First Frost

The first frost descended upon us.  At 6pm I saw the forecast for freezing temperatures.  With only an hour of daylight left, we all went out to the garden and started picking.  We picked every pepper and cucumber and then got as many tomatoes as we could before it got too dark.

This morning we had buckets all over the garage. We dropped everything to pay attention to these vegetables.  I've learned that sitting in buckets in the garage does nothing to improve vegetables. 

The tomatoes were separated into ripe, almost ripe, and green.  They will continue to ripen in the house.  The ripe cherry tomatoes went to the table. Next week those orange ones will probably be ready, and maybe another week for the green ones. 

The canning tomatoes were also separated.  The ripe ones went into the blender and crock pot, just filling it.  After a full day of reducing, they'll be canned.  The rest will go when they are ready.

Even the peppers got separated.  The red ones will go into the dehydrator while we wait for the green ones to finish ripening.

In the midst of it all, we kept the apples going.  A friend lent us her food strainer.  She said it handles peels so we wanted to try it.  We sliced the apples up with a corer/wedger and filled the stock pot. I think it only took 15 minutes to wash, shove the thing down, and throw the apples into the pot.  After almost two hours of stewing, we ran them through this food mill.  Out one side came beautiful applesauce and pulp came out the other side.  My daughters took turns cranking the handle and I was shocked when it was done in less than 10 minutes.  Wow!

With the frost, we are full into harvest, but we have also started back to homeschooling.  God's abundance is mighty.  We laborers will try to keep up.

Apples: Day 3

It was another day full of apples and today will be too.  My daughters took turns with the apple peeler/corer.  When the apples are crisp it works like a charm, 30 seconds from whole apple to sliced up perfectly.  But every day the apples sit in the garage, even though it's cool, they get softer.  Then we have to do them by hand.

These applesauce days are developing a pattern.  Wash, peel/core, and throw into the pot.  We keep going until the pot's full.   It makes some muscle to stir it.

Some of the apples are going into the freezer.  After dipping them in water with lemon juice and salt, we lay the apples out on cookie sheets.  By morning they are frozen solid; we break the pieces up and move them into bags. 

Some of the apples are going into apple butter.  We put over two gallons of applesauce in the crock pot, added spices, and then let it simmer all day.  It sure is an easy way to cook it down.

At the end of the day, we started in on some eating.  Applesauce and cottage cheese are one of our favorites, especially when it's Christina cottage cheese.  Last summer we made several batches of cottage cheese and stored them in the freezer.  Today the first came out to thaw.  Oh yeah, it's worth it.

Aching Applesauce

Three batches of applesauce left us with 23 quarts to show for our efforts.  Applesauce takes a long time to make, or at least compared to just dumping fruit in jars and canning.  The apples have to be cored and peeled, then cooked, then run through the food mill, and then it's finally ready to can or freeze. 

In the past we've done applesauce from Jonathan's and Rome's and added some sugar.  This year we did Jonathan's and Jonagold's.  It's flavorful and needed no extra sugar.  I think it's a winner!

This weekend my daughters are making apple pies for a girl scout fund raiser.  We have Jonathan's Jonagold's, and Gala's but I don't know which makes a better pie.  So we did a pie tasting.  We did Gala's in one pie and a mix of Jonathan and Jonagold in the other.  After everyone tasted, neither one came out the clear winner.  Some like one and some liked the other.  Truthfully, they were both pretty good. 

Our day start started at 9am and we collapsed by dinner time.  My arms ached.  My legs ached.  My back ached.  And today we do it again.  Of our 14 boxes of apples, we only got through 2-1/2.  Today we'll do applesauce again, but I think we'll take the extra step of making apple butter.  I'm going to try using the crock pot. 

Time to get started...

We Are Home

After weeks getting ready and almost two weeks vacationing, we are home and readjusting to home life. Our vacation was a wonderful time away with all of our children, even our 20 year old came along.  We went to Yosemite, Disneyland, the Queen Mary, the Getty Villa and the ocean.

After a lifestyle of never eating out, we suddenly were eating at restaurants every day.  It was a visit to mainstream America.  I have spent most of my life eating without thinking and I quickly fell back into old patterns. I admit to even finding it refreshing.  Where was the food raised? I didn't know.  Who grew it?  I didn't know.  Were they treated decently?  Was the land treated decently?  I didn't know.  I scarcely noticed as I sat while others did all the cooking and cleaning.

My children didn't slide into non-thinking as easily as I did.  My ten year old twins commented as we left every restaurant, "it's so strange to just leave the dirty dishes on the table." My teenagers, who have completely rejected factory raised meat, maintained that conviction and mostly ate vegetarian.  However, at the Getty Villa they had free range chicken and our sixteen year old let out a gasp, "I can eat the meat!"

Although we ate out often, we still ate many meals in the trailer.  We had spent weeks cooking and getting all that food ready.  We had homemade pizza, wraps, and chicken strips.  We had homemade crackers, jerky, and dried fruit.  Even the oatmeal in the morning included some homemade applesauce from last fall.

Mid-way through our trip I noticed that I wasn't feeling bad.  I am accustomed to feeling a little off on vacation, not quite right in my stomach, and I realized that the homemade food we brought was probably the reason for the difference.  I got enough good food to keep my system in balance.

Now that we are home, I am relearning and rethinking all of the choices we have made.  It was so easy to just eat what was put before us.  I went a long time without the daily work in the kitchen.  Now I am readjusting to the time every day in the kitchen.  Dishes have to be washed and counters cleaned.  Dinners require thinking and planning and cooking.

I'm also reexperiencing the depth of flavor our lifestyle provides.  Tonight we had chicken with such rich chicken flavor that it barely needed salt.  At lunch we savored whole wheat rolls with homemade butter.

I heard that part of the idea of the Slow Food movement is the privilege of participating in food preparation.  That certainly isn't a typical American idea.  It got me thinking... Do I work so hard at cooking our own food because it is right or because we just can't afford a servant?  If we could afford to pay someone else, would I still do it?

But now we are back.  The garden has been ignored for too long and needs attention.  The cows were happy to have us back.  Christina's udder looks all sucked up inside her; nice and dry and no imminent calf.  And we just got 14 boxes of apples.  Today we turn them into applesauce, apple butter, and frozen packages for pie.