Ruff Day

This is Oliver at the end of his very long day. I took the picture about five minutes ago and he hasn't moved yet. He may be out for the night. He really did have a rough day, though.

We got up this morning and went for a walk, to enjoy the cool weather. As you may know, Oliver is not the best walker in the world. He loves to get his leash on, but once we're outside he really doesn't know what to do with his fluffy little self. He is scared of walking. But he still gives it a try whenever I get the leash out. And, of course, he expects treats when he gets home from this scary adventure. (Today his "treat" was his heartworm pill.)

After his walk, I made an egg for breakfast. He saw the neighbor hanging laundry outside and started barking at her. We've had Oliver in this house with the same neighbor for a year and a half. She and Oliver have never had a problem, although Oliver always barks his head off when he sees her. When I am over at her house for a visit, Oliver barks the whole time I'm gone - and the river seems to amplify the noise. Today, while my hands were full of eggs, I told Oliver to "hush" when he barked. (As I always do. It never works. We need to go to obedience training.) Today, Judy was having a rough morning of her own, and she yelled at him to be quiet! I washed the egg off of my hands and carried Oliver into the kitchen by me. He gets pretty distracted by good smells in the kitchen. And the eggs were just the start of things today.

After my breakfast, I headed out in the back yard with Oliver and 30 ears of corn. While I shucked the corn, Judy came over to apologize for yelling at Oliver. She'd hung a new blouse out on her clothes line and one of the trees in the yard dropped goop all over it and may have ruined the shirt - that she was planning to wear to a luncheon at the high school today. (I told her she is free to yell at Oliver whenever he bothers her; she must have felt so bad about the whole deal that she apologized to Michael when she saw him at the luncheon - even though he didn't even know what had happened!)

Oliver hung out for most of the corn shucking, then wanted to come back in the house. Soon I joined him with the last 8 ears of corn. I boiled water and set up an ice water bath in my cooler. I blanched the corn, cooled it, and cut it off the cobs. Oliver waited at my feet, hoping for a "jackpot." He got a few. I froze 10 bags (3/4 lb. each) of corn. In the past, I have made the bags one pound each, but they seem a little too full. Besides, this way the corn will last longer. Of all of the corn that I have frozen this summer, this was by far the best tasting. I reserved another two dozen ears (which meant 30 yesterday) to pick up on Sunday at our CSA.
The tomatoes in the background are extras from our CSA. I thought about throwing them in with the rest of the canning today, but ended up keeping them out - I was already feeling a little bad because I forgot to save out a few ears of corn for our dinner tonight!

The corn was finished around 12:30, and I thought about eating lunch, but did the dishes instead, because I'd made plans to pick up 30 pounds of Roma tomatoes at the farmers' market at 2:00. I did some other cleaning in the kitchen, then headed to the grocery store to buy more jars and lemon juice. I looked at the jars for about 7 minutes, trying to decide whether to make between 6 and 8 quarts, or 12-14 pints. I didn't want to buy two cases of pint size jars, so I finally decided on the quarts. I'm quite certain that Oliver barked the entire time I was at the grocery store.

I picked up my tomatoes at the farmers market on my way home from the grocery store, and started canning at about 2:08. I washed the tomatoes, and Oliver waited expectantly at my feet for a tomato to fall.

The big box of tomatoes, partially emptied
On the left are tomatoes ready to be blanched. In the middle is the box. In the sink are (obviously) tomatoes being washed. This was a LOT of small tomatoes!
I think I could have filled my sink three times with all of the tomatoes in that box.

I blanched the tomatoes. Oliver waited expectantly at my feet for a tomato to fall.
(I blanched four trays full of tomatoes - but I had to bring out non-snowman trays in order to pull that off.)

I skinned and cored the tomatoes. Oliver waited expectantly at my feet for a tomato to fall.
Two tomatoes did fall while I was doing this, but Oliver didn't get either one.

In addition to making sure that no fallen tomatoes went uneaten, Oliver was also very busy barking at our landlord, who was using his Bobcat in the back yard, trying to figure out the grade of the terrace, and why the grass seeds aren't growing. Our landlord brought his dog, who whined the whole afternoon. Oliver heard the whining and barked. I told him to be quiet. He barked. The other dog whined. Oliver barked. The other dog whined. I wanted to pull my hair out. I called Michael to see when he'd be home from work. His phone was off. I locked Oliver in the bedroom. He barked, and also peed on the carpet.

