Canning Up The Summer

Today I stood in the kitchen all day long. Virtually all the steps on my pedometer today were counted between the sink and then stove. Its canning season! I got all inspired yesterday and packed all the kids up in the van and drove out of town to my favorite big farm stand and picked up four half bushel boxes of peaches, fresh off the trees in the orchard and then on an impulse nabbed two good sized boxes of tomatoes to boot. I haven't done any canning in at least two years....but I don't think I've canned tomatoes and peaches in longer than that. Bay Area weather is the best for canning.

It was warm today and with a boiling kettle going for blanching and another for syrup to hot pack the peaches it was pretty steamy....but it was nothing like the heat you have in the Midwest in August when you can all day. Its a blessed relief to feel the breeze through the slider and know that the temp is maxing out at 78 or so with extremely low humidity. I remember the way I would sweat right through my shirt and apron in my native climate on food preserving days. Its lovely to can here. The combination of personal satisfaction over the work, the ideal temperatures and the beauty of the gleaming jars in rows all full of produce is a pretty heady instigator. I was dreaming about adding beets, applesauce and dilly beans and maybe some canned corn to the stockpile. Doesn't that sound wonderful! I am part squirrel. I can't help it.

I was very pleased with how excited the boys were to help and how very directable and useful they all are now that they are a little older and there is no baby underfoot or strapped to my back. Everyone can help peel or sort of pack jars and they are all so proud of being capable and helping to make real food for the family. Ru even spiced and marinated the chicken for dinner for me so that I could keep working on the peaches!

We found four chrysalises for Anise Swallowtail butterflies on our street on the only wild fennel plant on the block....it was sticking weakly out of a chain link fence and leaning precariously down towards the sidewalk. We decided the cut it off and take all the chrysalises home and let them change in the more sheltered environment of our kitchen window. We have hatched out two of the four this week and released them into the garden, watching them fly off over our mammoth sunflower and the board fence and into the neighborhood sky. We are still waiting on the last two and hoping we are able to safely launch them all. So much fun to find a new caterpillar to raise and a new butterfly to hatch. I would expect that monarchs must be here too although I am not seeing them much this time of year. They were around a lot in the winter, in between the rains....a friend told me that there was a wintering cluster of monarchs on the palm trees at the golf course in our town this last winter and many years before. I have to remember to go look for them this year with the boys....apparently the gold course men are very kind about allowing adoring butterfly fans in to have a peek, even without a putter or a ball.



We've joined a co-op for the fall for homeschooling for the boys and I will be helping out as a teacher in the program too. We are going to give classical schooling a try and test our hands at Latin and history cycles and the learning of rhetorical method. I am most worried about teaching our kids to be big headed snobs who are no earthly use but most excited about the idea of them all learning tin whistle together, attending group field trips and giving speeches once a week in class. Classical Conversations will be a new adventure. I'm ready for a little more academic community here and a little more pushing strenuous goal setting too, as the boys get older it feels more important to me.

Golden Days On The Mend

Spending lots of time at home today. Nib has a ridiculous predilection to carsickness and this morning I briskly bundled him into the car to rush off to a bible study and ended up paying the price for my rumbledy driving holding his head over a toilet in the nearest rest area. So much for that outfit. I am really hoping that it turns out to just be a one-off, motion-sickness incident although I do hear that there are tummy bugs about. Boo. 

 On the upside, the weather is absolutely perfection and he felt totally normal again after a morning of work in the garden in which I weeded the strawberries within an inch of their life and the boys completely dismantled the brick wall in another part of the garden. Vitamin D is worth a certain price. I'm awfully glad that dry stacked walls can be re-stacked.

 We've been picking pears off a roadside pear tree that I discovered not far from the house, the flavor is wonderful and they are great treats for tossing in the car as we head off to baseball practices. They're also nice in the juicer, which means we can even find uses for the cracked ones that split when they fall from the highest branches of the tree.

I realize that sounds amzingly Ma Ingalls of me but it truly isn't. It takes no time at all to stop for five minutes and pick pears up off the grass and I haven't canned a single, darned thing this year even though I meant to with deepest intention. This is year two of my great hiatus from tomato sauce and canned peaches. We didn't even pick one peach this year.

 All the things in the vegetable garden were looking a bit past so I trimmed them all down a bit, thinking that I was beginning the autumn clean-up. There was a lot of material for the compost pile and some of the plants (the tomatoes for instance) were trimmed down to mere shadows of themselves. I was totally shocked to go out today and discover that they have all rebounded and flushed new growth such that they look like big full plants again. We are having a second round of produce! There's new leaves on the kale, the tomatoes are blossoming again and even the dahlias have begun  blooming all over. Never give up.

