Catching Up

Karen and Anna Kate at Circus World Museum.

Since I wrote my last post, I got a new very part-time, seasonal job as an interpretive guide at a local museum here in town. I also went to Indiana to visit Uncle Fred and see some darling little girls. And I have spent some quality time in the garden and kitchen, of course.

My dad and I planted fall crops of beets, beans, carrots, peas, and some lettuce, which I think I already posted. The beets and beans are definitely growing. I'm not sure where my dad planted the lettuce - that's his domain. I will check on the garden later this week and hopefully I will see some carrot and pea sprouts. I'm afraid it might be too hot for them, with temperatures in the high 80s and a heat index close to 100!

While I'm waiting for the new seeds to grow, I have still been hauling in zucchini and cucumbers, and the tomatoes are getting serious about producing too. I'm not sure whether I posted that we harvested the onions or not. They are drying on an old screen window in the garage. We pulled about 60 of them. I had already eaten about 10. Next summer I hope to plant more. 60 onions won't get us very far. I have already had to buy onions at farmers' markets a few times this summer. (Back before I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I liked to keep a couple of bags of frozen diced onions on hand because, like garlic, it is often hard for me to get by in the kitchen without them.) I still need to find a place in my house to store onions for the winter.

On Monday at work, the groundskeeper at the museum told me his wife was canning green beans. We swapped zucchini bread recipes, and talked about pickles. We had gotten a jar of pickles from some friends the previous Wednesday. They are refrigerator pickles, no cooking or canning required, and our friends had forwarded me the recipe. I had several pounds of cucumbers i my fridge and I finally worked up the courage to make pickles. I went to the store for jars after realizing I did not have enough containers in my house for all of my soon-to-be pickles. I also needed pickling salt and a few spices.

I ended up making 3 pints of sweet pickles (sorry I did not take a picture) and 6 pints of dill pickles. On the advice of our friends, I did not add as many hot pepper flakes to my dill pickles as the recipe called for. I also skimped on the dill seed in two of the jars, because I was running low. The sweet pickles were ready after 2 days, but the dill pickles had to be shaken once a day for a week before they were ready. I am planning to make another batch of both types of pickles soon, although we much prefer the sweet pickles. I am going to experiment with the dill recipe, maybe combining some other recipes I find online.

jars of cucumbers waiting for brine.

That night I also sauteed a huge zucchini for our dinner, served with caprese salad. I also made two loaves of zucchini bread. Instead of using my fancy recipe with yogurt and a lot of ingredients, I went with Betty Crocker. I'm not sure why the recipe calls for oil instead of butter, and I might have to experiment with that next time, but the bread was very good and much simpler to make, and calls for either white or whole wheat flour, instead of a blend of both.
Busy countertop.

Last week I also took a friend to the farmers' market. She lives conveniently right down the street from a market that is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, which is very handy! But she hadn't been to the farmers' market in years, and was understandably a little bit overwhelmed with the new type of shopping experience. She came prepared with cash and reusable bags, but shopping at the farmers' market can be very different from shopping at the grocery store. For instance, a vendor may advertise tomatoes for $2.00 a pound - but how does one know how much a pound of tomatoes is? At the grocery store, there are hanging scales that customers can use themselves to weigh produce. But at a stall at the farmers' market, sometimes the scale is behind the table, and only the vendor can reach it. Maybe you see three really nice-looking tomatoes, but are unsure of how much they weigh. Do you pick them up and hand them to the vendor to be weighed, and then gasp in shock and horror when you are told that your three plump, rosy tomatoes will be $9.00? At that point, do you hand over the money, or retract your offer? When vendors have green beans separated into little plastic baskets and the vendor asks whether you want a bag, should you be green and suggest the vendor just pour the whole basket into your reusable nylon bag, or should you let the vendor put the beans in a plastic bag so that they are protected from the rest of your produce? Do you pick your own leeks or do you let the vendor choose? (At this particular market, one farmer's wife loves to pick sweet corn for her customers. She also shucks it for no additional charge. Other vendors are more inclined to let you choose your own and shuck it at home.)

Fortunately, as I was able to remind my friend, the vendors are people too. I think they know that not every customer is well-versed in shopping at the farmers' market, and they are there to help! If you don't know how many mini cucumbers make up half a pound (the amount you've chosen because it is what you want to spend), just ask. I think most vendors will be happy to either give you a verbal estimate, or to actually put the produce on the scale. And if you're waffling about a purchase because you really don't know how to tell whether a melon is ripe, the vendor might give you a taste!

We had a very good day at the market, except that I got so excited about buying a cantaloupe that I forgot to pick up an eggplant, and had to make ratatouille with 2 lbs of zucchini and summer squash instead of one pound of zucchini and one pound of eggplant. It still tasted really good. (Sorry, no pictures.)

