New Game Show: Natural or Unnatural?

It's time to play that exciting new game show, "Natural or Unnatural?" where contestants try to guess whether a packaged product from the store is natural or not...even though the label says that it is.

Today's product is Stacy's Cinnamon Sugar Pita Chips. As you can see, the packaging indicates that the product is "All Natural." In order for contestants to decide whether this product is truly "All Natural," let's take a look at the ingredients list:

Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Sunflower Oil (Ascorbic Acid, Rosemary Citric Acid, Canola Oil), Whole Wheat Flour, Brown Sugar, Cinnamon, Sea Salt, Active Yeast, Oat Fiber, Compressed Yeast, Malted Barley Flour, and Inactive Yeast.

Right you are! You get points for pointing out that Stacy's has not included "natural flavors" (which really aren't natural)!

But let's take a closer look at the ingredients. Enriched Flour is our first ingredient, but doesn't the word enriched actually mean that something has been added? Looking further at the ingredients that make up the enriched flour, we see that iron, folic acid, and some B-vitamins have been added. It doesn't sound natural to me if you have to add vitamins.

Moving on to the Sunflower Oil, we see that this oil does not appear to be sunflower oil at all, but rather is canola oil with ascorbic and rosemary citric acid added to it. Hmm. I thought sunflower oil had to be extracted from sunflower seeds--or some part of the sunflower plant--but apparently I am wrong. And how many of you have jars of ascorbic and rosemary citric acid on your spice racks?

The rest of the ingredients look fairly natur--oh, wait! Apparently some stray Oat Fiber has been added! Not oats, but oat fiber. Where can I buy a jar of Oat Fiber? Anyone?

So the time has come to make your decision, dear contestants. What is your final answer: Stacy's Cinnamon Sugar Pita Chips--natural or unnatural?

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.

Heirloom Tomatoes Join the Harvest

I finally have a few heirloom tomatoes ripe that I was able to add to yesterday's harvest: 1 Cosmonaut Volkov, 1 Peach Tom, and 3 Sungold Select. The problem is that the heirloom tomato plants are laden with tomatoes, but something is eating them--seriously eating them. I would suspect hornworms, but I don't see any evidence of them. These are the first heirlooms I could actually harvest that weren't eaten up (even though the bottom of the Cosmonaut shows a little eating damage).

In addition to the heirloom pickings, I also raked in a regular harvest of 153 sun sugar, 3 Beefsteak, and 8 Best Boy tomatoes, 8 zucchini, and 8 cucumbers. The zucchini and cucumbers are essentially done; the vines are withering. I'll be yanking the zucchini plants out this weekend (they are covered in leaf mold) and will probably dig up my onion bulbs. I doubt I'll have much size to them, but they should be edible anyway.

The okra plants continue to grow skyward, but I have yet to see any okra. I know it will come, but I'm anxious to fry up that first batch!

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 103
Cucumbers: 169
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 2
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 686
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 39
Best Boy Tomatoes: 35
Cosmonaut Volkov Tomatoes: 1
Sungold Select Tomatoes: 3
Peach Tom: 1
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill

The Monster [Tomato] that Ate Manhattan

Well, it didn't really eat Manhattan. But it does look like one tomato started consuming a whole bunch of others, particularly if you look at the bottom side of the tomato. This mutated marvel is a Beefsteak tomato that has gotten totally out of control. I'm pretty certain it will end up as tomato sauce rather than sandwich slices, because I can't quite fathom where to begin slicing on this one. Notice that it has two stems at the top that merge into the vine! Somehow, it began as two tomatoes and then mutated into one. It's a pretty good size, too--I've provided a sun sugar cherry-size tomato to help give you a sense of scale.

All in all yesterday, I collected 5 Beefsteak tomatoes, 8 Best Boys, and 170 sun sugar tomatoes. Add to that the 8 cucumbers I picked today, and I'd say that was a decent harvest. Since the sun sugar tomatoes just keep on producing, I took the freshly harvested ones to church this morning to spread the golden wealth around.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 95
Cucumbers: 161
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 2
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 533
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 36
Best Boy Tomatoes: 27
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill

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!