Get Ready, Get Set . . .

It's canning time!

When I left work today I had the nagging feeling that I was supposed to go to the grocery store for something on my way home. I couldn't figure out what it was, so I called home. There was nothing on the grocery list, but upon learning that our new neighbors were still hauling stuff out of their huge moving truck, I decided to go to the store anyway, to pick up chocolate chips so I could make a batch of cookies to welcome them to the neighborhood.

On the way to the grocery store I remembered that I actually wanted to go to the farmer's market today. (I see it as progress towards locovorism that "farmers market" and "grocery store" are becoming synonymous in my mind.) I intended to buy one cantaloupe, and one cantaloupe only. Our fridge was already overflowing with vegetables, since we picked up our weekly CSA share yesterday evening. (And there were still three different dishes full of cooked veggies from last week hanging out in the fridge, along with the rest of last week's cantaloupe.)

Once I got to the farmers' market I stopped by the booth (at the far end from where I had parked my car) where I had previously put in an order for 30 lbs of tomatoes. I just wanted to find out if the vendor had any idea when they might be ready. By this point in the summer, I realize that a garden/farm runs on its own schedule. I just wanted to be prepared. As it happened, the lady had 20 pounds sitting right there in the back of her truck, waiting for some lucky canner to come along. She sold them to me for $8, which may or may not be a good deal, I have no idea. My mind was trying to process whether I can actually make this canning thing happen, as everyone who has ever indicated any interest in helping me can these juicy red things has to be at work tomorrow, when the canning will necessarily take place.
I lugged them to my car, and went back to search for my cantaloupe. I heard two ladies at a different farm stand selling 13 ears of corn for $3, which was the best deal on corn today. I got a bag, of course. I lugged that back to my car too.
On my third trip through the market, I saw a table full of several varieties of garlic. I bought some garlic, because I couldn't resist. I had passed a $3 cantaloupe but was holding out for a better deal. Instead, I found a $3.50 watermelon that really caught my attention because I love cold juicy watermelon in weather like this. (Who doesn't?) I decided to get it.
I didn't make a separate trip to the car with this one. It was a good reminder that my kitchen can't hold much more produce than my arms at this point!

Even though I had much more than I'd come planning to buy by this point, I had to check out the apples I'd seen on my first trip through the market. I love apples. Yesterday I was reading about various ways of preserving apples, and it made me really anxious for fall. Here was a table full of apples in the middle of August!

Last summer the apples I bought at the farmer's market in late August/early September were Winesops, and were very mushy. I bought a few simply because I was hungry for fall. This farmer had four different varieties of apples, none of which I had heard of before. I asked him how he had so many apples so early. He said these are from summer-bearing trees. I asked if the apples were soft. He said they are softer than the fall varieties, but the Ginger Golds were pretty crisp, as summer apples go. I tried one, and thought it was pretty good. They are tart, crisp, and juicy. I bought a small basketful, since I really didn't have room in the fridge for a lot of apples.
Eleven little pieces of fall, ten of which are currently chilling in the veggie drawer of my fridge.

When I got home I unloaded what felt like 100 pounds of food from the car, tried to find places for it in my kitchen, and we went over to introduce ourselves to our new neighbors. I verified that the 9-year old boy does, in fact, like cookies. (His sister didn't stick around long enough to answer that question.) Their mom did not object to my bringing some over, so I came home, made a batch of chocolate chip cookies (zucchini free, because I wasn't sure how well green-speckled cookies would go over with people I'd never met or baked for) and asked my awesome husband to shuck the corn while I put water on to boil, and then washed and dried basil in preparation to dry it in the oven when the cookies were done.

The cookies turned out pretty yummy (even though I was short on brown sugar - I substituted honey)

but the basil may have gotten *too* dry.
before
After.
(Barbara Kingsolver's tomato sauce recipe calls for one cup of dried basil. I have lots of fresh basil at my disposal - from my dad's garden, from our CSA yesterday, and in a pot in my back yard - but I have never dried it. Kingsolver specifically warns against adding fresh veggies to the sauce, as I mentioned in my last blog, and it seemed really dumb to go out and buy a cups worth of dried basil at the grocery store, so I found instructions for drying basil online. I checked three different websites, which had a wide range of approaches, and went with the quick one - it said to put a pan of basil in the oven after you have cooked something at 350 degrees (and turned the oven off). I figured the cookies would do the trick. The instructions made it sound like the basil would be in the oven for hours (another site said to cook it at 140 for something like 10 hours) and indicated I should stir the basil ever 30 minutes. I took the basil out after 5 minutes because the sweet smell of basil was turning to a yucky burning smell.)

While potentially ruining the basil, I started boiling and cooling the corn to freeze. While the first batch was cooling, I ran next door to give the new neighbors their cookies. When I got back, this is what I found:
Oliver, the Corn Cob Thief!

After the third (and last) batch of corn was cooling (I cook four ears at a time, which usually gives me a little more than a pound of corn, then I portion it into quart bags, one pound at a time) I ran outside to get a quick picture of the sunset, although I couldn't really capture on our digital camera:

When I came back in, I spied Oliver near that darn garbage can again. He scooted away as soon as I called his name, but left his treasure on the kitchen floor. (I'm not sure if you can see it against our lovely linoleum - it is two squares to the right of the garbage can.)

The corn is taken care of, but I still have 20+ pounds of tomatoes sitting on my kitchen counter, along with a dozen quart jars and five pint jars. (I actually put off making pickles earlier this week because I was short on jars.)

(Don't you love my kitchen wallpaper?)

Time to figure out where I'm going to put all the tomato puree this recipe calls for before I cook it down into sauce . . .