 We laid low today, skipped most of our lessons, read library books, took extra naps, played in the sunshine and watched Cheaper By The Dozen for the first time. I hate feeling anxious about the spread of germs and worrying about being behind but I do like the comfort of knowing that we are masters of our own schedule and if we so deem, we can take a day. I keep reminding myself that this is one of the biggest reasons why we homeschool. I cherish that lucky gift.

 I was just texting A and telling him to hurry soon (he's working late tonight) because any little family emergency is so much better with two. Isn't that the truth? Its so much better to go through crazy with someone who loves you. We have had real troubles in our marriage but I can honestly say, that we both feel that way about each other these days. Sometimes you need to stick it out, put in your time, read, grow, change and get help with wildly tenacious energy. I feel incredibly lucky to be going through life with someone that is a problem solver and a grower.

 I am off to kids club now, running all the non-sick ones off to enjoy their little pals and hoping that we have a quiet evening here at home. May the germs abate, may the hope rise and may you feel that you are over the hump! Happy Wednesday!

Some Like It Hot

Two of the tomato plants fell over yesterday. They're getting so top-heavy with fruit in this steamy, blazing weather that the turgid stems can no longer do the job. They've come to depend on a diligent gardener driving in stakes thicker than a broom handle to hold them up. Next thing I need to do is make a trip out to garden with twine to lash them to their masts so they won't fall into the raucous sea of cucumbers below. Those cucumbers of ours are going like gangbusters!

I had to pull the lettuce because it had all bolted up into hopeless towers of bitter leaves but the cucumbers and the watermelons (real watermelons maybe!) and squash of all kinds are taking over the ground in a crawling, spiky, explosively fruitful tangle. Every time I walk into the backyard there are more cucumbers to harvest. I have started a jar of refrigerator pickles and am dizzy keeping up with the munching and the jar stuffing by turns.

The weather is hot but not the blazing 90's it was a week ago where all you do is sit languidly in a dark corner in the house and sweat. We're having solid high 80's temps now and the garden is very happy as long as I water and the mornings and evenings are cool enough to be pleasant walking windows.

The boys and I are even enjoying a little yard play during the day when we feel buzzy or brave. And even Nana had a stroll in the middle of the day today, sauntering off down the block with her phone on a chat with a friend. You can manage to cook but the summer dishes do sound best, just a quick saute, no oven work...and salads...always a few of those on the menu as they sound better and better in this heat.

I think we're off to the beach again tomorrow...maybe we'll go north to Rhode Island or try some other beach we've never been to. We're drifting off into the weekend with dreams of picnic hampers, sand in every crevice, the feel of the surf and the scent of the beach rose swirling through our minds. Be well friends, be well!

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Poetry Friday: A Poem For Grace

A pile of Sungolds in my shirt

Happy Poetry Friday everyone! I hope that your weekend is beginning as sunshiney and full of promise as mine. We're packing the kids in the car tonight and hitting the road with a tent, a guitar, loads of good books, my paints and all the tomatoes we can manage to fit in. We're in the thick of it, tomato season that is, and what a beautiful season it has been this year.


I wrote about Sungold tomatoes this year, a variety that I really love, they're super sweet and a little bit tangy, very crisp skinned and just the most amazing orangey gold color. I wish I could send my dear sister-in-law a big box full of them. They were so fun to pick together last year at our CSA and it is such a really wonderful reminder to be gathering them here in my own yard and thinking of her. I hope that she gets to read this...I may have to send her a copy just to be sure.


Tomatoes for Grace

In December I ordered seeds for Sungolds
The only hybrid tomato I planned to plant.
All the rest were beefy, rippled heirlooms
Sungold, a golden marble of a cherry tomato
Was my one modern concession.
The seeds grew, in their little peat pockets
Drinking in the weak February sun,
There, on top of the sill-side radiator.
I bought another potted Sungold in May,
(When you think you can't have too many tomatoes)
There they were, so turgid and fuzz-leafed.
And so, I tucked it into bed, next to the one
I'd raised from seed and they grew up, twisting their
Arms together, embracing their round cages.
Now it is September and every day I walk
Out through the dewy grass and pick a handful
Of their shining school bus colored fruits.
They pop under my teeth just like they did in
Our toddler's hands when you visited last summer
I think of you, so far away across the ocean and
The way our laughter ran together down the rows
When we watched the baby totter after
A summer butterfly.

And this is last summer in the Sungold row, on the farm.

Such a beautiful plant.

And Grace herself. (often call her Penny here on the blog)

Well, I'm off to Michigan...I hope you all have a great week and that time somehow managed to hold still so I don't miss anything during my sojourn in the northland. Much poetic beauty can be found today at The Miss Rumphius Effect, the host blog for Poetry Friday. Drop on over, take a little browse through the offerings and maybe you'll be inspired to pen a few lines yourself.

Take care of yourselves, I'll see you all again soon!

