Dehydrating tomatoes and collecting propolis
Among the events of this past week, some little things, garden- and pantry-wise:
A steady, if modest, harvest. The onions and garlic are drying outside. I have some green beans in the freezer, along with grilled zucchini for future veggie lasagnas. The winter squash are looking good!
These are supposed to be sweet pie pumpkins, and I’m super excited about delicata squash:
Tomato-wise, I have salsa and a good amount of roasted tomatoes and sauce stashed away. I have an on-going system of letting the less ripe ones sit while I at least chop up and seed the more ripe ones — a bag of minimally processed tomato chunks is in the freezer, waiting for the others to catch up.
Note to self: plant fewer cherry tomatoes! They are a pain! To pick and to process! But the plants grow well from seed and I am a person who cannot bear to throw away even the tiniest little seedling! Meaning that I now am overrun with these dumb things!
That said, if I set myself up to go through a bunch (I can listen to a podcast while I do it, which makes up for not having little ones to fob the chore on), cut them in half, and dehydrate them, I am grateful in the winter for something tomato-y, rich, and sweet to chuck into a salad or a sauce.
I’m trying to be more confident in my dehydrating results and just keep the things in jars, rather than put them in the freezer — little things in my freezer(s) are hard to keep track of.
I hate rummaging for a handful of dried tomato when I’m making a salad. I’d be happier going into the pantry and seeing them on the shelf, and I think I have figured out how to determine if such things are really dry enough (vs. herbs which just become so crumbly that you know!).
I dehydrated some zucchini too! It’s amazing because this amount (2 pints) represents a few pounds of zukes!
I caught this photo from the porch: The Chief checking on the bees. We are hoping for a propolis harvest for the medicinal stash — you can read about that below, in the bits & pieces!
The fennel got a little out of control (and after the two ample, and so welcome, rainfalls of this week); it fell over and completely blocked my walkway!
Fennel hosts a vast array of predatory pollinators who apparently attack bad bugs. Maybe I should plant them among the squash — I was killing squash bugs while taking those photos, above!
And also these welcome lovelies:
Speaking of the pantry, I’m slowly tweaking my organization (they can put that on my gravestone, I guess), and I had the bright idea of moving the dehydrator from the mudroom to this spot.
I had had it out in the mudroom because it’s a bit noisy for the kitchen and it has a short cord, so needs to be near an outlet. But it’s silly to have it be something you see when you walk in, and obviously food belongs in the pantry!
I have to chuckle at my dehydrator when I see people’s extra-zowie-acme-deluxe models on Instagram, because I got it at a yard sale for $5 and it is clearly showing its age. Little pieces of it occasionally fall off, although I try to be more careful. But seriously, it works fine! You can regulate the heat and everything! I use it a lot to dry my herbs; they really do come out nicer if dehydrated with a little heat, as opposed to being left to air dry, but you also don’t want to heat them so much that they lose their potency — and my oven just gets too warm, even on the lowest setting.
bits & piecesA bit of “Doomsday Esolen,” but maybe also a reason to remain firm about taking charge of our children’s education: Imagine… What We Already ArePropolis information — so fascinating how nature works, and that we are able to hitch a rideAuntie Sue sent me the story of Abigail Becker, to add to last week’s post about amazing women. (Just switch the word “had” in the first sentence with her name, when you read that account of her heroism to your children!). And also Jane Whyte, who saved 11 sailors from the sea. Love that these ladies had a lot of children in between rescuing folks from drowning. (Award for best and absurdest non-sequitur to the author of that story, who irrelevantly opines, “This heroic lady was ahead of her time and it is fitting that the anniversary falls on the same year as the centenary of universal suffrage for women” as if having the vote would have done her any good or made her any more of a figure of honor. How many of us with the vote have odes written for us, I ask you? Isn’t it wonderful that in both cases, poems were written to commemorate these women’s acts. Maybe we should encourage our children to try their hand at similar tributes to their heroes!)It’s always good to talk about a Lewis book: Out of the Silent Planet: A Guidebook Against the “New Normal”We went to the movie theater the other night (more on my IG later), and the volume was much too loud. It’s no use saying that this perception is due to my age, because older people (myself included) tend to want the audio, on the TV for example, to be set a bit high. This was in the painful zone. Hugh Grant agrees. Calibrate, shmalibrate.Even a bald eagle had to be screened by the TSA before boarding!from the archivesSpeaking of… what Tony Esolen is speaking of: give your children the gift of Purity. Innocence is beautiful.Late summer, hot weather goodness: how to make a satisfying Salade Composée out of anything
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