"When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed." --- Ayn Rand, in "Atlas Shrugged"

Saucing Tomatoes

As a gardener, I enjoy growing tomatoes and I grow about a dozen plants a year. As an eater, though, I've only recently come around on them... as long as they're de-seeded and tucked away inside a sandwich or grinder/sub. It may sound a little weird, but there it is. Usually, I keep a stock of nice slicers for those in the family who do like tomatoes, but my real motive for growing them is for saucing. And so, here is my process:

Pick and wash the tomatoes, checking for freshness and firmness. Don't use any that show signs of widespread insect damage, over-ripeness or other problem. The one shown in my hand here is my garden's biggest this year.

Slice them up (halve the Romas, quarter the Celebrities, and make several cuts into Beefstakes or Big Boys) and remove the seeds into a container headed for the compost. I also cut away any unseemly sections. And while I used to use a corer to make a V cone cut to take out the white section where the stem leads into the fruit, it doesn't really matter for saucing.

Put the sliced, de-seeded tomatoes, along with just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan (the rest of the water shown comes out of the tomatoes) on the stove until boiling for about 5 minutes. Then I usually let them cool for upwards of a half-hour so milling them won't get too hot.

Drain as much water from the pot as possible. Get a sufficiently-sized bowl to catch the sauce and place the food mill on it, using the pronged feet to perch it securely. Then, using a sieved ladle, transfer a workable amount of the stewed, cooled tomatoes into the food mill. Work away turning the gear clockwise and counterclockwise (there's the saucing direction and the unclogging pulp direction) to produce sauce until there's only mostly dry pulp left. You shouldn't go overboard on getting every last drop of sauce or you'll be there a while and expend quite a bit of energy. Keep ladling in the stewed tomatoes until finished, getting rid of pulp in the same container as the seeds and cut-away parts as necessary to keep the food mill from spilling over.

You're left with a bowl of tomato sauce. It can tend to be a little watery, so it's a good idea to either boil it down a bit before using in recipes or add some tomato paste as a thickening agent. At this point, before covering the bowl with some plastic wrap and putting it in the refrigerator, I add about a tablespoon of a good kosher salt or sea salt as a preservative. The sauce will keep upwards of a week in my experience, but I can't speak to the longevity of freshness or when it starts to get fungus because it's never lasted long enough for me to discover how long that takes.

This process supplements my tomato sauce use during the summer months. At all other times of the year, I use Hunt's plain tomato sauce on pizza, pasta, etc. and season to taste with oregano, basil, parsley, garlic, black pepper and sea salt.

Irene

We came through Hurricane Irene pretty well. Never lost power besides several flickers, had water and phone throughout. The only real damage was some downed branches and twigs, a number of leaves all around, and my cucumber and pole bean trellis falling like a house of cards from the wind at about noon yesterday. Looking at the projected storm paths most of the week, I'd been expecting much worse.

Now, the same can't be said about the rest of the state, even just a dozen miles southwest where power is out, trees are down, people have lost their water....

This is to say nothing of sheer idiocy, where a once-in-a-lifetime canoeing opportunity turned into just that. A little piece of foam fastened to ones' chest was a bridge too far, apparently. It's a thin line between the human desire to "feel alive" and the wrath of Mother Nature screaming "DIE!" at all turns. A thin line, that is very poorly guarded under optimal circumstances. And even less guarded when naked machismo makes one believe he doesn't even need to wear a life jacket while navigating raging flood waters. There's still no Edit-Undo button for real life.

Anyway... it's time to clean up.

Explorers are we, intrepid and bold,
Out in the wild, amongst wonders untold.
Equipped with our wits, a map, and a snack,
We’re searching for fun and we’re on the right track!

--- Bill Watterson

"This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders." --- Sarah Orne Jewett

22 August 2011

It was a Canning Day here yesterday, as I finally amassed all the right ingredients in one place. Picked a bunch of Straight Eight cucumbers mostly from the garden of a close-by relative on Saturday evening and set to work Sunday morning. I'm pretty sure I've gone over the strawberry-rhubarb jam processing here before, as well as dill pickles. It started out with a literal bang while sterilizing the jars, as one of an older pair that I inherited did a clean break at the bottom, apparently from the heat. And then in the first jam session, I heard another sound from the canner and lifted the lid to see red water and loose bits of rhubarb in the roiling water. Not cool. Not cool at all. But, in total, I successfully processed 12.5 pints of jam. And then with the pickling (after changing the water, of course) I got 16 quarts done in three batches. The cukes were literally so large and seedy that for most of them, I sliced them in half lengthwise, and scooped out all the seeds before cutting them into wedges. Oh well, I never liked the seeds and mushy interior part anyway! (When we bought them at the store, I'd always get the little gerkin dill types that weren't big enough to have seeds.) I also did a few quarts of the "sandwich stacker" cut with some of the smaller cukes from my own garden, which worked out very well last year. I may do a small batch of relish in some of the left over pint jars if and when our cucumbers start to take off.

I just like the self-sufficiency aspect of canning. Not to mention that today's processing is equivalent to ~$100 (give or take) if we had to buy these things in the store through the year.

16 August 2011

So, in the last few weeks I celebrated my birthday, installed a new sidewalk, rebuilt some of the lake wall that had been caved in by the ice over the winter, split some firewood, did about 12 loads of laundry, mowed hell's half-acre twice, welcomed a good friend back from nearly a year in the land of OZ, and had the teevee on for maybe 6 hours.

The garden is doing all right, except for a serious lack of production from the cucumbers. By this time last year I'd done two batches of pickles and, so far, I've had about six Straight Eights to pick. Not very happy about that. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks. Pole beans are doing well, with three or four pickings so far. The tomatoes seemed to get done in by a run of upper-90 degree days (despite morning and dusk watering); the fruits that had already established have filled out, but many of the leaves went sere and there doesn't appear to be any more flowering for more fruit. I picked (in driving rain, no less) and sauced a bunch of the Roma and Celebrity tomatoes yesterday, actually. Zucchini is trudging along, which I'm a little surprised at because for the past few years it's been done in early by squash borers or blossom-end rot. Bell peppers are probably doing the best of the bunch... which actually might indicate the problem, as they produce peppers best in a low-nitrogen soil. I really need to work on getting the nutrients built back up in this soil, either through natural or other means. Last year, we got some so-called hairy vetch, an over-winter nitrogen-replenishing ground cover that greens up in early spring and you till in before planting your garden, but came to find out in my readings it was too late for it to establish. So, I'll be looking at putting some in late next month after production winds down. Also, I will likely be adding a bag of 10-10-10 fertilizer next spring before tilling. I had thought that adding our own compost and a nice load from the Franklin mushroom farm would be enough, but it clearly wasn't.

There's just so much to do in the summer. 'Course, this year's been more difficult and featured some inhibiting pain/soreness/serious loss of manual dexterity because of a certain event that I must not talk about at this time in a public forum. Mustn't grumble, though. It could definitely have been worse....