Linda Hoye's Blog, page 174

Blessed

“You’re so blessed.”

When my husband and I started seeing one another seventeen years ago and I started to get to know his family I said these words to him often. I was brought to tears more than once as I watched how his family supported, encouraged, and respected one another. That they welcomed me–insecurities, awkwardness, baggage, and all–seemed almost too good to be true.

Over the years there have been moments with each one of his siblings, cousins, and their spouses, that have touched me deeply. Simple gestures, words said in passing, snippets of time that were I to speak of them would be brushed off as nothing out of the ordinary. That’s the thing. These moments I hold precious in my heart would not be thought to be out of the ordinary for people such as this and that makes them all the more special to me.

Today is Thanksgiving Day here in Canada. Yesterday Gerry and I journeyed to the city, not far from here, where he grew up and where his parents and his older brother and wife still live. His brother and wife were away, but graciously gave us use of their home where I cooked a simple–albeit non-traditional–Thanksgiving dinner for us and my parents-in-love.

We visited, ate, laughed, and played a couple of games after dinner. It was a low-key and simple afternoon. Then we bid farewell with hugs and kisses–keenly aware as always that, at ninety-four, every goodbye could be the last. Gerry drove his parents back to their retirement residence and I started the post-dinner cleanup and we prepared to pack up and come back home.

This morning as I sipped a first cup of coffee in the afterglow of yesterday’s busyness I considered the rich legacy that the Hoye children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren are blessed with through these two people. I thought about stories I’ve heard about how extended family and other friends and acquaintances have been touched by their generosity and kindness.

I imagined again what it must have been like for my husband to grow up with the kind of love and support of a family such as this. I was reminded again that he is, indeed, blessed. Then I realized something that I may not have put into words before.

So am I.

An Autumn Reflection

It’s the first Saturday in October and the leaves on the deciduous trees have donned their autumn finery and are starting to fall. Spiders are everywhere; the harvest moon lights the night sky; the air is crisp and the days are shorter. Gerry is out enjoying an all-day hike with the local club and I have the gift of a day. When I was still working at my corporate job I dreamed of days post-retirement when I could spend an entire day immersed in a good book. I’ve been retired a year-and-a-half and I’ve yet to do it.

It’s not yet noon and three quarts of amber-coloured homemade vegetable stock sit cooling on the countertop. The vegetable scraps, along with coffee grounds we’ve been saving, have been fed to my worms and I’ve done a bit of worm bin housekeeping. The house smells of the granola that’s roasting in the oven. The sheets are hanging outside in the fall sunshine. I’ve just put eight quarts of beans–an assortment of pinto, kidney, black and white–into the pressure canner. (Yes, I could purchase canned beans from the grocery store; yes I could, and often do, cook a batch myself to use for a certain recipe; but I like the convenience of having cooked beans on the shelf.) There are herbs to be harvested from the deer-proof garden and there’s a twenty-five pound box of McIntosh apples on the counter waiting to be cooked and turned into applesauce. I won’t be spending this day curled up under a quilt reading either.

Once, I hated the signs of autumn. I mourned passing of another summer I felt I’d missed, cooped up for most of it inside of my office. Now autumn seems a gentler season, a time to be thankful for the summer that was and to prepare for the winter that is to come.

I found great satisfaction in my work over this summer tending a small garden and preserving the harvest–my own as well as that of other local farmers–but now I am weary. I look at the tomatoes on my kitchen windowsill in varying stages of ripeness and consider those still on the vine in the garden that need to be tended to before the first frost. I am ready for the harvest to end so I can put my canning supplies away. I think about pulling out my knitting basket and settling in for an afternoon in front of the fire, maybe even spending a day reading a good book.

While many Canadians are preparing to head south to warmer climates before the cold weather arrives, I’m looking forward to spending another winter here at home. My canning, freezer, and pantry shelves are filled with the bounty of summer; the last of the onions, garlic, and squash sit curing on the back deck. The worm bin has been moved into the garage where it’s warmer and where the red wrigglers will keep working making vermicompost over the cold months in preparation for spring and another season of gardening. Soon, we’ll move the flowerpots into the garage to make it easier to clear the snow from the sidewalks.

