Harvest

I love the smells of the fall. The crisp cool air, the crunchy leaves. Anything made from pumpkin. LOVE IT ALL!

Lately I have been trying to preserve the fruits of our labors from the massive garden we grew with our friends. We bought a new freezer. I invested in Ziploc. The shelf over our cupboards and the new freezer are officially "full" of dill pickles, pumpkin, mustard pickles, diced onion, beans, jam, corn, bread and butter pickles. You name it, I feel like I have canned it.

I have washed LOTS of bugs out of jars. My mother and my grandmother both have "fruit rooms" full of empty jars, so why buy them right? So you don't have to clean out the cobwebs! At $8 a dozen, I have saved at least $80 by not buying them though so I can't complain...at least not to loud.

Today it is tomatoes. The garden was especially generous on the cherry tomato end. Most of them green. The hardest part about that is they don't all turn red at the same time. We have eaten our fill over and over. Last night Clark threw up tomatoes because he had eaten too many that day. A neighbor offered a box of tomatoes to me, so I thought to myself, You only have 3 boxes full at home, why not take more? About half of them were still green but the other half were almost over ripe. So between those and the ones I have on my window sill, in my fridge and stashed on my dryer, I have enough to actually do some canning!

I have searched online for recipes for any and every way I can possibly preserve them. Salsa, stewed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, sun dried tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato juice. The list goes on and on. Today I opted for stewed tomatoes and sun dried tomatoes. (this is a great way to use all those cherry tomatoes you really don't want to have to peel.) My water bath caner holds 7 jars. So of course I have 8. But I still have lots more tomatoes to peel and can. Maybe around mid November I will be finished with them.

Does anyone have a great salsa recipe or a good way to preserve squash or potatoes? Those are next on my "to do" list.

O and on a related side note...my kids are selling the pumpkins we grew. They are earning money to buy each other Christmas presents. I have had people say they are coming to get them but have only had 1 person show up so far. We still have lots and they are much cheaper than any you will find anywhere else! Plus it is for a good cause right? So come get your pumpkins before they are gone!