Batch #2

Using every spare moment I had today, between picking up the farm share, running to the store twice, and driving around for both the children, I managed to make another batch of applesauce, this time with brown sugar because I don't yet want to open the new bag of white sugar. Plus I am making this Sicilian-Style Fish Stew with fish my brother-in-law gave me that he caught, and changing pretty much everything else. No golden raisins? How about barberries? No onion? Use a leek! Add escarole!

Soup, Pie, and More Soup

Today started out rainy and cold.  It felt like a good day for soup, and I had two soup projects waiting for just such a day!

First I made a batch of that escarole soup, using a head of escarole from the farm.  Saute a package of sweet Italian sausages with minced garlic (2-4 cloves), then add 2 pints of stock and the escarole.  Let that simmer for about 10 minutes or so and add a can of cannellini beans.  Flavor the broth with parmesan cheese and serve with good bread.  That was lunch.  For three of us.  The 9 year old asked for homemade chicken noodle soup instead.  I just happened to have a quart in the freezer so I heated that up as well.

After lunch, I made a triple batch of Icelandic Lamb Soup using up a lot of farm share vegetables:  all the turnips, 4 potatoes, 3 leeks and a head of cabbage.  After removing the bones and returning the lamb to the pot, it's sitting overnight in the fridge.  Tomorrow I'll skim off the fat and can some and the rest will be dinner.

Very tall pie. I also made a strawberry jam tart.

Lastly, I made an apple pie, finally, with some of the apples from when we went picking a few weeks ago.  The apples must have been much larger than usual because although I used the same number of apples (9) the pie is so tremendously tall.  It looks like one of the pies we used to get a restaurant called Gregg's in Rhode Island - they were at least a foot tall!

There's more to do:  I need to make a batch of chicken stock, and can the juice I made the other day (some of which went into this morning's smoothies, which were wild blueberries +/- banana, homemade yogurt, local honey, and foraged mixed juice (grape, autumn olive, elderberry, crabapple)).  And, someday, I'll do tomato sauce again.  I have 5.5 gallons of tomatoes taking up space in my freezer.

Hardly Making a Dent

You should see my fridge.  Not only is the vegetable drawer stuffed with produce, the bottom 2 shelves are stuffed as well.  AND there is more in a basket on the table - all the squashes and potatoes and tomatillos.  Today I made another triple batch of eggplant caponata which came to 7 pints.  This is now in my gift stash.

A friend moved to a house that used to have a vineyard attached and has a lot of residual grape vines - Zinfandel and Concord, mostly.  Those Concord grapes were so sweet!  We brought home a bunch over the weekend and I've extracted almost 2 quarts of juice.  Later today I plan to heat it up, add sugar, and then put it back in the fridge for the kids to drink.  Grape juice is a bit of a novelty, since usually I don't buy juice.

Tonight for dinner I am going to make a soup with the head of escarole I got from the farm.  That'll be something new for us, and it'd be nice to eat some of the greens instead of giving it all to the bunny!