zana16 | (no subject)

I got the first tomatoes from my garden today. *smiles beatifically* Yummmmmm....

Sir Now Appearing has pointed out that we already have trouble eating the entire CSA box every week even without the garden producing. Having never successfully grown anything before, I honestly didn't expect to get anything much. And, well, the asparagus never did come up (though we would have had to wait a few years for it to establish anyways), and the lettuce and nasturtiums couldn't take the heat, and bugs got the eggplant, and the black raspberries are dead sticks in the ground, and yet STILL I am contemplating the coming harvest with mounting horror.

Example: I planted one squash plant. ONE. I wish to inquire of the management why there are THREE squash plants currently growing over the rest of back garden. I don't even like squash all that much.

(Unlike

thefourthvine, however, I did not plant a pumpkin - thank goodness. Pumpkins should come in cans like God intended.)

And while home-grown tomatoes are, admittedly, better than 99.9996% of any food in this world, perhaps it was not the best idea I ever had to put in 11 plants. I honestly thought most of them would die! They always did before! Perhaps there's something to this composting thing after all...

So, if you are local and you find bags of squash and tomatoes left on your doorstep in the middle of the night... Wasn't me. :)

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If you are not canning, you can freeze it -- but it will take up a bit of space in your freezer. This is something to think through before starting. :)

Let me know when there are squash and I will wander over. And remind me about the puree machine, okay? I am not an expert at canning, though, so you will need to consult another source on that. We did it in such huge batches, back at home, that I'm sure the apparatus is entirely different from what is done now. The one bit of wisdom I can give you is this: don't try sealing cans in a pressure cooker. Doing that nearly killed my grandmother when the pressure escape value got jammed and the cooker exploded.

Eeep! I do not own a pressure cooker (they scare me) so I will definitely not seal cans there.

Canning is better than freezer cause our freezer is jam-packed. ...I stockpile food as a safety blanket; it is a problem.

Canning outfits do exist that are not part of a pressure cooker -- the process involves submerging the glass jars in boiling water for a specified amount of time, taking them out and letting them cool until the space inside the jar creates a vacuum holding the lid on, and then taking off the metal ring because it's not needed any more. I can consult on that. The part I don't remember is how long things need to be heated.

And I have a 6-quart pressure cooker that I cook with all the time; it is not the kind that could be used for canning. The kind that contributed to Grandma's accident was the old sort that had hooks from the sides holding the top on, and the pressure broke a hook. Next time you are over I will show you my safety-style pressure cooker (not in action), fyi.

I understand stockpiling food; the question is what kind of food and in what form to stockpile it. We can talk about this when I see you next. Are you busy next Sunday afternoon or Monday?

Sunday afternoon/evening is free, I'm pretty sure, and I'd love to see you. Would you like to come to my place, or shall I come to yours, or would you prefer to go out...?

C'mon over (and bring any squash you wish to have me adopt) and you can see Toby and we can watch stuff, go out for something to eat, dive through the cookbooks for canning info, things like that. Does that work for you? Steve says we still have the puree machine, so we can look that over too (though it may need *massive* amounts of cleaning; hasn't been used in a decade.)

Sounds good! We have no actual squash (yet), just large plants that are growing at an alarming rate. But as soon as we do...