garden to kitchen

 

:: roasted tomatoes (with garlic and herbs) for the freezer~ to become the base of a rich and tasty sauce some winter day.  I will say I was shocked when the five pounds of tomatoes shrunk down to fill one quart freezer bag not quite all the way.  I shouldn't have been shocked, not if I'd really given it much thought, but still.

:: I've been stockpiling our sungolds for a few days, aiming to make a tomato jam recipe (one I found on Food in Jars) just about exclusively out of sungolds.  I figure I can probably use a bit less sugar given how super sweet these little golden orange orbs are.

:: we turned most of our basil into 5 jars of pesto. yumyumyum.

:: I am picking okra daily and waiting until I have enough to make at least a few pints of pickled okra.

:: the beets, however, got pickled even though what was left in the ground amounted to a whopping one! pound!  I divided the recipe I had (which called for ten pounds of beets) by ten and turned out a pint and a half of ruby red goodness and canned them alongside a few more jars of dilly beans.

:: we decided to keep about half of our garlic (the largest and hardiest looking bulbs) out on the shelf and preserved the rest, raw, in vinegar.  the woman who shared the method we used says they taste fresh when you rinse the vinegar off because the oils in the cloves keep a lot of the vinegar from soaking in.  well, I've had pickled garlic, and while I like it, that's not what we were going for here, so we'll see.

:: we got a total of, I think, nine apples from our tree this year.  a few have been munched and the remaining six are destined to become a pie any day now.

and that's the kitchen, this week.