Putting Up Our Harvest

Years ago, when we lived on the mountain, we had to buy a chest freezer to store all the extra produce from our garden. We have no plans on plugging that freezer in this year but we still have more vegetables from the garden than we can eat fresh. So, here are some of the things we did with the extra veggies.

So many tomatoes!

I intended to make a big batch of cucumber pickles when it wasn’t too hot out. Unfortunately, we had a very dry spell after a very wet spell and that stressed out the plants enough that the cucumbers went bitter. I felt really bad throwing dozens of cucumbers into the compost but they just weren’t edible. I did have a small heap of cucumbers from before the plants turned. There weren’t enough to warrant pulling out the water-bath canner so I made a small batch of freezer pickles instead.

I used the recipe for Freezer Dills in the book Farm Anatomy by Julia Rothman. (This is a great little book, by the way, with lots of basic information and beautiful illustrations.) The recipe is also available on Grit magazine’s website.  I have yet to try them but I’m sure they will be a wonderful treat when the snow starts flying.

Pickles in the freezer

I also decided to pickle turnips. I had not heard of pickled turnips before but the power of Google showed me that they were, indeed, a thing. So, I decided to give them a try. There are a bunch of recipes available online. I ended up using one from Eating Well. I filled two quart jars and look forward to trying them.

Turnip pickles

Back in June I made two jars of pak choi refrigerator pickles. We got into them last week. They are very vinegary (maybe a bit too vinegary for some people’s tastes) but they are really good on hotdogs. The white stem parts are nice and crunchy. I’m definitely going to plant more pak choi next year.

During the winter, I bring soup to work every day for lunch. During the summer, it feels odd to make soup but with all the wonderful fresh vegetables coming out of the garden I had to make a batch of minestrone soup. There are a lot of recipes out there for summer minestrone. The August issue of Cooking Light magazine has a good recipe and it happened into my mailbox just as I was wondering what to do with all my veggies. Homegrown carrots, green onions, tomatoes, squash, green beans and chard all went into my massive soup pot along with cannellini beans and ditalini pasta to make a wonderfully hearty soup. We ate some for dinner and I put the rest (three quart-bags full) into the freezer for later.

Bags of summer minestrone in the freezer

We are currently being inundated with tomatoes. I love fresh tomatoes on sandwiches and salads but it’s beginning to get out of hand. I don’t want to throw out any because I didn’t get to use them in time. So, today I made some tomato juice. I was going for tomato sauce but we didn’t grow sauce tomatoes so it was a bit more watery. No problem. The juice will be a great base for soups and sauces. All I did was cut up the tomatoes and simmer then for about 45 minutes. Then I pushed them through a sieve with a wooden spoon to get rid of the skins and seeds. (This is one time when I really miss my mom’s old food mill.) I then put the juice into zip-top sandwich bags in 1-cup servings. I laid them flat on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. Once they are frozen, I will transfer them to a gallon size freezer bag.

From tomatoes...

...to tomato juice ready for the freezer.

And since I was heating up the house to process the tomatoes anyway, I decided to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. And yes, I did put two dozen of them up in the freezer so we wouldn’t just eat them all!

Mmm...cookies!

And a cardinal, just because.

Guess Who was in the Garden Again

We had a house rabbit for many years. I should have known from that experience that rabbits do not give up easily. Yesterday morning when I looked out the window on my way down the stairs, as I do every morning, I saw a pair of ears in the garden. So, I rallied the troops (my husband), put on my barn boots, grabbed my camera and headed outside. You know that little break in the fence I mentioned before? Well, that was the spot where the rabbit chewed through the mesh fence to get into the garden. We knew that it could easily chew through the mesh if it wanted to but I didn't think it would make the effort. I guess I was wrong. It got out through the same hole after a brief panic among the raised beds. As soon as it was out of the garden it settled down maybe 20 feet away and started chomping on grass. Apparently once it was outside the fence the two perturbed humans were no longer a threat.

The rabbit peacefully snacking on greenery after being chased from the garden.

So, as the rabbit went about its business, I scanned the garden. Nothing was sampled or disturbed this time. I must have seen it right after it got through the fence. The way the rabbit was eating greens from the lawn it was obviously hungry but it didn’t touch anything in the garden. Maybe it just didn’t like what I have growing. Who knows? My husband grabbed some wood strips and the stapler and we repaired the hole in the fence. We’ll see if the rabbit tries again.

A perfect little bunny-sized hole nibbled through the mesh fence.

Hopefully the repairs will keep the tricky little bunny out.

After the quick emergency fence repair I harvested some spinach, more arugula and all the pak choi. It had rained the night before so the greens were gritty with dirt. I gave them all my standard triple rinse then ran them through the salad spinner.

The day’s harvest

I froze a lot of the pak choi. I chopped it up, blanched it two minutes in boiling water and then plunged it into ice water. After letting it dry off a bit on some paper towels, I packed it into a quart freezer bag. I also fridge-pickled some of it in a simple brine of 1 cup of white vinegar, ½ a cup of water, 1 tbsp. of sugar, ½ tbsp. of salt and some fennel seeds. I’ve never had pickled pak choi before. I’ll give it a week or so and then see what it tastes like.

Two pints of pickled pak choi

I’m going to use most of this round of arugula for my lunches this week but I also used some in a salad today. I mixed four servings of cooked and cooled pasta with a can of rinsed kidney beans and a couple good handfuls of chopped arugula. I dressed it with 1 ½ tbsp. of oil, 1 tbsp. of lemon juice and some salt and black pepper and then sprinkled some freshly grated parmesan cheese on top. It made a great light meal for a hot, humid day and all the subtle flavors worked really well together.

Mmm, pasta with fresh arugula and beans