This is what it’s like to live in harmony with the seasons. I read a book recently called A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography by Kayann Short  (Highly recommend). In it, the author says so eloquently what I feel:

Follow the daylight and the seasons. Work hard in summer while the light is long and the weather mild. Rest in winter when the days are short and the nights cold. Balance the necessary work with rest and renewal and regeneration. Each season, the land extends forgiveness and we get to start over again.

Before spring comes I’ll be sick of the cold wind and snow and I’ll be impatient for the first sign of spinach to appear in the garden. For the time being I’m appreciating the beauty of autumn, and looking forward to the resting season of winter. This simple way of living in tune with the ebb and flow of the season suits me well. I find myself, once again, spending a quiet afternoon in my kitchen feeling thankful.

The Tiny House; No Longer Tiny

Two weeks ago, it was dark and raining lightly, as we drove the familiar prairie road toward Benson. When we turned off onto the dirt road leading to Queen Street and the main entry into the hamlet I asked Gerry to stop the car so I could snap a photo of the hamlet.

We drove down Queen street, turned onto Second Avenue, and drove toward Grandma’s house. I was apprehensive about what state I might find Grandma’s tiny house in given what it looked like four and a half years ago when we were there. I was also confused for a moment as we approached and I saw a brand new house standing there.

“They’ve torn it down and built a new one!” I exclaimed before I got my bearings and realized we hadn’t yet reached Grandma’s yard. And then we were there.

“Oh no. What have they done?”

That troubling cement foundation I had first seen in 2009 had turned into a large structure tacked on to the back of the tiny house. Grandma’s house had been transformed into a Frankenstein-like monstrosity piecing together structures from different centuries into a single one meant, I assumed, to house oil workers. 

From the front, the tiny house didn’t look all that much different from it had when we had been there six years earlier; that is to say it hadn’t been fixed up, restored, or tended to. The windows in the new addition still had stickers on them and, while the exterior was sided, it appeared from my vantage point that the interior was not yet finished much less inhabited.

I didn’t think anyone was around, it would have taken only a moment to walk forward and get a better look but I had little curiosity about the bunkhouse-like structure tacked on to the back of my grandma’s house. We snapped a few photos and drove away.

There were so many things we could have found that would have been preferable to what I saw as the desecration of the tiny house. Best case would have been that it had been fixed up and modernized. Less-than-best case would have been if it had been torn down and replaced with something more modern as I first thought. Worst case, in my mind, was what we found.

Maybe it’s not done yet, I tried to rationalize. It has, after all, been a work in progress for over six years. Maybe, in time, the piece that was Grandma’s house will be fixed up and made to look like it belongs to the bunkhouse. Or, maybe this is as far as it will go and, as the oil boom begins to wind down, the structure that is there now will be abandoned and left to decay. I fear the latter is most likely to be the case.

We drove to the end of the street and turned right on King Street and headed toward First Avenue. There were other new homes, nice homes, cared for homes, along the way. First Avenue, the street I remembered from childhood with wooden sidewalks and old boarded-up shops, looked completely different with newer looking residences. It looked nice, kept up, cared for.

We drove to the R.M. building and got out of the car to look at a memorial plaque that had been placed commemorating the history of the hamlet.

R.M. of Benson

A petition for authority to proceed with the organization of a rural municipality comprising of townships 4, 5, and 6 in ranges 7, 8, and 9, west of the second meridian, was made on June 12, 1909. The R.M. was incorporated on Dec. 13, 1909 and the first organizational meeting was held on December 20, 1909 on the NE 10-5-8-W2M. The first council in 1910 consisted of Reeve George Wheeler, Councillors Sam Wheeler (I), John Honan (II), Frank Benson (III), Alphonse Roy (IV), Albert Sellsted (V), and Archie McAuley (VII). The first secretary-treasurer and assessor was Mike Honan in 1911. The R.M. of Benson  No. 35 joined the Saskatchewan association of Rural Municipalities.

Councillor Albert Sellsted was my great-grandfather. His son, Tenor, married Isabelle and died at age 35 leaving Isabelle with three young children. Albert Sellsted built the tiny house for my Grandma and her children and she lived there for the rest of her life.

