Goodbye Tomatoes

I pulled up the tomatoes. A few weeks ago it was the end of the road for the zucchini. There's a fresh batch of chard growing and four basil plants. The bell pepper plant continues to produce.

Notes for next year's tomato crop:

• Plant in the back bed
• Try Roma tomatoes if you're thinking of making sauce
• Staking the plant to a piece of rebar in the ground is a good approach
• Also use the square cage
• Keep the plant trimmed if it starts to get wild

Homemade Grape Juice

After receiving several pounds of grapes (muscat, I'm told) and getting a bag of grapes (Crimson) in our CSA box I decided to see if I could turn all this into grape juice instead of letting it go to waste. Since I don't have (yet!) one of the juicer steamer contraptions I decided to search the Internet and see what I could find. I put together the following steps:

Wash and de-stem the grapes. This was the most time-consuming task. It took about an hour to get all the grapes off their stem and into the colander.

Mash the grapes. The recipe I was following said to use a potato masher which I didn't have. So I just used my hand blender and pulsed it on the grapes in the pot.

Cook the grapes. I let the smashed grapes simmer over medium heat for around 15 minutes. As the grapes softened I continued to use the hand blender to mash the grapes more.

Prepare cheesecloth sieve. I lined the colander with two sheets of cheesecloth. I used a rubber band to keep it in place and set the lined colander over another pot.

Strain grape mixture. I ladled the grape mixture into the lined colander. I let it sit for a few hours and then threw it in the refrigerator overnight.

Finishing. I removed the grape mixture and cheesecloth and threw it in the compost pile. What was left was the juice. It was naturally quite sweet and didn't need anything else. The web sites talked about sending the juice through another strain to remove more sediment. I tried a gold coffee filter but the juice was actually too thick. I moved on to a paper coffee filter which worked better since I was able to squeeze the juice through (not unlike a frosting bag).

The juice was quite good on its own but was also improved with the addition of a local vodka.

Labor Day

Labor Day = homemade apple pie. I was given a bag of Granny Smith apples so I made apple pie.

Staged photos

Once our remodel was finished our designer hired a professional photographer to take some shots for her portfolio. We recently got copies of the photos. These are just a few of the shots they took. She and the photographer spent the day here staging and shooting our place. They arrived early in the morning and that evening when we came home and everything seemed to be in its original place. In addition, we got to keep the staged food that they brought in (lemons, limes, flowers, assorted vegetables, the canteloupe "brunch meal" that you see). While everything was back in its place when we came home, we can see that they were quite busy moving furniture around.

Recent Harvest

We went out back this last week and harvested lots of peaches, green beans, tomatoes, bell peppers, a yellow onion, and a zucchini.

Return from Vacation

Here's what happens when you go away for a few weeks. Our house sitter managed to harvest most of the zucchini before they got out of hand but when we returned we found one monster zuc that had escaped detection. The monster zuc is just under 2 feet long and 18" in circumference.

Yellow onions also came up. We found 8 harvested onions in our refrigerator. There are more in the garden ready for picking.

We completely missed the apricots. They were all picked and waiting for us. They were a bit old but still tasted much better than the tasteless ones you get in the supermarkets.

One bell pepper was ready and more are on the way. The peach tree and the tomato plants are loaded but not yet ripe.

Last night's dinner featured all home-grown roasted vegetables: onions, zucchini, and bell pepper.

BFZ

Here's what happens when you don't check your zucchini plant on a daily basis. Harvested this 16" baby yesterday. There was another slightly smaller one that got picked as well. Looks like it's time for zucchini bread.

Strange year for produce this year as the temperatures have fluctuated. One week mild and overcast; the next week hot. I had to cut off and toss some early mutant zucchini that were just not forming into proper vegetables. I assume not enough sunshine. But now that it is warmer and sunnier we're starting to get normal zucchs.