When the Garden Pelts You with Food...

This weekend has been all about managing great piles of vegetables. Most of the veggies have been from our own yard, and some are from the little farm where we volunteer on Saturday mornings.

Our one cherry tomato plant, a Super Sweet 100, has been pouring on the steam, and we’ve been having trouble keeping up with the ripe, sweet little fruits, so one of the jobs for today was picking a bunch of tiny green tomatoes for pickling. Just minutes ago, I pulled four pint jars of pickled cherry tomatoes out of the water-bath canner.

Yesterday, I made and preserved in jars a batch of tomatillo sauce. Four half-pint jars of the tart green sauce have been added to our cupboards as a result.

Joe started a gallon-sized batch of brined pickles that is mixed cucumbers and green tomatoes. He also started a pint of fermented hot sauce with a beautiful pile of ripe, red, cowhorn peppers.

The dehydrator has been filled, emptied, and refilled with slices of tomato and with chopped peppers (a mix of both hot and sweet).

I skinned and seeded a big bowl of ripe tomatoes, roasted them in the oven until I could smell them turning sweeter, and then let them cool. Those are in the freezer now. They mostly filled a quart freezer bag. I strained the juice out of the skins and seeds and froze the juice, too.

Out at the garden-farm, we found a couple of hilariously large zucchini, and I brought those home to seed, peel, and shred. I made a couple of loaves of zucchini bread using 2 cups of the shredded zucchini. I froze the rest, measuring out two cups to each freezer bag, so those will be ready for making more zucchini bread later in the year.

The four bags (8 cups) of shredded zucchini joined four bags from a couple of weeks ago, from other over-large zucchinis that we had uncovered out at the garden farm then.

Also today, Joe cooked crowder peas that had been harvested last summer, using the solar oven that he placed out in the front yard. The owner of the garden farm has planted what we are sure will be a superabundance of crowder peas, so we are trying to use up the last of the previous harvest.

Our younger son, who recently moved back home, has cut up some okra and is frying it to add to our supper.

We are incredibly fortunate to have this abundance of good food! The garden is some work, but the rewards are great.

Hope all the other gardeners out there are enjoying the harvest!