My grandmother was a single mother during some of the harshest years this country has ever endured. She raised three children–Albert, Laura, and Edith–in a house not much larger than my living room. They were financially poor but when they told stories about those early years you would never know it. They rarely had enough, but what they had became enough, and for that they were thankful. Of the three, only my mom had children of her own: two adopted daughters who brought the sound of children’s laughter into the tiny house again–and the sound of mother’s scolding when they became too rambunctious in a space that was so small.

Isabelle died in 1971 at age 74. Laura died suddenly in 1985 at age 55. Edith died suddenly in 1997 at age 65. Albert died suddenly in 2001 at age 76. This is the legacy of the tiny house that is no longer tiny. This is the history I hold in my heart.

As we drove away from Benson I felt angry at the many oil wells dotting the prairie fields and our human tendency to go after prosperity and profit (in this case oil) at the expense of ignoring and forgetting the past. I mentally kicked myself for not holding on to that tiny house when I had the opportunity to.

Some sources say that the Bakken boom in North Dakota, Montana, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan is beginning to wind down. Others cite environmental damage resulting from fracking, oil spills, and even explosions. Let’s not forget about the social cost as a result of a changing demographic caused by the boom too. We, as a society, can too easily lose sight of that what matters when we put too much stock in profit at all cost.

There is much we can learn if we don’t ignore the lessons that history, and a tiny house, can teach us.

Trespassing At The Tiny House

In March of 2010 we were in Saskatchewan to look at a farm we were considering purchasing for our retirement about an hour and a half north-east from Benson. We took a slight detour on our way back home from the farm to stop by the tiny house in Benson.

It was snowing lightly when we pulled up and stopped in front of Grandma’s house. It looked the same as it had in the photographs we had received from the current owner a few months earlier; and I couldn’t wait to get a closer look as I stepped carefully through the snow toward a door that wasn’t there before.

I boldly pushed open the unsecured door and stepped into the tiny house. It had been gutted completely. In my mind’s eye I could still picture the original rooms: grandma’s bedroom, the kitchen, and living room–but no interior walls remained. The stairway to the attic where my sister and I had dug through old trunks and boxes a few years earlier was gone. A trap door covered the steps leading to the dirt-floored basement.

With the walls gone it was even more apparent just how small the tiny house was. It seemed to me that the entire house could fit into the bedroom I now shared with my husband. To think that Grandma raised three children in this small space was hard for me to wrap my mind around. The ghosts of my grandma, my mom, aunt, and uncle were in every dusty corner.

I walked around back of the house and looked around the yard at the same outbuildings that have been there for as long as I have been alive. Save for the fact that the interior of the house was gutted, and that a set of french doors had been installed off of what once was the living room, the place itself wasn’t all that much different from the house of my childhood.

Despite the fact that the tiny house was am empty shadow of what it had once been, as I stood in the snowy yard drinking in the ambiance I felt at home–trespassing, yes–but strangely at home in my mind.

Later, as we drove away, the oil wells that dotted the fields everywhere nodded, bidding us farewell for now.

A Tiny House in Benson

My Uncle Albert died suddenly one cold December day in 2001 at his home in Benson, Saskatchewan. He had lived in the little house in the hamlet of Benson for most of his life, his father’s people building the house next door to their own after their son–Albert’s dad, Tenor–died in 1932 when the young boy was seven-years-old. Albert’s mom–my grandma, Isabelle–was left to raise Albert and his younger sisters, Laura (my mom) who was two-years-old, and Edith a two-month-old infant, by herself during the harsh years of the Great Depression.

Grandma and her three children in front of the tiny house in Benson

My grandma–Belle, as she was known to her friends–died in 1971 and Uncle Albert, a lifelong bachelor who had lived with his mother and slept on a pull-out sofa all of those years, was left alone in the tiny house. He added an addition to make more room (ironic, in a sense given that there was now one person living where four had lived in the past), installed indoor plumbing, and made the house his own.

In time, and much too soon, Albert’s sisters Laura and Edith passed away. Edith and her husband had never had children, so my sister and I, and Uncle Albert were the last remaining members of that branch of the family. That my sister and I were adopted and, therefore, not blood-related was irrelevant: we were family. On Christmas Day in 2001 I received a phone call letting me know that Uncle Albert was gone too.

