Planting Garlic. 9.21.2021

Today I planted the first few batches of garlic. I bought two heads of a soft-neck Italian veriety, called "lorz". This is described as a good keeper, strong flavor, good grower, big heads and big cloves. I planted them in the half wine barrel planters that had the pickle cicumber plants until this week. I supplemented the soil with compost, wood ashes, coffee grounds, and eggshells. That made for an excelkent crop this year.

I also planted a batch of red skin garlic from plants that had survived from previous years. I don't know which variety. These are in circle planters basically in-ground. Same supplementation.

I also planted the largest of the little bulbs that I grew from tiny bulbils this year. Probably about 20 of those. These are the variety "Music", the best growing, largest and strongest so far.

The majority of the garlic crop remains to be planted, in one of the main raised beds.

First Rain since June 3.5". Freezing Sweetcorn. Canning Pears. 9.19.2021.

Today was the first rain since June. We measured 3.5 inches. I think it was needed. I picked more pears. I didn't plan to can more, but did after all. It took about 7 pounds for 4 one-pint jars. I ran out of commercial fruit-fresh and there was none in the store. With Covid Im only going to the store every other week, so I ordered vitamin C tablets and citric acid on Amazon. from what I read, 6 500-mg vitamin C tablets, crushed and dissolved jn one gallon of water, will prevent browning. So I used that, adjusted for just 4 cups. There was no browning. I also added 1/4 tsp citric acid to each jar, per an online recipe. Canned per Better Homes and Gardens Canning Guide recipe. I'm getting better at it.

I also harvested most of the rest of the sweetcorn, and blanched and froze 7 ears. Drop into boiling water, boil three minutes, transfer to ice water, chill, slice planks of kernels off the ear and freeze in freezer bags.

Red Peppers Harvest. 9.17.2021

I harvested the red peppers. There are still quite a few green ones. Most are serranos and Jalapenos, but there are also some cayennes. Ning grew Korean peppers. I started some hot sauce fermentation, one batch with Serranos and one batch with Korean peppers. After these ferment about 10 days, they'll be separated from the brine, pureed, some brine added for the right thickness, and kept in the fridge. The recipe: 2 cups water, boiled. While hot add 1 1/2 tbsp canning salt and 1/2 tbsp sugar. Cut up 2 1/2 pounds of the peppers, a small shallot, and 4 cloves of garlic. Place the garlic and shallot into fermentation jar, add the peppers, then pour on the brine. I also added 1 tbsp sauerkraut juice to the cooled brine before adding to the peppers, as a starter. I'm using water filled pplastic bags to seal the tops and exclude air until they are fermented.

Another Tomato Pie, with Improvements. 9.17.2021

I made some changes in how I made the tomato pie. This time, I used a pyrex pie plate. I covered the edges of the crust through blind baking and through the pie baking. After blind baking at 375, I removed the lining foil and baking marbles, and baked for additional 10 min. Five min might have been better, it was slightly more brown when I wanted, but was still great. I think this one came out looking and tasting great.

Squash Harvest. 9.13.2021

The squash vines and leaves are starting to turn brown, so I don't think they can give much more nutrition to the squashes. This year the vines produced about double what they did last year,and many of the squashes are bigger. Some are much bigger. I think the "Illinois" squashes look like Al Capp's Shmoos. Others in the photo are Pink Banana Squash (the big oblong ones), Red Kuri (like small-ish pumpkins) Galeux d'Eysines (Warty, salmon pink pumpkins) and some ripening zucchinis. I don't know yet what I'll do with all of them. The Illinois and Pink Banana squashes are over 18 pounds each. And there are at least a half dozen more to harvest. Puree for pies, freeze chunks for doggie food, roast, bake, make soups. No wonder they were a staple food for first peoples.

Canning Tomato Sauce, Grape Jelly, Pears. 9.10.2021

 I learned that home grown fruit isn't solely for fresh use.  Freezing is great, still home grown flavor and quality.  No comparison to grocery.  But freezing takes up too much freezer space, so it needs to be limited.

The jellies are also better than store bought.  I think even when sugar is needed, it's better in flavor and healthier than the damn high fructose corn syrup.  Plus the tree or vine ripened fruit is more flavor, and not fertilizing and watering too much also helps.

I made jelly from "Venus" grapes. Easier than expected.  I used the "low sugar" pectin.  

