An hour's worth of picking yielded this bounty of lovelies.
First round...seven quarts of crushed tomatoes. I was so happy with the ones that I bottled last year that more of these were high on the to-do list this year. So far, I'm pretty happy with the 'Rutgers' tomato variety that I grew this year. This batch included a lot of very small tomatoes due, I think, to the high night time temperatures we've been having. Hopefully, once the temps cool a bit, more of the tomatoes will be of the large size. At any size, they are very tasty both fresh and cooked. And, I have to admit, it gives me a little thrill that I started these tomatoes out from seed back in January.
Seven pints of tomatillo salsa. This year's batch is awesome! Last year's was pretty good, this one is really tasty. I've eaten most of the approximate one cup left over after bottling. I'm planning on a couple more batches as, not only is it very tasty, but this picking was less than one third of the tomatillo crop currently ripe. I've also been researching chili verde recipes to make and freeze. Can't wait to try those!
Two pints 'pickle' relish from a new recipe. With only about a tablespoon overage in this batch, we didn't get much of a taste yet, but what we had was yummy. Mike was home when I processed these and he approves of the finished product, too. We sat down and figured out that the two of us would need at least 10 pints of relish total to get us through a year. Yeah. That's a lot! We both like it on hot dogs, in tuna salad and my potato salad recipe uses up to a cup per batch. I'll be making much more of this during this canning season.
I also made a couple of discoveries about canning this week. First, I can't possible grow enough cilantro to keep up with demand. I have a real love-hate relationship with cilantro. I think it smells and tastes like old sweat socks. I've tried substituting other herbs for it in recipes, but the plain truth is, Mexican salsas don't taste like they should without cilantro. So, I keep trying to grow it, but it's always already bolted by the time I need it. I guess I should be planting a few plants every week to keep a fresh supply on hand, but I just don't have room in the garden for that. I'll just have to keep running to the store for cilantro every time I make salsa.
Also, we're going to have way more apples and peaches than we can eat this year. Turns out, too many peaches isn't going to be much of a problem as Ben has rediscovered 'sploosh' and is willing to drink as much of it as I can bottle. Apples, on the other hand, are going to be trickier to deal with. I've been researching apple pie filling and applesauce recipes and will probably be trying out some new ones this year.
Last, I really just might be losing my mind. I was down in our food storage room grabbing yet another box of pint jars to fill, when I had the thought 'wouldn't it be fun to fill every jar with somthing yummy this year?' flash through my head. I put the craziness down to boiling vinegar brain-damage, but it does keep coming back. I think it would be cool to fill all the jars and maybe even have to buy a few more. Hopefully, that's just my overachieving OCD self talking and not some kind of divine inspiration about how high food prices are going to be this winter.
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