Not long after Uncle Albert’s death an auction was held to sell his farmland, equipment, and vehicles. That tiny house he had lived in for most of his life, on the plot of land in Benson that still had the same green outbuildings I remembered being there when I was a child, was sold at the same time. There was discussion, at the time, about whether it made sense for me to keep the little house. I longed to retain that piece of history but, given that we lived 1,500 kilometers and two provinces away, it seemed to make little sense.

On the afternoon of the auction, I stood at the back of recreation center as the auctioneer put the house on the block and opened up the bidding. Lower. He dropped the price lower. Then lower again. Who would be interested in buying a tiny house in a hamlet in the middle of nowhere? I had to step outside to prevent myself from raising my hand and bidding on it myself. Eventually, a bidder came forward and the tiny house became his for an unimaginably low price.

I had taken a last walk through the house the night before the auction and my sister and I had sat on the floor in the attic going through trunks and cardboard boxes collecting family ephemera that we wanted to retain. We would be leaving Benson after the auction with no concrete plans to return and, as it now it seemed, no reason to return.

*   *   *

Seven years later, in 2009, I was in the midst of writing my memoir and I visited that tiny house in Benson over and over again in my mind as I waded through memories of long ago, grieved that Death had claimed too many who once were part of that Benson history.

I was saddened that perhaps no one remembered the big empty house that once stood next door to Grandma’s tiny house where my grandfather’s people once lived–those same good people who had built the tiny house for grandma and her children. A big green garage had sat in that same space for so many years that memories of the big house were fainter with each passing year.

Who remembered the sound of the ticking clock that once sat on the corner of my grandma’s dresser next to an open window where a sheer curtain blew into the room on a hot summer breeze? What about the little bed tucked in the single bedroom where two young girls slept, safe next to the larger bed that was their mother’s? Who recalled the oiled wood on the stairway leading the attic my sister and I were forbidden from entering as children, and that seemed that much more inviting by our being kept from it? Or the worn wooden spool that served as a doorknob on the screen door, and the thwack of that door slamming followed by a scolding of the little girl who let the door slam?

An idea conceived in the back of my mind and, tentatively, I broached it to my husband: I wanted to buy the tiny house back. I was delighted when he agreed to my sentimental desire and, as we talked about next steps and what we would do once the house was ours, I felt hope and excitement at the prospect of going home. We wouldn’t uproot our lives immediately and move to Benson–we would likely never move permanently to the little hamlet–but I had plans, ideas, dreams, and we spent the rest of the warm summer afternoon sitting on the patio talking about them.

The next day, it was easy enough to find contact information for the Rural Municipality which seemed the likeliest way to find out the name of the person who owned the tiny house. The RM gave us his name and phone number and my husband made the call while I sat outside in the sunshine and dreamed. When he joined me outside and said he had talked to the individual who now owned the tiny house, and that he was willing to sell it, I was ecstatic.

My joy turned to confusion when I heard the asking price: ten times more than what the house had sold for at the auction. I couldn’t believe it. I was convinced he had not heard correctly and begged my ever-patient husband to call back and confirm. He made the call. The price was the same. It made no sense.

By this time we were living in Washington state and didn’t often hear news of what was happening in Saskatchewan. A bit of research revealed that there was an oil boom–the Bakken formation, it was called–perhaps the largest oil pool discovered in Western Canada since 1957. With the oil came workers, and the workers needed places to stay. Trailers and bunk houses were being brought in to small towns, houses that once stood empty were cleaned up and rented out, and the owner of Grandma’s tiny house in Benson had plans that didn’t factor in sentimental granddaughters.

The owner sent us photographs of the tiny house and yard. It looked much like it had the last time I had been there. The original house was intact and the addition Uncle Albert put on was still there. There was a troubling cement rectangle behind the house; someone had been making plans to build a structure for the oil workers to stay in. Aside from this, though, the grounds appeared relatively unchanged. I pored over the images, kicking myself for letting the house go in the first place and frustrated at the oil boom that was preventing me from getting it back.