It wasn't my favorite afternoon.

But Michael came home, and after he decompressed from back-to-school meetings he helped me with the tomatoes, which made the afternoon go much faster. (Also, our landlord left and took the dog with him, so Oliver didn't have anything to bark at. He just waited for tomatoes to fall.)

The tomatoes I bought were glorious - I only had to throw out two from the entire box. But while the Romas I got from my CSA were bright red and meaty, with thick red pulp around the seeds, these Romas were pale and watery. The puree they made coming out of the chinois was pretty thin - and the seeds slipped through the holes in the sieve part. (Not all of the seeds, just a few.)


I followed the Ball Blue Book recipe for tomato sauce in part, because I wasn't sure how long to cook the puree before putting it in the water bath. That recipe said to cook the tomato pulp down until it was half the original volume.

I couldn't wait that long. I didn't get my tomatoes until 2:00, remember? And I did the blanching and skinning mostly on my own, which takes a lot longer than doing it with another set of hands. Plus these Romas were very little, and I had to put a lot more effort into coring them than I would have with larger canning tomatoes. So I was still putting them through the chinois at 7:15 when our pizza was delivered. (Yes, it was ironic that we got pizza tonight while I was making tomato puree that might become pizza sauce sometime this winter. But Michael suggested pizza from a locally owned place, and I'm always up for food that someone else cooks.) So I boiled them down in three separate pots (because I didn't have a 3-gallon pot) until all of the tomato pulp fit into my 8 quart pot.
On the left is some of the juice that drained off of the tomatoes while they were waiting to be smashed in the chinois. On the right is the first large pot of puree.

And then I continued to boil it down while the water in the canner was bringing itself up to a simmer, and then a boil.
All of the puree in my eight-quart stock pot.

My sauce is pretty thin, but I think it will taste good. (I know it tastes good because I tried some, actually.) Five of the six jars that went into the water bath sealed so far (I took them out of the water bath 35 minutes ago), and the half quart that didn't go into the canner sealed too, but we'll eat that this week.
The leftover jar.

Resting in the water bath after 40 minutes boiling away.
I put vinegar in my water to keep the lime away, but apparently didn't use enough. However, this time the residue was only on the outside of the jars, not the inside. (I know because I looked, and also because I went ahead and put vinegar in the water while the jars were being sterilized today.)

From my human perspective, it was a good day. Oliver did his best to be in the way, but only got one drop of tomato on his head for all of his trouble. (Well, that plus the four tablespoons of corn that went flying when I lost my grip on the ear I was holding this morning.)
(My last jar just popped. So I can go to bed now, and my grandma can get back to whatever she was doing with her angel friends.)

Canning On Location

After spending over a week in Indiana with my sister's family, my mom returned home yesterday afternoon. Today, she worked as the overseer in the kitchen, while my dad and I canned a batch of tomatoes. (My mom showed me how she prepares the tomatoes a few weeks ago, but she learned to can from her mom, without a water bath or pressure canner, and I'm just too timid to go there. Although we almost did today, as you'll see . . .)

I planned to visit the garden today, since I had not been there for a while. Turns out, not too much is happening in the garden right now. There may be some pictures on a different camera, I'm not sure. I have about 8 blazing orange pumpkins, there are lots of green butternut squash, and my carrot tops have definitely filled out a lot since the last time I checked on them. Here's one that I picked, just to see how they're doing. There must have been a rock or clump of clay in its way (but it still tasted delicious):
I also dug around by the potato plants today. They are definitely growing! And the onions curing in the garage have thin papery skins, and seem to be ready to put into storage. But our fall crop of peas completely failed to materialize. I'm not sure what's up with that, but it makes me pretty sad.

Before he found out I was planning a trip to the garden today, my dad wanted to bring a big bag of tomatoes up to my house to can. Instead, I brought the canning supplies to him. A mistake I don't intend to duplicate tonight. Um . . . I mean next time. (Princess Bride reference, not a reference to more canning in the very near future.) The tomatoes were gorgeous, and while most were picked yesterday, some came off the vine mere seconds before being washed and dropped into boiling water for a little bit of blanching. I think we had good teamwork skills. But even as I walked into the house forty-five minute earlier, I foresaw a potential problem with our home canning operation.

I realized that I had lugged my 21 quart water bath all the way to Madison, intending to use it on my parents' enamel stove. The pot expressly states in the (basically otherwise unhelpful) instruction booklet that it is not for use on flat top stoves. Oops.

