Pickle Relish

Last year I made this recipe for golden pickle relish and it won first place in the Topsfield Fair. No pressure or anything....

Yesterday I mixed 6 cups of cucumbers, 2 cups of red onions (Red Long of Tropea, to be exact) and 2 cups of chopped green bell peppers with salt and let it all sit. Today I drained the veggies, mixed up the spices, sugar and Clear-Jel with vinegar and brought it all to a boil, then added the veggies, boiled again, and put it into jars. I used 5 8-ounce jars and 7 4-ounce jars, so I could start this year's gift stash.

Also, I started another gallon of yogurt. I've lost count, this is either batch 6 or 7 from that original packet of starter.  It'll be ready tomorrow.

Quick Batch

Today's farm share pick up was interrupted by a massive thunderstorm...

While I was getting the already picked items, it was getting darker and darker and thunder was rumbling. I was told it had been rumbling for over an hour, so I figured I still had time. I went out to pick 2 quarts of green beans. The lightning was getting closer and closer! Just as I was finishing with the beans, the first large drops began to fall. Most of them missed me, they were so sparse. I started walking to my car, wondering if I could get the 1/2 pint of blackberries or maybe some dill flowers. By the time I got to the dill field the drops were coming more frequently. Halfway back to my car, the sky just opened. Whoosh. I was soaked in 3 minutes flat.

Once in my car I drove home, wondering if I was going to end up like those people you read about who have a tree fall on their car. They were really waving around in the wind! Fortunately, I made it home without incident and, by the time I got to my town, the rain had stopped. My husband wasn't as lucky; he was about to head home on his bike when the hail arrived. He ended up taking the subway.

After dinner I made 2 pints of dilly beans with 1 quart of the green beans. The other quart will be for dinner tomorrow night. For tonight's dinner I was able to use most of the farm share in the form of potatoes and salad. All that is left are a few cucumbers and carrots, one bell pepper, a head of garlic and some cabbage. Where did the rest of it go?  Into a batch of golden pickle relish, the same recipe which won first place last year in the Topsfield Fair. (For fair purposes, 6 cups cucumbers, 2 cups green pepper, and 2 cups red onion.) The vegetables are resting with salt until tomorrow and I'll finish the batch then.

Gearless!

Drinking some water off a mint leaf.

The last time I went into the hive I misplaced one of the spacer bars and I've been meaning to put it back in the right spot. However, I haven't really wanted to bother the bees, who are still transitioning through their various roles. Frequent peeks through the window have revealed that the combs are getting larger and they have been working on a new comb, although I don't see any evidence yet of honey or brood in it. Anyway, it was nice out today and I thought it might be a good time to fix that spacer but I didn't want to put on all the protective equipment. I figured, it was a small job, maybe I could go without the gear? Turns out, I could! I don't think I'd pull out a whole comb without gear or harvest honey or anything, but I can make a small tweak without too much fuss. That is nice to know.

Tonight for dinner I made the chicken tortellini with alfredo sauce but I ground up some kale in with the eggs so the sauce was green and full of kale. Even the 10 year old ate it, in small quantities. We also had sautéed zucchini, onion and garlic scapes to mix in, and the last of the carrots and most of the cucumbers from the farm share. I'm left with some turnips, one onion, 2 small cucumbers, cabbage and Napa cabbage, and a small amount of Swiss chard. The rabbit eats the chard and the regular cabbage so he's good for a few days at least!

Oh, and exciting news! We ate a few grapes off my Concord grape vine after dinner - they are ripening and we'll get at least a few more before the squirrels do, I hope.

More Baking Than Canning

In addition to our weekly farm share, sometimes our mason drops by with vegetables from his fabulous garden. Usually zucchini is one of the things he brings (along with celery, green beans, basil, tomatoes, peppers and sometimes eggplant - it's really quite wonderful) and they're generally the very big ones. Each one makes about 3 cups of shredded zucchini, which means they are perfect for chocolate zucchini bread. Since I had 2, the other day I made a double batch - 4 loaves. Do you know why this recipe is so great? Because the 10 year old asks me to make it. Knowing full well there is zucchini in it.

One loaf went to my next door neighbors who had just returned from a month away. Another went to the construction workers in front of our house. They are replacing the water main on our street with a new 3-foot diameter main, complicated by old pipes, traffic, heat, and the fact that the entire neighborhood is mostly ledge. For the past week I've had to either make a date with them to leave my driveway or get my car out really early and leave it out on a side street all day. Anyway, they've been super nice. I brought a loaf of the bread to them, and said they could leave the plate on my steps when they were done. Not TWO MINUTES later, the foreman appeared at my door with an empty plate. I was highly amused.