The tiny house from the side

The back of the house . . . with the troubling cement foundation.

The garage . . . where my great-grandparents house once stood . . . next to Grandma’s tiny house.

Heading Toward My Heart’s Home

It strikes me as odd sometimes that the area of my beloved province of Saskatchewan that I hold most dear is not the city I grew up in, but instead is an area southeast of the city where we traveled to often to visit my grandma, aunt, and uncles when I was a kid. The land is flatter here–endless miles of farmland as far as the eye can see–it is the place of my imagination, the place I feel my roots the deepest, and the place I call my heart’s home.

“When I’ve satisfied my need to immerse myself in the Moose Jaw of my childhood, I drive back up Main Street and turn right onto the Trans Canada Highway heading southeast toward Stoughton.

As I turn onto the Highway 39 exit, I hear a ghost say from the backseat. “This is the road I spilled my milk on.”

Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude, 2012

Last week, as we turned onto Highway 39 I couldn’t help but remind Gerry that this was, indeed, the road I spilled my milk on about fifty years ago. The skies were dark and it seemed like we were on borrowed time waiting for the rain to come. I captured a few photographs while we had, at least some, decent light. I find such beauty in the prairie–even the dark, cloudy, and moody, prairie–so the scenery still fed a deep part of me as we drove south.

We drove past tiny villages with names so familiar to me: Drinkwater, Rouleau (where the grain elevator showed the town name as Dog River; a carryover from the now-defunct TV Show called Corner Gas that was once filmed in the tiny town), Wilcox, Corrine, Milestone, Lang, Yellow Grass, McTaggart. We stopped whenever something captured our attention, taking our time and exploring.

Finally we arrived in Stoughton–the little village where my beloved aunt and uncle had lived and where we visited often when I was a child. We drove by my aunt and uncle’s old home; there was a For Sale sign on the lawn and, yes I did check out the real estate listing and ever-so-briefly pondered what if? I captured a not-so-good image of one of the two remaining grain elevators in town and we walked through the cemetery where they were buried and paid our respects.

Then, we headed toward the hamlet of Benson which was about 20 minutes south. My grandma raised three children by herself during the harsh years of the Great Depression in a tiny house in Benson; it’s a place a travel to often in my mind when I feel the need for a prairie fix.

Little did I know there was heartbreak waiting there.

Moose Jaw Days

Last week at this time Gerry and I were on the beautiful Saskatchewan prairie. It’s no secret to anyone who knows me how much I love the prairie how our time there nourished my soul. The weather was not the best; instead of endless blue skies with puffy white cumulus clouds on the horizon we had dull cloudy skies, a titch of rain and–at the most inopportune times–wind. That’s the prairie for you. A positive spin to our less-than-perfect weather was that we resolved to return in late spring or early summer, timing our trip according to the weather forecast rather than hard dates. We’re retired. We can do that now.

We had no set itinerary; just a rough plan for some must-visit places and a big atlas in the back seat filled with possibility. Our only constraint was the day we needed to come back home to pick up our little Yorkie because I had left our doggy sitter with enough of her homemade food for a specific number of days.

Our first stop was Moose Jaw–the city where I spent the first twelve years of my life and the city whose streets I still wander up and down in my imagination. As soon as we arrived there we headed for 1065 7th Avenue Northwest–the house that Dad built and where we lived. The last time I was there I was dismayed to see the house had fallen into a bit of disrepair. This time was a whole other story though as it has been updated and is obviously being kept up and restored.

We drove by the elementary school I attended and I was stunned to see the size of the steps I once lined up in front of when the school bell rang. In my mind I stood looking up–way up–to see Mrs. Scott ringing that hand bell to call us in from recess. I suppose I did look up but the stairs to the door we entered into were not nearly as high as I thought they were. It’s funny how our perception changes things.

 

Next stop was 412 Moose Square–the house where Dad grew up–the only boy among six sisters (when asked how many siblings he had, Dad would invariably answer that he had six sisters and every one of them had a brother!). Again, I was pleased to see that this old house is being kept up as well.

