We Interrupt Our Normally Scheduled Philosophical Blog...

...because I didn't actually read anything yesterday. Part can be blamed on the dryness of the subject matter, but most of the blame belongs to the National Weather Service.

There was a frost warning for the valley, and as our garden is a bit too sprawled to be effectively covered, we spent last night harvesting.

After an entire summer, I finally had enough dehydrated bell peppers to fill my jar:Granted, it's a large jar, but I now have a new appreciation for why dried peppers are so expensive in the store--you're buying 10,000 bell peppers. Okay, maybe only 1000. Still, they really are mostly water.

I made and canned a double batch of seasoned tomato sauce:

and still have all of these left to go.
I have recipes for a salsa verde, a spiced chutney, and a relish all made with green tomatoes, and out of sheer curiosity, we'll be making fried green tomatoes tonight. If you don't hear from me for a while--blame it on the tomatoes.

These are our pumpkins and butternut squash that were "curing" out in the sun for a few days before going into storage in the garage. They'll go back out in the sun later today if it warms up (it did indeed freeze last night and NOW that pesky weather service says there's a chance of snow through the weekend! SusieH, you might just win the furnace wars. I'm cheap, but snow??????)

And these are the pumpkins that need to be kept warm for 10 days to turn orange. Even once they turn orange, they won't keep as long as the others, so it looks like there will be more odd pumpkin experiments coming up. As the house isn't actually warm until later, I'm keeping a few in the oven and will be putting the small ones in the dehydrator for warmth. Strange times at Chateau Sutton-Goar. Luckily, it's fall, so having pumpkins stashed everywhere looks like "decorating" instead of "winter squash hoarding."