We did it anyway, since the tomatoes were there, and it seemed silly to caravan back to my place. (Okay, we didn't even consider doing that.) The tomatoes were sliced and simmering happily on the stove in the 3 gallon pot while we tried and tried to get the water bath to simmer, thereby sterilizing our jars.
(My dad thought this warning might be in place to prevent the owners of enamel stoves from suing the company after the water bath scratches their stove surface. I thought it had more to do with the uneven bottom of the pot.)

If anyone out there who reads this cans, please advise. How am I supposed to: 1. bring a water bath to boiling; 2. cook 3 gallons of tomatoes; and 3. sterilize jars in a third very large pot of water all on a four-burner stove? Some of those burners are very small, you know. And the dimensions of all of the non-commercial stoves I have ever used make it basically impossible to have three such pots on a stove at once. Yet all of these things need to be going at exactly the same time. My instructions state that I should pull one jar out of its simmering pot, fill it with hot material, put a lid on it (also pulled from a simmering pot) and then place it immediately on a rack in the water bath.

Rather than buying additional stoves for my kitchen and my mom's kitchen, we avoid this dilemma by using the water bath both to sterilize the jars and to do the processing. So my jars spend a few minutes on the counter after being filled, waiting to be re-submerged in now boiling (not simmering) water.

This entire situation was more complicated today because it probably took the water bath over an hour to get to simmering. During that time I decided twice to make the tomatoes my mom's way, heating the jars in the oven, and not using a water bath at all. But then the water was 165 degrees (we were going for 180) and it seemed silly to have wasted all of that energy on the hot water.) So we poured boiling water that my mom had heated in the teakettle and I had heated in the microwave into the water bath to bring the temperature up.

Eventually the water did boil, and I filled the first jar (an activity for which I was almost entirely unprepared, having misplaced my washcloth for wiping off the threads on the outside of the jar, forgotten to bring my lid-lifting magnet into the room, and failed to plan for the fact that there was room for serious drippage onto the floor between the simmering pot of tomatoes and my jar on the counter). I noticed that the tomato juice was very very thin and watery. Right. Because we'd kept the tomatoes simmering on low the whole time we were trying to get the water bath to simmer. We never took the lid off to let the tomatoes cook down, either. Oops. So we closed up that first jar and set it aside, and decided my dad could run out to the grocery store for more lemon juice (we weren't sure we had enough) while a little water cooked off of the tomatoes. We let the water bath bubble away happily, filled with six more quart jars. (I did not weigh the tomatoes before we started, so we weren't sure how many jars we'd need.)

I should mention at this point that the rack for my canner, which was in the water bath with the jars, keeping them off of the bottom of the pot, is already rusty and smells like old metal. I have used the thing twice, and I purchased it new a couple of weeks ago.

Eventually, my dad returned from the store and we pronounced the tomatoes thick enough to be finished. (Actually, we called them "good for more than just Worms," but Worms is a dish my mom's dad got kicked out of kindergarten for eating, and thus, is the story for a different blog post later.) As my dad pulled the jars out of the simmering water, and drained them, I began to notice that the white residue on the outside of the jars (from hard water) was also Inside the jars. My dad was convinced that this would not hurt anyone. (He doesn't cook a lot, but he did make pickled beets and canned tomatoes last summer, most if not all of which have now been consumed. And, like my grandma and my mom, he hasn't ever killed anyone with his cooking yet.) (I don't actually know anyone who has killed someone with their cooking, just so you know.) The residue creeped me out but we kept going.

Apparently my parents' water was unusually hard today. While I do not have a water softener, and there was a little bit of residue on my jars when my dad came up and we canned tomato sauce a week ago, it was nothing like what we saw today - and my parents have a relatively new water softener. And some of the residue had a faint brownish tinge, which I suspect came from the rustiness of the rack in the water bath.
See that residue on the jars? Eww.
But we did have good teamwork. My dad was in charge of getting the jars out of the canner, handing me lids, and, eventually, helping me get the last of the tomatoes out of the bottom of the pot. I filled jars with lemon juice and tomato sauce, and my mom captured it on film.
We added vinegar to the pot when we put the jars in to boil (five quarts), which I had read would help with hard water buildup. But I wasn't sure if I ought to have vinegar in the water while the jars were being sterilized. As I previously posted, I'm very worried about introducing foreign elements to the recipes I use, because I am afraid of botulism and other deadly diseases.