Moose Jaw, in general, has many beautiful old homes and as we drove up and down the avenues we were pleased to see many of them had been, or were in the process of being restored. Street after street of tree-lined boulevard-ed streets whispered ‘home’ to me but also left me with a sense of gratitude for the good people who appreciated the beauty of the past enough to put their time and finances into maintaining these old homes.

Downtown Moose Jaw has some of the most beautiful old buildings I’ve ever seen in one place and we spent a pleasant afternoon walking up and down the “Golden Mile” of main street photographing some of them. We admired beautiful old St. Andrews church where Mom and Dad were married; the old Public Library that my dad likely spent time in and that I, as a child, took refuge in as well; and building after building that held memories for me. I love that you can look at very old photographs of the city and see the same grand buildings that still stand proud today.

 

After our walking tour we drove around various areas of the city relying, successfully for the most part, on my memories of where things were. Some places were changed; many looked just slightly different; others were exactly how I remembered them. That’s my Moose Jaw.

Our time there was brief but enough for me to take hold of that sense of home and wrap it around me like an old worn quilt. The next day, we headed southeast toward my favourite part of the province and my heart’s home. More to come . . .

The September 6 Garden

Things are beginning to wind down in the community garden. A couple of gardeners have already cleaned their plots out completely but there’s still lots of action happening in the Hoye garden.

We’ll be eating the last lettuce we’ll enjoy this year for dinner this evening. I don’t buy lettuce out of season so it truly will be the last lettuce salad for us until spring. We’ll savour every bite of the crisp Drunken Woman lettuce combined with Yellow Pear and Sungold tomatoes, and diced cucumber.

Speaking of cucumber, I picked four more today that I’ll slice up with some dill weed I also harvested and put them in the dehydrator for more of those delicious cucumber chips. There are still more little cucumbers on the vine so we expect more to come before too long.

There are lots of green tomatoes still on the vines too. We pick little Sungolds and Yellow Pears daily. I’m throwing them in the freezer and will use them for sauces throughout the winter. There are a ton of green Federle tomatoes hanging on the vines–many people are mistaking them for peppers! I’m saving the ripe ones at home as long as I can until I have enough to warrant canning a few more jars. Lots of green Brandywines and Black Krims left too so, as long as we don’t get an unexpected early frost, I expect we’ll be well stocked with tomatoes for the winter.

I’ve been harvesting kale and chard and freezing what we don’t eat fresh. Still lots more of that left and the kale will be good until even after the snow falls. I’ve heard that it tastes even better after a frost so I think we might just test that theory out this year.

My second crop of green beans should be ready to begin harvesting in a couple of weeks. I can’t wait to enjoy more fresh green beans–some of these too will go into the freezer for winter soups and meals.

The deer-proof garden in our back yard is also winding down. The spaghetti squash vines are beginning to die off as is the delicata squash plant. The squash has been a bit of a disappointment–we’ll end up with just three spaghetti squash and one delicata–next year we’ll do squash in the community garden instead of up here. All of the herbs have done well and I’ve got jars of dried thyme, rosemary, oregano, sage, and chives tucked away and will be drying still more. There are just a few onions left in the garden–I used most of them in salsa and pickles. This was my first year growing onions and they were a big success. I’ll definitely grow more of them next year.

Sometimes as I survey the garden and think about the bounty on my canning shelf and in my freezer it’s hard to imagine that I spent a few restless nights in early spring worrying about how this year’s garden might turn out. We moved to a new plot this year were wary about the quality of the soil. Once again, my worrying was for naught and all turned out well–even better than I expected in fact. There’s a lesson there, isn’t there?

As the days lengthen and we sense fall in the air I find myself, for the first time in many years, looking forward to the change of seasons. I’ve worked hard over the summer. Slowing down, taking a little vacation, and returning to a quieter pace will be a welcome respite. I’m looking forward to having time to get back to my photography and writing projects–activities I had to set aside while I was busy with the garden and in the canning kitchen.

For me, this is what living a fulfilled retirement life is all about: Working hard at things that bring satisfaction like gardening, canning, and otherwise preserving summer’s bounty; then slowing down, enjoying the fruits of my labour, while turning back toward other creative pursuits like writing and photography. It’s a good life and I am thankful for it.

