August 10, 2009: A Day in Granny's Life

*Warning, the following is a typical day in my life. It's more like a book than a blog, but my days are quite long!*

I crawled out of bed this morning, not really looking forward to tackling the table full of tomatoes from last night. I did, however, really want to make some more sweet, spicy Chili Sauce. That stuff is just so good poured over steak or hamburger patties with caramelized onions, and allowed to simmer a bit.

First, I had to get dressed and go out to the garden. I told KitsapFG I'd try to do a taste test on the different varieties of tomatoes I'm growing, so I took my "tomato map" and a sharpie pen, and headed for the tomatoes. I tried to find a ripe one on each vine, but I'd just picked them last night and didn't get the best specimens. I marked each one with the pen, and as they ripen, I'll do the taste test and report back.

Back inside, I got a pot roast and veggies in the crockpot so dinner would take care of itself, then I brought in the baskets full of tomatoes.

First I had to peel, core and chop 16 cups of tomatoes. I also squeezed out most of the seeds for this batch of sauce (optional). After adding chopped bell peppers, onions, sugar, vinegar and spices, it was put on the stove to simmer. This is what it looked like after the first hour of cooking. You can see, by the line on the pot, just how much it had boiled down at this point.

After two hours of simmering, it was thick and ready to can.

The jars were sterilized in boiling water, the lids were kept warm on the stove, and the lids and utensils were ready to go. The hot jars were filled with sauce, capped and lowered into the boiling water bath, where they would spend the next 15 minutes.

Due to the size of the stock pot I use as a canner, I could only get six wide mouth pint jars in it. I found a skinny 1-1/2 pint jar that would fit in with the others, and a really short half-pint jar that could piggy back on one of the shorter pint jars. So I ended up with eight pints of sauce.

I still had a lot of tomatoes left, so I boxed up ten pounds of them and had Mr. H take them to an apartment building downtown, where there are a lot of disabled and low income residents. I think they will enjoy some vine ripened, fresh tomatoes. I also have a box of the extra-good heirlooms to send over to my neighbor, Pat, along with the dozen jar rings I had to borrow from her last week. That leaves me with a bunch of cherry and plum tomatoes, plus that basket full that I picked this morning. And some in the refrigerator that are almost over ripe. I'm getting real sick of tomatoes.

Leftover tomatoes.

Kitchen clean up time, then grab a quick chicken salad sandwich....with sliced tomatoes, of course, and back to work.

On to the next mess. Mr. H ate that second pumpkin pie, the one I promised my youngest son (OK, I might have eaten just a little bit of it), so I'll bake another one for him. I didn't really want to send my good Pyrex pie plate home with him, anyway. He has a way of keeping all my jars and containers, so a Dollar Tree pie tin can go to his place!

It might be messy, but I have two pie crusts ready to chill in the refrigerator. My other son, John, reads my blog, so I expect him to come by for his pumpkin pie, too.

I love my food processor. I've used it so much today....to chop tomatoes, peppers and onions, make pie dough, and mix up the pumpkin pie filling.

One pie done. Time to clean the kitchen......again.

Kitchen's clean, so of course it's time to fix dinner! That's a cinch tonight, since it's in the crockpot.

Mr. H got a dinner salad with romaine lettuce, Kellogg's Breakfast tomato (he thought I'd put diced peaches on his salad!), and cucumbers, all from the garden, and bottled ranch dressing. I opted for the romaine with cranberries and walnuts, and Wishbone Bountifuls Berry Delight dressing.

Mr. H wanted to watch a ballgame on TV while he ate, so I dined alone at the kitchen counter. We had onion topped pot roast with carrots, potatoes and gravy. The potatoes and parsley were from my garden, but we're having to eat store bought carrots for now. Did anybody notice I bought myself a white plate, so the food would photograph better?

With dinner done, and the dishes in the dishwasher, it was time for my evening rounds in the garden.

My first stop was the volunteer tomato behind the garden shed. It was in need of a drink of water, and I was in awe of its beauty. It's so healthy, and grows so fast! It has green tomatoes on it, but I have no idea what I'll get. I hope it's a nice, sweet cherry tomato.

Two melons in the whiskey barrel. These were seeds from Dan's Urban Veggie Garden. No, the one on the right isn't growing upside down, I propped it up there for its picture.

Those melon vines are growing crazy, and loaded with blossoms. I do hope more melons set and ripen before winter.

I should have pick strawberries tonight, but I spent too much time at the fence, visiting my neighbor Pat. I delivered her the box of heirloom tomatoes, and talked her into letting me pick a bucket of fresh tomatoes for her. She promised to weigh them, and call me with the total weight....it turned out to be 10-1/2 pounds. By the time we finished visiting, it was getting too dark to pick berries.

Here is the fall planting of onions, beets and carrots. The carrot seeds were glued to paper napkins and then planted in this bed. No thinning!

The beets are growing quickly. I grabbed an English walnut off the path to show how large the roots are getting. They are at least the size of a silver dollar already.

See how the peppers are beginning to turn color! Even the jalapenos are turning red, but they still don't have any heat, I can eat them like a bell pepper, even chew the seeds! I emailed Ohio Heirloom Seeds to ask Michael if he knew why my peppers aren't hot. He'd never heard of that happening, and is going to look into it. Such a nice place to do business with....good seed prices, very reasonable shipping charges and excellent service.

The bush beans are up in the former potato bed. That's a Juliet tomato that my neighbor gave me in the background. It is getting HUGE, and absolutely loaded with Roma grape tomatoes. Pat's Juliet tomato was bigger than mine when we planted them, and they aren't more than ten feet apart...competing with the same lilac tree. The only difference is one shovel full of compost that I snitched from the squash patch to put in the planting hole. Yet look at the difference........

Pat's Juliet tomato.

I'm surprised the lettuce germinated in the 100 degree heat, let alone grew to an edible size without bolting. We had romaine from this bed for our dinner.

This is Mr. H's cantaloupe. He picked out the seed, and it looks like he will get the lone melon from it. It does have a lot of blossoms, so maybe I'll get lucky.

Here are the bell peppers I started last February in AZ. The plants are sturdy and healthy, but the peppers are small. I did get a few red ones this week, which gave some color to a batch of pickle relish. There is also a leftover jalapeno here. I haven't yet tasted it to see if it is hot. The impatiens have been the prettiest flowers in the garden. These are growing in full sun, but they just keep pumping out the blossoms. Cheryl sent me some lily bulbs last week, and I planted them in their own special garden with a wire fence to protect them. The next day, I noticed doggy paw prints in the lily bed.....and the lilies were gone! I found them, just slightly chewed, in the grass. They are now temporarily in a pot behind the cherry wood timbers!

I should have picked more tomatoes tonight. There are a lot of ripe ones now, where there weren't many at all this morning.

But it was almost dark, so my little gnome and I grabbed our basket of cucumbers and headed for the house. It's been a long day.