All six quart jars sealed (the first one I made sealed itself on the counter, after my mom and I had kind of given up on it -
and we felt a little bit of my grandmother's old wonder and awe at the sound of a metal lid sucking down over a glass jar filled with homemade goodness when it did finally pop) so we'll probably wait a while before digging in, and finding out whether we poisoned ourselves with rusty canning rack residue. (Things to note about the above picture: this jar spent significantly less time in the water bath, which may be why it is not covered with yucky white lime buildup. Also, my mom lacks a snowman plate, so she uses this yellow one for canning purposes. In the background are two jars of the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle tomato sauce we canned at my house on Friday the 13th.)

Next time I can tomatoes (or jelly, if I can get enough fall berries), I will do the work at my house, for easier heating capabilities and apparently softer water. My mom and I are unable to coordinate our schedules through at least the end of this week, but we'll see what happens next week. We may try to can some tomato puree, since I'm now a master chinois user. (Except I studied that Wikipedia article a little more carefully and discovered that Wikipedia actually refers to the device I have as a China Cap. A Chinoise is more like a conical sieve/strainer.)

Here is the recipe for the sauce we made today:
Ingredients:
One large tote bag full of tomatoes from the garden.
Dash of salt
Dash of pepper
Lemon Juice

• Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water until the skins crack.
• Core tomatoes and remove skins; cut tomatoes into large chunks.
• Simmer tomato chunks on the stove.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.
• They are ready to be put into jars and processed in the canner when they smell right. Seriously. That's how my mom knows. But for those of you who do not know what tomato sauce (for Worms) smells like: 15 minutes of simmering is a good length of time. Today we simmered the tomatoes with the lid on for probably an hour, and then with the lid off for another 30 minutes, trying to cook them down. But we were using the wrong kind of stove, you know?
  
• Pour into quart-sized Mason jars, adding two tablespoons of lemon juice per jar to ensure proper acidity. (If you use pint sized jars, add one tablespoon per jar.)
  
• Wipe the top of the jar, and cover with a vacuum-seal lid that has been in simmering water (but not boiling - that ruins the sealing material). Tighten a band around the jar just until your fingers meet resistance - not too tight!
  
• Process in a water bath for 40 minutes. Then turn the heat off and let them rest for 5 minutes.
  
• Remove jars from water bath. If the bands have loosened during the canning process, Don't worry. Leave them alone. My grandma will roll over in her grave if she sees you messing with those jars.
• Let the jars sit on the counter, or the kitchen table, or somewhere that little (or big) fingers won't touch them for 12-24 hours. If you want, stand nearby and listen to the "Pop!" of the lids sealing. Rejoice that your hot labor in the kitchen means rosy homegrown tomatoes in February. (If you miss the pop, you can tell it is sealed because the lid is concave, or at least flat - not poking up in the middle.)
  
• Store in a dark place. Apparently light affects the nutrient content of canned vegetables.
• If a lid fails to seal, the product is not canned and is not safe to leave out. Put it in the fridge and eat it very soon. (The Ball Blue Book has rules about re-processing the vegetables, but eating it now seems like an easier solution.)
  

(Note: I tried to find a similar recipe in the Ball Blue Book but couldn't find any, so the processing time I used today is what they recommend for canning raw tomatoes. If you like to use very watery tomato sauce for things like chili, and you are planning to use a pressure canner or a water bath, you could probably process your tomatoes raw, rather than simmering them until they smell right. But we don't know if that recipe has killed anyone yet. Just sayin'.)

Check back for an update on the healthfulness of this particular recipe after we've opened up a jar to make a batch of Worms.

Pesto, Pickles, and Mock Apple Cobbler

**My apologies in advance. This post is ridiculously out of order. I don't really know how to put it into a better order without deleting the whole thing and starting from scratch, but it is 12:16 a.m. and, as I do not have a tiny infant to keep me up whether I'm blogging or not, I have better things to do, like sleep.

