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Sunday, August 14, 2011

Making it easy on myself for a while

I am getting a lil bored with doing tomato products now. I have been at it for near 2 weeks. Still got a ways to go tho. I went to the nursing home to visit mom for a while today and took her some fresh maters and cantaloupe that I had cut last night. Gosh it was so dang good. This is what it looked like before we cut it. Not to mention I have 3 more at the house just like it.


This thing was 12 inches long, really ripe and sweet. I think I will try freezing a few containers of cantaloupe again this year to enjoy this winter. Easy to do, just peel melon and pack in freezer box or container and cover with light sugar syrup. Freeze and when ready to serve allow to only partially thaw out. Really good.
I haven't done anything with tomatoes today. I worked a lil bit in my herb bed and got the sage cut again and in the dehydrator. Then cut the ground cherry plants back some so I could pick the ripe ones up off the ground. I got a 2 gallon bucket full of them in the husk. I finally got them husked out and ready to make ground cherry and orange jam. There are still thousands of them still on the ground that I may get later and try dehydrating some to see how they are. I'm sure they would be good in bread or muffins, or even in cereal.
When I went to visit mom I stopped by the dollar store to pick up some jar flats all to be told they didn't have any and would not be getting any more this season. Dang it! So I stopped at the grocery store and paid double for 3 dozen cause I need them badly. They also had Mrs Wages pizza sauce mix and I picked up 2 packs of that and one for salsa. I can make pizza sauce from scratch but with all the tomatoes I have to do this will save me a good deal of time and standing in the summer kitchen on my feet. The older I get the more I appreciate being able to cut corners anywhere I can. So pizza sauce and salsa will be my projects for tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow evening I can get the ground cherry and orange jam made. If I can remember to ask Rodger to bring home 3 oranges.
Last evening when we picked tomatoes we picked off all our sweet corn that we had left on the stalks to dry for seed. So those are neatly hanging in the outbuilding to dry real good and then get shelled off and put in the freezer. After we found the cayenne pepper plants I picked those off as well and have them in one of my drying boxes to dry and then grind em up to use as seasoning. It will take a good deal of hot pepper flakes to make all the sausage this fall when we butcher hogs.
Nothing else happening here so I need to go do laundry so we all got clean drawers this week again. Till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, you've been busy. Our garden here in Oregon is barely started. All that's really growing is the zuchinni and cukes. The tomatoes are growing slowly, but the green beans don't even have flowers yet. I know you're beat, but I envy you!

She Chef said...

are you telling me that your local dollar store carries cases of canning jars!!!!