Here are Friday's and Monday's harvests from our small garden, minus all we ate and gave away over the weekend. Zucchini, tomatoes, beans, red/yellow/green peppers, broccoli, spaghetti squash and a handful each of raspberries and strawberries await transformation. (No, the goldfish will not be processed.)I have a love/hate relationship with canning. Love, love, love to grown my own food. Love this small exercise of self-reliance, and the gratitude I feel during it. Love to have a taste of summer follow every "swoop" sound of an opened bottle in the winter.
Hate trying to fit canning in with everything else. It makes me a wee bit crazy. Every year I ask: why am I doing this?? Harvests are great until they take the upper hand in a do-something-or watch-them-die standoff, with no regard to your schedule. Counter of produce or counter-productive?
The hardest part, for me, is finding the big chunk of uninterrupted time that canning requires. I've already peeled and chopped the tomatoes from the picture, but have to wait until tonight because none of my pockets of free time today is deep enough to finish any processing I start. They're seamed by carpools, school pick-ups, appointments, piano lessons and waiting for a worker who needs access to my neighbor's house. Oh, and the family's meals. Almost forgot that one.
Still, if the squirrels can do it, I guess I can too. Hmm. Do you think they have squirrel carpools?
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On a related note, I've been so impressed with friends who have menus planned ahead. That's been a real struggle of mine. I'm more of a "pull something out of nowhere" kind of cook, which has yielded some fun triumphs, but is generally not worth the daily stress of answering my son's constant "What's for dinner?" when I myself don't even know yet. So, as a nod to Katrina, I've started a menu list of my own. Imititation is the sincerest form of flattery.
6 comments:
I can come help! Love your dedication to processing. I'm looking for peaches because it's our favorite winter treat.
I made your soup and it was a hit. Delicious. Thanks! Grilled Pizza? We may have to visit Saturday. I've never heard of that but it sounds so good.
Grilled pizza? I made that up when typing the menu. shrugs. It was a hot day -- I hate heating the oven. (Even the zucchini bread came from the slow cooker.) But I've seen it done . . . come on over!
How do you make zucchini bread in the slow cooker?
Katrina,
Ah, in a special pan with a vented lid that fits inside the cooker. Rival brand makes one called a Bread and Cake pan -- I think they stopped manufacturing them years, maybe decades, ago. I had a cookbook with lots of recipes for that pan and was intrigued. I bought one on Ebay, then found a second one at DI so cheap I just had to buy it. An alternative is to use a copper mold with vented foil, kind of like steaming a pudding. What size slow cooker do you have? Because I'd love to send you my spare pan and recipes! (My pan has fit in five-quart round or six-quart oval cookers.) It's a fun way to bake.
I'd love to try that. I have a six quart oval.
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