After a long week of doing things mostly outside of the kitchen, I got back in the swing of things today. Here's my kitchen, with mock apple cobbler to the left of the stove, sauteed zucchini on the stove, tomato pie to the right of the stove, and pickles-in-process in the front.
Earlier this week I signed up for a "Pesto Party" with our CSA. I wasn't sure whether I should plan to go or not. I had a job interview on Wednesday for a job that would have started tomorrow. I had a second interview on Thursday. I started to regret having signed up for the Pesto Party on my last day of summer vacation, but then on Friday evening I got a voicemail from the Principal saying they'd chosen a different candidate who was "more what they were looking for in a candidate." They always pick that person. Some day I will be that person, right? Not getting the job was both good and bad. I wasn't sure how I'd handle the 90 minute commute each way (without air conditioning. In Summer. Driving into the sun both ways), I didn't want to leave our current house, or our current neighbors, or my little job at the museum. I didn't want to have to find a new grocery store. Seriously. That thought crossed my mind. I don't even like shopping at the grocery store anymore.

I did find myself at the grocery store this morning, though. (First I stopped at the farm stand, which did not have any large yellow onions. The vendor said the truck would be coming by in half an hour, so I stopped again on my way home and bought two. And a cantaloupe. Because you know what happens when I look for cantaloupe at the farmers' market.) I needed flour, sugar, Parmesan cheese, and milk. I did not need eggs, nor do I prefer to buy them at the grocery store (although I will buy their organic eggs when necessary) but I was relieved (?) to see that the eggs that this particular grocery store sells are from a DIFFERENT farm (CAFO) in Iowa, and are thus not affected by the egg-normous recall currently affecting the Midwest.

While I was home from the store by a little after 10 (and I'd even already taken Oliver for a walk), I didn't really have time to do any of my major projects for the day before heading out to the Pesto Party. So I ate breakfast, read a little bit of my newest book club book - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - and started a loaf of bread in the bread machine.

Michael decided to go to the Pesto Party with me, so we headed out to the CSA together, working on a New York Times crossword puzzle on the way. While they have had "come hang out at the farm" events in the past, we have not been able to make any of them. So it was the first time we saw the actual farm, rather than the shed where we pick up our share each week. We picked two ice cream pails full of pesto on the farm, with one of their "worker share" employees. (You can work four hours a week on the farm and get paid with a full-sized share, plus all the extras you want. I may do it next year, depending on what life looks like then.) Then we proceeded to make pesto with a bunch of other members of our CSA. We were instructed to bring a recipe, and all the ingredients we would need, except basil and garlic. They provided the food processors.

I brought a recipe that I discovered and enjoyed last year. At first I could not remember where I had found it, but then I checked Diary of a Locavore because it seemed like the kind of thing she'd write about. Elspeth posted this recipe last summer. (Let's just ignore the fact that I was probably interested in particular recipe, as opposed to so many of the others she posts, because I was excited to see her talking about her upcoming wedding - since I also had wedding on the brain last summer.) I think I made pesto mostly because I had extra basil from the farmers' market and wasn't sure what to do with it. I made a small batch, half of which I froze and enjoyed sometime last winter. Today Michael and I made three batches of her recipe. I froze two containers, and we dug into the third for dinner.


Washing the basil and picking the leaves off the stems.
Freshest Pesto Ever! (We did all of the work outside, so the pesto was literally warm to the touch when I packed it into the containers.)

When we got home, the bread was almost done and the house smelled delicious.
I had taken chicken legs out of the big freezer for dinner (thereby destroying any sort of order that was in the freezer, since they were the first thing I put in it when we got it and I have been haphazardly layering things on top of the package of legs since then) but realized they would still be frozen at dinner time, so I rearranged our dinner menu again. (The original plan was grass-fed beef stew with carrots, onions, and potatoes from our CSA but this plan occurred to me on Saturday morning at work. After I invited my parents to dinner and asked Michael to take the roast out of the freezer I realized it was already Saturday morning - not Friday, as I must have been thinking - and there was no way the roast would be ready to put in the crock pot this morning.)

We ended up having tomato pie for dinner, and the last zucchini in the fridge.
(We had our first tomato pie of the summer earlier this week:
I didn't have much cheese, but there were a few tomatoes that really wanted to be eaten. I'd planned to make tomato pie the week before, but never got around to it - because I stopped by the farmers' market in search of a cantaloupe.)

My tomato pie recipe is my own unique creation, so I'll share:
(Some day I am really going to make a real pie crust, since I am the proud owner of a rolling pin and all. But I must have had a hunch, on my way to buy a cantaloupe at the farmers' market last week, that I would really appreciate having a Pillsbury pie crust in my fridge, so I bought a box. Then I bought canning tomatoes and you know the rest of the story. I could have made my own crust this week, but the rectangular red box was still in my fridge, making me feel guilty for caving to the processed food empire. It was easiest to just get rid of the darn things.)