September Time

 We are making our annual tomato sauce. First time in the new house, last summer I just didn't have it in me. I'm experimenting with a new method, no skinning, no seeding which means less finger work and less boiling, just a lot more slow simmering over the stove and the use of my food processor. The house smells amazing, ripe luscious tomatoes, top to bottom. We sat there, snuggled on my bed, reading for our Story Hour and it was incredibly cozy with the bright sunshine, the cool fall breeze coming through the open window and the warm, round scent of tomatoes drifting into every nook and cranny.

 Part of why I am making sauce today is because I need to use up our current tomato harvest. I only had to buy one box of tomatoes this year, half of my normal purchase, because I had so many tomatoes ready from my own garden. That felt like a great coup! We have been eating every which way but we're leaving town for a week in Michigan and we can't take tomatoes along since they don't exactly make good traveling companions and they sure won't wait quietly for us at home, at least not in a solid state. Heh.

 My biggest sauce helper this year was Nib...he was always in the kitchen and pottering around picking things up and poking holes in tomatoes and helping me make sticky orange footprints on the tile floor. Fun to have him becoming such a little boy and independent person.

 Otherwise we have been enjoying quite a bit of outdoor time, the weather is exactly my very favorite right now. 75 degrees, slight breeze, sunny. You can wear whatever you want and do anything from swimming to wood-stacking in weather like that. We're soaking it in.

 We've been doing a lot of painting around the house which I am am beyond excited about!We started by finishing the white walls in the playroom. Such a relief! I got really bogged down there. I painted the corner cupboards with a pretty terracotta inside and a smooth, new layer of gloss white on the outside. I am so pleased with the way they turned out and am so thankful to the friend who brilliantly guided me to this color idea. Gotta love it when people come over and you leave five inches taller and stuffed with great inspiration!

We've also finally painted the stairwell to the second floor which was all layered in retro, faux wood paneling. It is now a smooth, light taupe/grey with the beginnings of fresh, gloss white trim. I hope to finish the trim sometime very soon (I am working on it a little bit at a time in stolen moments) and continue the taupe on up into the upstairs hallway. I am somewhat addicted to the smell of fresh paint.

 This beautiful Siamese kitty has been slinking around our property from time to time, sometimes even slipping into the garage. I have always been rather taken by Siamese cats, I know that Disney painted them as villains in Lady and the Tramp but it didn't take for me. I think they're gorgeous. Is it okay to admit that I am considering leaving some bits of fish or a little dish of milk out for this kitty in hopes that I could lure it to stay around and curl up in the sunshine on our back porch? *wince* Don't tell my asthmatic husband who does not want a pet.

September is a good month and I'm excited to make a pilgrimage to my childhood home this time of year. I plan to swim in The Big Lake no matter how cold it is, roast a marshmallow, catch a fish and stay up way too late playing guitar. I am hoping to get the chance to take some pictures and maybe even log a few posts from way up north...I'd love to share my roots with you all. 

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Sundried Tomatoes, Sans-Sun

It's tomato season...we're rolling in them. I am to the stage where I have started packing a small container of tomatoes to take with us when we leave...just in case any of our friends want tomatoes. (Yay friends!) Almost time for making tomato sauce. I'd be all over it this week except we're wildly busy with Vacation Bible School at church every single day so, all other major accomplishments (hello Laundry!) are out for a while. Next week will be sauce week, and our counter will be splashed with tomato seeds, and we'll have tomato skins dropped all over the kitchen floor and the house will smell like tangy, sweet sauce for days on end, long after the jars are sealed and rinsed and making their way to the pantry shelves.

 But, I just couldn't wait to do something with tomatoes...they beg to be used, and loved and enjoyed. So, I decided to try making my own "sundried" tomatoes. It's been raining this week and the heat is finally down a bit so I decided to skip doing it outdoors (maybe another year) and just do it simply, in my oven.

Now, this week is insanity at our house so low key was really important if I was going to be working on anything at all. Is tomato sauce intimidating but you'd like to dip your toe in the water of food preservation and old fashioned home-making skills? Dry a few tomatoes. They're dead easy and so luscious good.

 I took some really beautiful plum tomatoes (from the Farmer's Market, not our garden) and sliced them in half. I laid them on a cake rack, to give them good air circulation, set it in a cookie sheet....and popped the whole shooting match into my oven on the lowest setting which on my oven is 150 degrees Farenheit.

They slowly, slowly wrinkle and darken and after a day or so, depending on the humidity, the moisture content of the tomatoes, the heat level of your lowest oven setting...etc. they'll be done! I rotated the cookie sheet around in a circle sometimes to make sure they dried evenly, and towards the end I checked more frequently so that I could start picking finished tomatoes off the sheet as they started to stagger towards done. I turned my oven off at night just because that's a long time of unsupervised cooking and I worried they'd finish somewhere around 3AM and then keep toasting away till I woke up and found them sadly dark and hard. When they're finished they're this sumptuous lipstick red, beautiful, just teetering on the edge of burgundy. And the flavor has intensified to a wonderfully  deep, zippy sweet...almost like fruit leather.