Canning Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce

When I was in pickle-making mode I bought a lot of garlic–more than I needed. I was thinking about what to do with it all when I came across a recipe for Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce on the SB Canning site. It sounded great, I had a bounty of fresh tomatoes, peppers, and herbs that needed to be tended to so I gave it a go.

Yield: I increased the recipe (the measurements I used are in this post) and ended up with ten pints.

Ingredients

9 bulbs of garlic
4 Tbsp. olive oil
6 green peppers, halved and seeded.
18 pounds of tomatoes, peeled and chopped
4 1/2 Tbsp. packed brown sugar
3 Tbsp. kosher salt
1 1/2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 tsp. ground pepper
3 cups chopped basil
1 1/2 cup assorted chopped fresh herbs (I used a combination of parsley, oregano, and thyme.)
Bottled lemon juice–1 Tbsp. for each pint jar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Peel away dry outer layer of garlic bulbs. Cut top off, leaving bulbs intact.

Place cut side up on casserole dish and drizzle with 1 Tbsp. olive oil. Cover dish.

Arrange peppers cut side down on foil-lined baking sheet. Brush with remaining 2 Tbsp. olive oil.

Roast garlic and peppers for 40-50 minutes.

Remove from oven. Cool garlic until cool enough to handle.

Pull foil up to enclose peppers and leave for about 20 minutes. Peel skin off of peppers.

When the garlic is cool enough to handle, gently squeeze the bottom of the bulbs to remove the garlic. Put the garlic into food processer and add a few of the chopped tomatoes. Process until chopped and pour the tomato/garlic mixture into a large pot.

Continue chopping the remaining tomatoes and adding them to the pot.

Add brown sugar, salt, vinegar, and black pepper to the tomato/garlic mixture in the pot.

Bring to a slow boil and boil steadily for about 50 minutes, stirring often.

Add the chopped roasted peppers and continue boiling for about 20 minutes, stirring often, or until sauce is desired constancy.

Remove from heat and mix in basil and herbs.

Put 1 Tbsp. lemon juice in each heated pint jar and fill with sauce leaving 1/2 inch headspace. (Use 2 Tbsp. if using quart jars.)

Wipe rims to ensure they are clean and apply lids and rings. Process in water bath canner for 35 minutes for pints and 40 minutes for quarts.

For my altitude here in Kamloops I need to increase the processing time by 5 minutes. You need to check the altitude for your location and adjust accordingly.

 

 

Cucumber Chips

I can feel the change of seasons a little bit more every day. Cooler nights mean we’re closing the window a bit more these days. Spider webs everywhere (and the biggest ugliest spiders I’ve ever seen!) make me a bit more cautious when I enter my garden area. My canning shelf and freezer are full.

Still, the cucumbers keep coming.

I’ve made dill pickles, sweet garlic dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, cucumber relish, I’ve given them away, and we’ve eating them in salads almost every night for ages.

And they still keep coming.

I was looking for some new ideas for how to use the never-ending cucumber supply a few days ago and came across a few recipes for dehydrated cucumber chips. I decided to adapt them for my own use and give it a go. One of the advantages of having an abundance of garden-fresh produce is that one is more likely to try new and different ways to use them.

These chips turned out to be delicious! I doubled this recipe and made another batch the next day and now I’m eagerly waiting for more cukes so I can make even more.

I talk a lot about avoiding processed foods and eating a plant-based and natural diet. I try to do this for the most part but there’s one thing I haven’t been able to give up: my nightly snack of cheddar flavoured mini rice chips. These cucumber chips might just be the ticket for helping me overcome my rice chip addiction.

Ingredients

Approximately 4 cups sliced (about 1/4 inch) cucumbers. Mine were of the size that I used 2 for a batch)
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. salt
Chopped dill (to taste)

Instructions

Mix apple cider vinegar, salt, and chopped dill together in bowl.

Add cucumbers and mix everything together. I used my hands as it was easiest.

Put on dehydrator trays and set temperature to 135 degrees. This is the dehydrator I have.

The time needed to dry the chips will vary based on the thickness of the slices, water content, humidity etc. My first batch took about four hours. I found that I wanted slightly thicker slices so my next batch took a few hours more.