Bake a pie crust, according to your directions. (I baked mine at 425 for 12 minutes according to the package.)
While your crust is in the oven, slice some tomatoes. I used six Roma tomatoes today. Earlier this week I used four random tomatoes that were sitting on my counter. One was a canner that wasn't quite ripe last week. Two were Romas, and I honestly don't even know what the other was. You can blanch them and peel the skins off if you want, but it's not necessary, and I think it makes them much harder to slice. Sprinkle them with salt and let them drain while the crust is in the oven. (Draining them longer is always a good thing, if you have time.)
Shred some cheese. I usually use between one and three cups. The original recipe my mom used called for Gruyere cheese - which is yummy but pricey. I have used Swiss, mozzarella, muenster (pictured), and Farmer cheese (also pictured). Using a blend is best. If you have some good Parmesan cheese, sprinkle a little on top. (I used all of ours making pesto earlier.)

I didn't take pictures, but I also sliced up a small onion and minced two small cloves of garlic. If you have fresh basil, that is always a yummy addition. Today I used our freshly-made pesto. I spread a thin layer over the bottom of the pie crust after I took it out of the oven and let it cool a little bit.

Then I put a layer of veggies, followed by a layer of cheese. Repeat the layers until you run out of ingredients. When I was short on cheese earlier in the week, I only used one layer and it was fine. I like to put the cheese on top. But if you are in a rush and can't drain the tomatoes before putting them in the pie crust, put them on top of the cheese so some of the moisture can evaporate. Sprinkle a little bit of freshly ground pepper on top.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until brown and bubbly on top. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving. Seriously. If you can keep it around long enough, it is also good served at room temperature.
While I have definitely been enjoying my zucchini harvest, it does take up a lot of space in the fridge, and I'm not sure we need another loaf of frozen zucchini bread. Fortunately, Michael and I both really like sauteed zucchini. Usually we eat it as our whole meal, but tonight it was a side dish. I like feta on mine, but didn't have any, so I copied Michael and covered it in farmers' cheese. Okay, so I might have gone overboard with cheese on this dish - I got a little carried away while shredding the cheese for the pie.
My last raw zucchini. (For a few hours, anyway.)
Yum.

Oliver loves to stand near me while I am chopping/shredding zucchini. I think it is his favorite vegetable, and I always drop some on the floor - usually accidentally. Today I also dropped a piece of cucumber on the floor around the same time, while I was getting the pickles ready, but he was completely uninterested.

Here he is waiting for me to drop some of my dinner:
While Oliver was discovering that he's not interested in cucumbers, the other two zucchinis that had been occupying the bottom shelf of my fridge were happily bubbling away in the oven, as Mock Apple Cobbler. I got the recipe from our CSA and had to try it. I admit, I was a little bit nervous at first. But I decided to go for it. The worst thing that could happen would be the loss of some flour and sugar. I couldn't really count the zucchini as a loss, as there is plenty more in the garden.
As it turns out, we really like mock apple cobbler. If you didn't know it was made with zucchini, I think you'd believe that the filling was apple. I passed the recipe along to my next door neighbor.

While dinner and dessert were in the works, I was also working on another batch of pickles - this time I actually canned them. I had gotten a recipe off of the internet, but it worried me because it called for six large cucumbers and two large onions. I have to be honest, folks: I really dislike pickle recipes that call for a number of vegetables. Who's to say that my idea of a "large" cucumber is the same as the author's? A lot of the pickle recipes I've looked at call for numbers of cucumbers, and many of them don't even give a ballpark figure as to how many pints/quarts the recipe will make. Very annoying. Consequently, since I had the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving that my mom bought for my dad and me sitting in my kitchen (my dad brought it up when we canned the tomato sauce), I looked for their recipe for Bread and Butter pickles. It called for four pounds of cucumbers and two pounds of onions - and estimated the yield at 7 pints. Now we're talking.

I only had six usable pint jars, but I wasn't too worried.
I sliced the cucumbers and onions, layered them with salt, and let them sit for an hour and a half, covered with ice.
I got my canning supplies in order, and started cooking the vinegar, sugar, and spices.
When the liquid boiled, I added the cucumbers and onions and waited for the fun to begin:
I actually did the whole canning thing myself, except Michael took a few pictures, and he got me a cloth to wipe off the jars.

