YAY!!!! Oops, I mean DARN!
I LOVE having a the vegetable garden and the food this time of year is simply AMAZING....but I am getting just a wee bit tired of it. I don't know if last year's garden really had no problems, or if maybe I just wouldn't have noticed if it did, but this year we've had aphids, slugs, moles, and now powdery mildew on all the squash. Maybe word got around in the pest community that we were really trying hard to NOT use chemicals and additives. Theoretically, weekly baths of baking soda & water might kill the mildew, but the plants have only about 3 weeks left to live anyway.....
It has really cut down on the pumpkin production, but lest one worry about there being a winter squash shortage at Chateau Sutton-Goar, meet Audrey's first offspring
30 POUNDS. Which I think makes ours a bit of a runt. There's another one which might be a bit bigger,
but I don't think it's ready yet. (For reference, I wear a size 8 women's shoe) The skin on the first one got a bit knobbly, but I'm just guessing. I tried googling on when to harvest them, but no one else seems to know either. One person suggested "harvest them while you can still pick them up," and I can see her point.Yesterday I canned 6 more quarts of pickles yesterday,
and while it feels like I have made enough to supply 4 large hamburger chains, we (meaning mostly ME) have already gone through 1 quart and 3 or 4 pints. As you may have guessed, I am a pickle fiend. I would guess it's how normal people feel about chocolate. These might be the last of the pickles, though, or very close to the last. The garden is getting pretty droopy. I gave it some Miracle Grow yesterday, but one very cool night already killed off some of the bigger leaves on one of the squash, and the cucumbers have taken a pretty big beating with me rummaging around in them regularly and the cats hunting the moles in them. Pouncing is NOT good for plants.And my roasting experiments?
The pumpkin seeds, which I had never done before and was just sort of making up from a collection of tips
turned out beautifully--and in fact, I am rather embarrassed to have to admit that they're already almost gone. Apparently if one has been denied salty snacks for most of 9 months, one should reintroduce them slowly. Pumpkin seeds are thankfully supposed to be quite good for you, so we've gotten a really big dose of HEALTH lately.And the tomatoes WHICH I HAVE DONE BEFORE?????
Not so much. I have two recipes for this--one which I really like and one that doesn't work as well--and guess which one I picked??? At least this one had you roast garlic at the same time, so I have two cloves of roasted garlic stashed away in the freezer. And what remained of the tomatoes. This time I will be making NOTES on the recipe that doesn't work.AND I have learned to not complain about how boring canning can be--Theo livened up yesterday's session with a gift of a live mouse. There are no pictures of this--and I don't think I'd share them if they were--but if you want a visual, picture a steaming stove, a cat, a frightened mouse, an even more frightened human batting at the mouse with a broom to keep it out of the pantry (and mostly just smacking the cupboards) and a cat running for cover because its human has lost her freaking mind.
That would just about sum it up.
2 comments:
Dear Theo. He clearly thought things were getting too serious in the kitchen.
According to the U of Illinois, "Winter squash can be harvested whenever the fruits have turned a deep, solid color and the rind is hard."
But I agree that before you need heavy equipment to move them is best.
Don't know how you usually process these, but my mom's technique was to whack them into sections with a hatchet, then bake (or steam in a pressure cooker) the sections, and scoop the softened squash out of the rind. It was way easier than dealing with cutting/peeling.
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