Using extra grapes, but leaving out the sugar, pectin, and canning step, makes for a very "grapey" flavored grape juice. So that is more benefit and less waste. I did this a few days ago. Canned pears, also last week. I made 7 pints. That's about what I buy for 7 weeks, so not too bad. Plus the same amount of peaches.

Last night I canned 4 and 1/2 pints of Roma tomato sauce. No spices or garlic, I add those when I use it. Per USDA recommendation, each pint has 1 tbsp lemon juice as a preservative. Also, they recommend pressure canning instead of boiling water canning for better quality and nutrition for tomato products, so I did. If the 1/2 pint jar is good on tonight's pizza, I can can some more. I'm not sure if that lemon juice will impact the flavor.

Tomatoes. 8.31.21

Some of the tomatoes. In this batch, there is Amish Paste, various cherry tomatoes, Dwarf CC McGee, Golden Siberian King, Improved Dwarf Champion, and a few others.

The Dwarf CC McGee was one of the most tasty. Sort of a tropical fruit flavor.  So I saved seeds from this one.

A pot of sauce tomatoes about to become sauce. The pear shaped ones are nonhybrid Romas. Most of the elongated ones are hybrid Romas. Those were also quite long.  I think those were the most productive. The Amish Paste were a little too juicy for boiling down, and not as productive. Their flavor was good. The Tyren hybrid were productive, later (most not ripe yet), maybe a little too dry, like green peppers inside with almost no juice, and have green shoulders.

Tomato Pie. 8.31.21

 I made a tomato pie.  The original recipe was from a "Cast Iron Skillet Classics" recipe magazine, but I made a lot of changes.  Recipe is below, how I made it.

Prepare  a crust for 1 crust pie.  I like to blind bake the pie crust.  I use the butter flavor crisco recipe on package.  For one crust pie, I do half- recipe but increase everything by 25% so I can use larger pie plate.  Also, I put 1/4 cup pastry flour into the measuring cup before adding the all purpose flour.  That makes it more flaky.  The original recipe did not blind bake, so either way should work.

I blind baked the crust at 375 F while the tomatoes are resting on the paper towels. (this takes some planning and is a separate recipe).  I don't let the crust cool, rather I start assembling the pie while the crust is still hot out of the oven.  To blind bake, I first refrigerated the crust 30 min, poked lots of holes using a fork, lined with foil and placed pie weights on the foil.  After baking 20 min, I removed the foil and pie weights and baked 5 more minutes.

I used a mixture of slicing tomatoes and sauce tomatoes, which are meatier.

2 1/2 pounds tomatoes sliced 1/4 inch thick

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup grated gruyere cheese (what I found this time at store was a blend with cheddar).

1 cup grated Pepper Jack cheese

3/4 cup mayonnaise

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon dried Italian herbs

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 cup chopped onion.

Place tomato slices on paper towels.  Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of the salt.  Let them sit 30 min.  The salt draws out a lot of the water.  I also lightly pressed some paper towel on top of the tomatoes to wick out more water.

In a bowl, stir together the egg, mayo, cheeses, Italian herbs, the other tsp of salt, pepper.

Sprinkle the onions across the bottom.  Add 1/3 of cheese mixture.  Layer with 1/2 of the tomatoes.  Spread on second 1/3 of cheese mixture.  Layer with remainder of tomatoes, then spread on the rest of the cheese.  "Spread" is a hopeful term - more like gently mush it around but don't worry about spreading evenly.

Cover the crust edges with aluminum foil so they don't burn.  Bake the pie at 375 for 50 min.  I actually check at 45 min and then every 5 min until it looks set.

I like to blend ceasar or garlic butter croutons to make bread crumbs, mix about 2 tbsp of those with 2 tbsp parmesan cheese, sprinkle on top of the pie and bake 5 more minutes.

I think this pie is even better the next day, cold.   

Cherry Pie. 8.31.21

I made a pie, using a batch of tart cherries from June. It was worth the effort. By freezing the filling with all of the ingredients already, assembling the pie is much easier and faster.

8.31.2021

The second planting ("Ambrosia") is almost gone. I've been harvesting it for about two weeks. Excellent production and flavor,,

I liked these very much. From planting seed, to harvest, was about 90 days. I froze 9 ears, blanched and sliced off the cob. There are still two blocks to ripen fully - "Delectable". I already cut one ear. The kernels weren't fully developed yet, but it was quite good.