You know they're done when they feel like nice flexible, leathery dried fruit....nothing gushy left to them. I am keeping these in a ziploc bag in the fridge at the moment but next week...when all that tomato canning happens, I'm planning to take them up to the next level and try making this amazing looking tomato confit with them....slobber slobber slobber! I forgot to pick up a couple of heads of garlic at the Farmer's Market today but otherwise I have all of the ingredients ready and waiting...it's just a matter of time.

Garden Fever

Am having a major garden day. Time to make spring happen by sheer force of will. I just ordered my raised beds for our vegetable garden. It will be my very biggest veggie section yet and I'm extremely excited. I bought cedar beds from this company. There will be four beds: 3 feet by 5 feet and then a big pole bean teepee in the center of it all. I am imagining an idyllic little hideout for the kids in the middle of the vegetable garden + the perfect vertical support for Kentucky Wonders.  Here's a little sketch of how it will all fall out. 

I am so excited about growing pole beans this year. I usually grow bush beans (nothing wrong with them) but I just found out that pole beans produce supply and demand, for as long as you continue picking the fruit, whereas bush beans put out one big round of beans and call it good. I have a really pretty looking packet of triple color pole beans....gold, green and purple, all mixed in one seed packet. Can't wait to have that first summer dinner of tender pods with a dollop of melting butter.

I also started seeds for the garden this morning. We've got 11 kinds of tomatoes going (I'm not insane, I promise), eggplant, sweet peppers, lettuces, cucumbers, melons and even a couple artichokes just for kicks.

The only big things I'm waiting on are the arrival of the beds, and the removal of five diseased trees along the back border of our property. We've finally decided on a tree service and bargained for the best price we can so now we just need to get a date booked. Once the trees come down I'll be out marking out the paths, assembling beds and filling them up and maybe, maybe we'll finally be getting some nice warm weather. We sure are having a slow, cool spring. Last year at this time we had dandelions in the grass, and the cherries trees were in full bloom. This year we're just starting forsythia season and I haven't even laid down my crabgrass pre-emergent.

In the meantime, I have been watering my flat of seeds, sorting out the ones I'll direct seed instead, collecting cardboard for the bottom of my beds and buying what supplies I need to make it a gangbuster growing season. I've also taken to making long phone calls to my fellow gardener sister, Foxy and talking through my edible garden issues with her.

So far I have discovered the following brilliant ideas:

• You should hand pollinate your corn for better ear development in the small home garden. (Hah! I know the secret to avoiding those puny, underdeveloped ears!)
• Carrots crave steady moisture so you must water faithfully during the three freaking weeks they take to germinate and it helps to put a board over the seeds to keep moisture in the soil...just lift the board daily to peek for signs of green and when the sprouts show, take it off. (I think I tend to dry mine out so, I can't wait to try this) They also want soft soil to make long straight roots instead of gnarled stunted versions and apparently straight manure in the soil will make their roots split.They also love wood ashes so I know which plots will be getting our fireplace leavings! They are a cool weather crop so you can plant them before the frost free date, which I didn't know.
• Potatoes need cool weather too and it's a good idea to start them indoors if your summer goes above 90 degrees F so that they will have enough time to complete their growth cycle before it gets hot. (and yes, that would be our summers) I'm total ran out of the room to go start the organic Yukon Golds that were sprouting in my pantry when I found that out.
• Making crisp homemade pickles means picking cukes when young, soaking them in an ice bath, canning them within 24hrs off the vine and raw packing them in the jars and pouring in boiling brine to cover. (Aha! I hope to conquer the dill pickle and banish the mush this year. )
• Asian eggplants are more tender and thin skinned and contain fewer fibrous seeds than the Italian variety. Eggplants are my most recent discovery...I love how they melt in the mouth when cooked well.
• You can grow scallions in your garden using the chopped off roots from your grocery store purchase. Is that cool, or what?
• Watermelons will set fruit more readily when multiple plants are present. A single hill can support three plants at a time...they'll twine all over each other. The secret is that they are not self-fertile and you'll have much better pollination odds with several plants. So great to know! I also need to make sure I get some black plastic down around those guys as they love all the heat you can muster. A watermelon is ripe when the two small tendrils closest to the melon turn brown and the underside of the melon is a creamy color.
• There are a lot of options out there for supporting tomatoes that will work work better than the traditional and ever-insufficient tomato cage. See the following: Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C. Gonna have to figure something cool out.
• Beets are slow growers, just like carrots. Each beet seed in a packet is actually a cluster of seeds so you need fewer than you think you will when sowing. Beets like to be thinned...they need room to develop that big root.

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