The other two loaves were for us, and one was finished that day - eaten for both breakfast and dinner. See, it's a vegetable, right? So it's perfectly fine for dinner!

Last night we'd stopped by the local peach farm so I bought a quart of "seconds" as well as a quart of peaches for eating. I made the seconds into a peach cobbler which we ate for dessert. (Note to self, use the 9x13 dish, not the Corningware.) We tried it with the spruce ice cream - not bad, but I think I might like to try it with the wintergreen ice cream instead. If there is any left by the time I get home from work today!

Pickles from the Farm Share

This week, I needed to get the farm share early. We are still working through last week's share, but there's not too much left. Mainly just the greens, which take time. Today's share consisted of another head of garlic, 2.5 pounds potatoes, 1 bunch carrots, 1 bunch spring onions, 2 pounds zucchini, 3 pounds cucumbers, 4 turnips, a head of fennel, and some flowers. First thing I did when I got home was start a half-batch of bread and butter pickles, using almost all the cucumbers, the spring onions and 2 heads of garlic (I had one from last week).  After dinner and their 3.5 hour soak in salt, I made the pickles, using the same recipe for "Old Fashioned Bread and Butters" on page 95 in The Joy of Pickling. For fair purposes, as I intend to enter the 2 half-pint jars in the fair, there were 7 pickling cukes (just under 3 pounds), 2 heads of garlic and 5 spring onions (10 oz).

For dinner, I sautéed zucchini and carrots with scallions and a shallot and served them over chicken tortellini and a homemade alfredo sauce (2 eggs, 1 pint light cream, some pepper and nutmeg, and parmesan cheese, simmered until thick) and topped with shredded fresh basil. Fairly easy and quick, and everyone loved at least part of it - as you can imagine, the 10 year old had issues with the cooked vegetables. But did eat the cucumber and raw carrots at least...

So Plentiful!

Last year, we missed blueberry season by being out of the country. A reasonable excuse, but it meant that we were close to running out of wild blueberry jam. As in, we had one jar of sauce and no jam left!

Overall, this year has been fantastic for berries, and the blueberry patch was no exception. I think it has to do with how harsh a winter it was combined with the really beautiful weather we've had in the last month. Every different tree seems to have gone crazy with their respective seeds, fruits or flowers. In the past, we've had to roam all over our preferred picking area for 3-4 hours to get 4 quarts of berries. Today it took us 2.5 hours and we hardly moved; I think we stayed in a 50 foot by 50 foot region. We filled our containers all the way to the top, so in all we netted about 4.5 quarts.

Getting up so early in the morning not only beats the heat of the day, but because there are fewer people around, you can hear the birds and insects as they call to each other. In the distance are strains of music and the occasional shriek of laughter coming from the beach at the lake in the center of the forest. Every once in a while I'd hear the high pitched whine of a fly or the medium toned buzz of a bumble bee. Once a dragonfly passed by with it's lower, lazy sounding hum. We picked mostly in silence, enjoying the morning.

After we got home, I made a batch of blueberry muffins and set aside 4 cups of berries for the freezer. I still have 3 cups left over from 2013, which are going to get used up first. Everyone ate a few handfuls of berries and, with the remaining 12 cups of berries, I made 2 batches of blueberry jam with powdered pectin. I think this might be the first time I didn't use liquid pectin for this so I ended up having to use more blueberries in order to get enough jam to last us for the year. Or two. Who knows what next year's harvest will be?

Very, Very Patient

When we first saw this recipe for Wintergreen Ice Cream on Hank Shaw's blog, in 2012, my elder child asked if we could make it. Yes, I said, when we have enough wintergreen berries. And when I have (or find) my ice cream maker. The project got put on the back burner and even when we finally amassed enough berries (it took over a year and many different locations; I stored the berries in the freezer) I never got my act together.

Today I picked up that (now) 13 year old from a week of camp and it seemed like the right time to make this. Actually, I started around 6 am and had the base all made and in the fridge before we had to leave and get the child. After we got home, I put the base in the ice cream maker and let it do its thing for 30 minutes. When it was done, I poured the ice cream into a washed out ice cream carton and folded in chocolate chips that I'd run through a little chopper thing (Black & Decker, 1.5 cup chopper. Really useful.). It was the same chopper thing I used to chop up the frozen wintergreen berries. I chose not to strain the ice cream, hoping for a little pink color. It's a little bit pink. Not very. That's fine.

The recipe called for 2 ounces of berries, after making the ice cream I think I have an ounce left. Maybe I'll collect some more this fall and make this again. It's really a nice flavor. The 13 year old loved it, as did the rest of us. Sorry it took so long to make it!