The picture that I have of the six finished jars shows one jar not sealed, but since I started writing this blog, the lid popped. So apparently my first attempt at canning on my own was successful. But the recipe says to wait 4 to 6 weeks to try the pickles, so they can attain their optimum flavor.

I'd say it was a good day in the kitchen.
Oliver wants to know when he gets more zucchini.

Oh yeah, a recipe

Sorry folks, it's been a crazy week. And I know there are hundreds of avid blog readers out there, incessantly hitting the "refresh" button at the top of your screen, waiting, salivatingly, for my tomato puree recipe to pop up as a new blog. (Hey, a girl can dream . . . )

Drumroll please . . .

Tomato Puree, My Way (with pictures - Yes, I am recycling pictures. No, I did not have time to make another batch of tomato sauce this week):

1. Boil water in a largish pot (not a stock pot, but something you'd use to make a decent sized batch of spaghetti noodles).

2. Blanch tomatoes, four or five at a time, until their skins crack.

3. Remove the cracked tomatos and set them on a plate or your favorite snowman platter.
4. If a tomato hangs out in the water for a long time and does not crack (like my tiny tomatoes, and the romas I used from our CSA share - not pictured above) go ahead and pull it out.

5. Peel the skins off and core the tomatoes. This should be easy. It goes faster if one person blanches tomatoes while another skins them. Be careful - they might be hot. (Some people dip the tomatoes in ice water first. My mom never did that step, so neither did I. It is faster and the tomatoes don't get waterlogged, but you do have to watch your fingers. Especially if you're planning keep them in good shape so you can dunk them into a pan of scalding water in a few hours.) (By the way, after a rough night where it literally felt like both hands were on fire, I woke up in the morning and my hands were fine. I went to work and helped small children make hide paintings My feet, on the other hand . . .)

6. Cut the skinned tomatoes into chunks and put them into a really big bowl, cutting off any bad parts first. (When I did this part alone, in the morning, with the first 15 lbs of tomatoes, I seeded the tomatoes and squeezed the juice out, according to a recipe I found online. I discovered with my chinois set that this was an entirely unnecessary step, and wasted time and good tomato pulp - especially from the romas.)

7. Grab a handful of tomato chunks, stick them in the bottom of the chinois set (wikipedia spells it chinoise, listing chinois as an alternate spelling, but I'm going with what was on my otherwise-utterly-unhelpful packaging), and move the wooden cone (kind of like a mortar and pestle, but with a sieve instead of a solid bowl on the bottom) around in a circular motion. I used the chinois set over a large glass cake pan the second time around, because it held more, and I didn't want to scratch my stainless steel pot. Not that I wanted to scratch the cake pan . . . surely someone out there has a better suggestion.) I thought this would be difficult. Since the chinois set came with literally no instructions (not even washing instructions) I was not sure what would happen when I put the tomatoes in. The holes looked larger than tomato seeds - I thought the seeds would fall right through. I tried a tiny amount of tomatoes (which didn't really have that many seeds anyway because I seeded the first batch) and put them in, mashing them around with the wooden cone. I didn't know what to expect, but was delighted to see a little puddle of what really looked like tomato paste under the contraption. I'd been prepared to take the chinois set back to the store (you can see the plastic bags that the pieces had been wrapped in in the background) if it didn't give me the results I wanted. I'd read one recipe that called for making puree in a blender, so I had a back-up plan. But I gave the chinois set a try, and was very pleasantly surprised. The chinois set worked, and I didn't have to use any electricity to get the puree. Very cool. (Getting off the grid is going to become my next big obsession, after I've fully conquered home canning and locovorism. Just so you know. But I digress.)

8. Continue this until your pasty puddle of tomato below the chinois set is overflowing, and pour it into one of several containers you have sitting out for this purpose. (Assuming you're going for the full 10 quarts.)
9. Load up the chinois set for another round of smashing.
10. Use your tomato puree to make tomato sauce.

11. Have some of your family over for dinner to sample the tomato sauce, to thank your dad for his help, and to show off a little. Make homemade garlic croutons from homemade bread to serve with your sister's homemade raspberry vinaigrette. Use your dad's garden flowers as a centerpiece. Take a walk by the river. Actually feel chilly for the first time all summer. Forget to take a picture. Oh wait, skip that last one!
Thanks dad! I'm glad I get to grow stuff and cook stuff with you. Next time we'll have to remember to eat off of our own pottery! (And take pictures of the meal.)