will be using.
2. Cut out the core and cut a shallow "x" into the bottom of the tomato.
3. Boil a pan of water. When it comes to a rolling boil, place the tomatoes carefully into the water (you don't want to splash boiling water on yourself).
4. Wait 30 seconds.
5. Remove the tomatoes from the boiling water and immediately immerse in ice water. Leave in the water until completely cooled.
6. The skin should slide easily off the tomato. If a patch here and there sticks, just use a paring knife to remove.

I've been through this process in the past when I've frozen tomatoes for sauces. The hard part is removing the seeds. I tried a variety of ways. I tried cutting the seed sections out when I sliced the tomatoes. I tried pushing them out with my fingers. I tried squeezing the tomato, hoping the seeds would come out. I tried ripping the tomato slices apart to remove the seeds.

As you can probably guess, my inexact methods resulted in a horrible mess on the cutting board and seeds in my tomato sauce. But is that so bad? Surely the seeds add some nutritional value? And what about the globby stuff around the seeds...isn't that important, too? After all, that's what helps give a tomato its juiciness!

This morning I spied a very simple article on how to peel and seed a tomato at eHow that would have saved me a lot of trouble. But looking at the picture of the seeded tomatoes, the tomatoes look kind of empty, like the best parts have been removed. I'm not sure I want to fully remove the seeds if doing so leaves only empty tomato shells.

And by the way, I want you to know: I only used real ingredients. I added neither tomato fiber nor natural flavors.

Superwoman I Am Not

I'm not sure why I thought I could even begin to get all 14 items on my food list done. Here's what I managed by 1:30 a.m.:

1. Make a new batch of bread-and-butter pickles to begin curing.
2. Eat the yellow doll melon (okay, only half--hubby gets the other half) I cracked when I dropped it this morning on my way into the house with it.
3. Make dinner--venison stuffed green peppers with a side of fresh broccoli (although I didn't make the broccoli)
4. Make a batch of whole wheat bread--unfortunately, not with my own freshly ground flour. Still working on the flour mill.
5. Make a batch of freezer tomato sauce.
6. Test the previously made freezer dill pickles to see if they're any good before giving some to others. Meh, I'm not thrilled by these. I'll make hubby try them and see what he thinks.
7. Make homemade applesauce.
8. Make homemade freezer slaw.
9. Make homemade cashew butter (like peanut butter, but from roasted, salted cashews).
10. Make raspberry-almond muffins for tomorrow's breakfast. Skipped the almonds; need those for beet salad with goat cheese for tomorrow's lunch.
11. Chop and shred a LOT of zucchini. I got a FEW chopped. The zucchini remind me of the clown car--you know, the one that is so small that every time you think no more clowns can come out, several more do. Every time I chop a zucchini or shred one, it seems that at least 5 more appear out of nowhere.
12. Make honeyed carrots.
13. Eat leftovers for lunch to make room in the refrigerator.
14. Sautee 4 lbs. of button mushrooms for freezing.

Well, I got about half done. I'll have to work on the rest tomorrow because I am exhausted and am going to bed!

Today's Food Endeavors

I need to be held accountable somehow, so I'm blogging about what I hope to accomplish in the food arena today. I'll provide a progress report at the end of the day with how far I managed to get. These are in no particular order.

1. Make a new batch of bread-and-butter pickles to begin curing.
2. Eat the yellow doll melon (okay, only half--hubby gets the other half) I cracked when I dropped it this morning on my way into the house with it.
3. Make dinner--venison stuffed green peppers with a side of fresh broccoli
4. Make a batch of whole wheat bread--unfortunately, not with my own freshly ground flour. Still working on the flour mill.
5. Make a batch of freezer tomato sauce.
6. Test the previously made freezer dill pickles to see if they're any good before giving some to others.
7. Make homemade applesauce.
8. Make homemade freezer slaw.
9. Make homemade cashew butter (like peanut butter, but from roasted, salted cashews).
10. Make raspberry-almond muffins for tomorrow's breakfast.
11. Chop and shred a LOT of zucchini.
12. Make honeyed carrots.
13. Eat leftovers for lunch to make room in the refrigerator.
***Added later***
14. Sautee 4 lbs. of button mushrooms for freezing.
***
A baker's dozen [sorry--added #14, so it's no longer a baker's dozen]--seems like a good number. Now, I wonder how far I will get? Care to guess?

Chocolate and Zucchini: A Delicious Pairing

I know, I know. Chocolate and zucchini together sounds a bit disgusting. But I assure you that it isn't! In fact, I made a Chocolate Zucchini Sheet Cake tonight! The zucchini doesn't really flavor the cake--the cocoa comes through strong and clear--but rather helps make the cake moist...while adding extra nutrition, of course. The icing on this sheet cake is still melting, so it's a little uneven in places, but it will even out into a kind of glaze as it cools. Chocolate heaven, I tell you!

I spent the rest of the afternoon picking zucchini again (thankfully, I'll have a few days reprieve from zucchini picking now while more grows). I thumbed through my copy of The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food: Easy Step-by-Step Instructions for Freezing, Drying, and Canning by Janet Chadwick (which is no longer in print, apparently, since it can be purchased at Amazon for a mere $103.14) and learned that I can tray freeze zucchini and then pack it in a freezer bag.

I also shredded a lot of the zucchini and packed the shreds in snack-size (1 cup) Ziploc bags and set them in the freezer. Once the packages are well frozen, I will slide several into a one-gallon Ziploc bag and date it.

Keeping Up with the Zukes

I checked my zucchini plants today and found 8 more zucchini ripe for the picking. I left several others to be picked tomorrow or the day after--they are still a little small and skinny. Of these 8, I picked all but two of the thinner ones (which I'll sautee for dinner tonight) to shred for future zucchini bread and other zucchini recipes.

For the freezing, I had to decide the best way to go about it. I decided that right now, I'd shred some zucchini (I'll look at flash freezing later on.) I packed 3-cup freezer bags (quart-size bags) for future zucchini bread since my recipe calls for 3 cups, but also 1-cup freezer bags (snack-size bags), which I could use for other zucchini recipes. I was very pleased to get all of this processed today; the zucchini is still fresh and none of it went to waste! The tips and ends will go into my compost bin, where the worms and other bugs and microbes can sample my garden fare as well.