Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Seasonal Delights

As late summer and early fall come upon us, we always get into our hunting and gathering mode and start collecting lugs of tomatoes and other fresh vegetables from the garden to sauce, chop and blanch for the freezer. Nothing like some fresh tomato marinara, sweet corn from the cob, local peaches, etc. to give one the taste of summer during a snow storm in January.

We went out to our local farmers market and got 50 pounds of these.............
...then, for the next two days, we threw them into boiling water to get the skins to come off easier........
.......the peeling and seeding took so long we got the pruney finger syndrome..........
........crushing the tomatoes in the food processor. We did so many, the counter started to look like someone had been murdered in the kitchen........
........we added fresh herbs from the garden, spices, carrots and lots of love to the double pots of crushed tomatoes........
.........some of the finished product. We also made up jars of plain chopped tomatoes to use in other recipes over the winter. We went around the neighborhood sharing jars with our neighbors. The rest went into our freezer for use over winter.
Some of the organic vegetables harvested from our own garden: kale and carrots
Something we cooked up using the fresh vegetables from our garden. Nothing tastes better than fresh, organic produce picked fresh from the vine. YUM!
Stay tuned for exciting news about our new laying hens in my next post. Yes! We have chickens!!