Partial haul from Wednesday. Corn, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers (not pictured) from the garden. Cantaloupe and onions from the farmer's market. The cucumbers and yellow squash in the background are from our CSA.

I had a busy night in the kitchen on Wednesday night. After visiting the farmers' market and working in the garden for a few hours (and freezing tomato sauce with my mom!) I picked up our CSA share and got right to work. I missed my book club, which was okay because I hadn't read the book. (The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. I noticed that one of the bloggers I read lists this as the book she is currently reading.) I couldn't get into the book after about the first 6 pages, and loaned it to my sister. (I read the first page aloud to her, exasperatedly wondered how anyone could read this, and was shocked to hear her say it sounded interesting. Later, I told my neighbor about this book I couldn't get into. She asked what it was. I told her. She called to her husband, "Katie says she doesn't like Elizabeth's friend's book. Can you believe it?" "Elizabeth" would be Elizabeth Eulberg, my neighbor's daughter, the publicist for the Twilight Saga, and author of The Lonely Hearts Club. Apparently Markus Zusak is a personal friend. Maybe I'll try to read it again when I get it back from my sister.)


Instead of hanging out in a book store, having good conversations with interesting people, I hung out in the kitchen alone, and made salsa. I had never made salsa before,* but we got fresh cilantro from the CSA and I had plenty of tomatoes, so it seemed like a logical thing to make. (I can't really remember what we had for dinner, but it was probably zucchini sauteed in olive oil with a clove or two of garlic thrown in at the end, seasoned with a little salt and fresh cracked pepper. I top mine with feta cheese and my sweetie puts shredded farmer's cheese on his.) I love salsa with mango in it, but have no access to mangoes, so I improvised with part of my cantaloupe instead. I diced some melon, chopped a bunch of cilantro, threw in the raw corn from my garden (which my parents said is not that great on its own, but it worked very well in the salsa), and a few squirts of lemon juice. I also added green onions from our CSA, and a few dashes of black and white pepper. I did not have any hot peppers in the house, but thought the salsa needed a little zing.

* In hindsight, I realized that this is not strictly true. I made salsa once in 7th or 8th grade at school in Spanish class. Senorita Speaks gave us the recipe and I tried it at home with my mom. I don't recall any of the ingredients. I do remember that it was a LOT of work, and I think it made several gallons of salsa, of which we ate maybe a couple of chip-fulls each.
We didn't have any tortilla chips in the house, but quickly remedied that on Thursday, and the salsa disappeared over the weekend.

In addition to bringing home lots of fresh produce on Wednesday, I also bought a water bath canner, a jar lifter, and other various canning supplies. I've been waffling back and forth about whether or not to can tomato sauce, or just freeze it this summer. Honestly, I'm a little bit scared of canning, which is strange because I grew up eating my grandma's canned pears and maybe peaches, canned jelly, pickled beets, bread and butter pickles, and lots and lots of canned tomato sauce, which, as my mother likes to say, has never killed anybody yet. Watching experienced grown-ups can, and contemplating actually doing it myself are two entirely different things. I read about people canning. I just found a new blog where a homeschooling mother of four cans a lot of different vegetables (and salsas). She makes it sound so easy. Her 10 year old son did some canning for a project for 4H at the county fair. Then I read things like, "old cookbooks are really neat to look at but don't you dare use the canning recipes in them because those people didn't know what they were doing, and didn't know what botulism was" which concerns me because the recipe in my kitchen for pickled beets (which my dad used last summer with great results) is from my grandmother. Heaven only knows who or where she got it from. Barbara Kingsolver gives a great-sounding recipe for tomato sauce in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which calls for a cup of dried basil. I would like to replace this with fresh basil, but she warns against changing any ingredients or adding fresh herbs/spices because you might change the pH of the sauce, and render it deadly. The homeschooling lady offers a tomato puree recipe and breezily advises the home canner to, "throw in a couple of fresh basil leaves for added flavor." Yikes. (It is safe to assume the homeschooling lady has not killed anyone yet either, right? - I will try to add her to my list of blogs I read soon) (One reassuring thing is that this homeschooling lady uses the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, which my mom bought for my dad and me earlier this summer.)

In spite of my trepidation, I have put in an order for tomatoes at my local farmer's market. Kingsolver's recipe calls for about 30 lbs of tomatoes to make into 6 or 7 quarts of tomato sauce, and I think I'm really going to do it. I'll keep you posted.

Later this week, after I pick up more vinegar and dill seed, I will be making more pickles. And probably a loaf of zucchini bread or two.