What do you do when you have a lot of tomatoes around? The answer is whatever you can do like salsa or sauce, . My dad gave me a bunch and we have eaten some but it is time to finish them off before they go bad. To top it off, yesterday was a rainy day and something warm would be just the ticket.
The ingredients are simple and the technique is easy. I looked up several different recipes and kind of made my own. I coarsely chopped an onion and smashed four cloves of garlic. Those were browned in the pot. Then, I chopped up about 2lbs of tomatoes and put those in the pot after the onions were sweat.
After the tomatoes have cooked down, I added two cups of vegetable broth. That was to give me enough volume to use the immersion blender. I added some basil and some time and blended the entire mixture. I finished it off with a couple of tablespoons of cream. Be sure to taste for salt.
End Your Programming Routine: It is officially fall and the harvest is winding down. The rains are here and our annual frost date is within the next two weeks. It is likely the last hurrah for summer veggies. I paired the soup with grilled cheese and a slice of peach pie.
When I agreed to to take on this task, I knew that it was going to be tough. Now that I am done, I am happy to have this done. Let me say that I am worn out. I decided to do it all in one night rather than splitting it because of the the amount of energy it takes to get started. Meaning, it saves time to keep going rather stop and pick back up again.
Just because peaches and pears are done, doesn’t mean that I am done. I have basil that I am going to make into pesto and freeze. I have grapes that I am not sure what I want to do yet, I might make jelly or I might do nothing. I have my plum wine ready to start. Usually, I make applesauce too. I don’t think that there are enough apples this year to do so.
Today, I am going to talk about the process of canning for high acid foods, specifically pears. The two most important things are having everything gathered up and the sequencing of the steps. Meaning, this process can go much faster if things are moving in the right order.
The first thing I do is start heating the water for the canner (black on the left). But as long as things are heating up, get your syrup going (right, back) and heat up the scalding water for peeling (right, front). Have your workspace laid out so there is somewhere close to put finished jars to cool. In the right picture, I have the prep station setup including someplace to dump waste. I have the lids already off and the jars lined up so that I can move the funnel from jar to jar quickly and minimizing the mess.
I tried a new way of peeling this year. It involved scalding the pear for 15 seconds, and then immersing into cool water. In theory the skin peels of. I found that no matter how you slice it, this process was messy and time consuming. After the pears are peeled, I quarter them and remove the core and other blemishes.
As you get going, be sure to keep an eye on things going on. You may need to refill syrup so that sugar has time to dissolve in time to get the jars filled so that you don’t need to wait on that step to run the canner. Time in the canner is 25 minutes at a rolling boil. I find that I need to fiddle with the power gauge up and down to keep it going. The canner holds six jars technically, I find that I can do seven by putting one jar in the middle of the basket. Once boiled, I set aside on a towel to cool. Interestingly,
Canning works by two principles. One is that the sugar water acts as a preservative. The second is that the lid ultimately creates a seal which increases pressure inside the jar. As the contents boil, there is a slightly higher pressure inside the jar which drives oxygen out of the jar. It means that the jar leaks while the process is happening. In theory, the jars being submerged under water creates a ‘one way’ drive out of the jar.
I say all that to say that the jars end up sticky because some of that syrup boils out. Before storage, it is a good idea to clean off the outside. Sometimes I don’t and the consequences are that ants may find the jars in the spring. Of course they don’t get in, but they do crawl all over the place and who needs that?
I usually have a failure or two. With my peaches it was one jar out of twenty this year and I had one pear fail to seal. Those go into the fridge for short term consumption. Also, jars can break due to a temper set of glass. I never do this because it takes extra time and I always put my jars away clean but it is recommended to run the jars through the dishwasher before use. This helps with setting the right glass temper as well as cleaning.
End Your Programming Routine: Everything that you need to know can be found in the Ball canning handbook about $10. For free you can also supplement with YouTube. Since I grew up with this, I cannot each store bought canned fruit. It does take some planning, effort and commitment but I think that knowing how to do it is valuable.
I believe in transparency, especially in a forum such as this. Not everything can be bang on successful. Not only that, I believe in mistakes are our teachers. In the software industry we used to call project wrap up ‘lesson’s learned’ or using a fancier term ‘plus delta’.
So, look at the picture closely. The first thing you probably see is my dog digging a hole in the bed. Then you might see the bathroom addition that I just finished. Right next to the bathroom, there is a big pile of dirt (it is actually two piles, but the contrast in the picture is not clear).
What kind of plants did I end up with? Good question, I am still not totally sure because my kids planted the seeds in the tray. One of the tray’s was labelled ‘Rainbow’ which they explained to me was all of the leftover seeds mixed into one tray. I noticed that the cabbage tray was growing tomatoes, no peppers actually sprouted. From what I can tell, I ended up with two tomato plants and what I think are two brussel sprout plants.
There are two volunteer tomato plants that I let grow and they are the only thing that is currently producing. The brussel sprouts may have enough time to produce. I don’t think the proper tomato plants will yield anything because it is getting too late in the season. I had some volunteer dill come up as well. This is not exactly the bounty of a Victory Garden.
It is going to be pretty easy to talk about the things that didn’t go well, so let us start with what did.
I got seeds started and sprouted
I kept the seedlings alive from about mid-April until mid-June before I got them in the ground
Most of what got planted is still alive and if the weather holds out, may still produce
I got my kids involved in the process
That is pretty much the positives, now for some constructive analysis
I went from three beds to one, cutting the opportunity for productivity significantly
Because my construction project dominated my life for months, the plants stayed in the trays six weeks too long reducing their vigor and potential for yield
I needed to pay more attention to my kids technique when initially planting the seeds
The bed location is getting less full sun exposure each year. This year particularly also had construction debris all around, materials dragged over the plants and in general in the way of everything.
Some of my seeds are getting long in the tooth. In the past, I was able to get seeds from the library for free and I got kind caught flat footed with COVID and all of the shut downs, including the library
Despite my many issues, and what I consider a nearly wasted effort, I revealed my plans to come back stronger and better. I suppose the good news is that this effort cost nearly nothing. I spent a few dollars to retrofit my irrigation manifold so I could have all soaker lines in the bed.
The other good news is that my dad grows a giant garden and we got broccoli, cucumbers, corn, beets and swiss chard. Sometimes it is better to know a gardener than to be one.
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