Tomato Update
I’ve been picking tomatoes like crazy here at Chiot’s Run. My Lemon Boy’s are in full swing, which is great because we’ve been enjoying eating them with every meal.
So how many tomatoes have I harvested so far this year? 38 lbs of Roma’s for canning, and 25 lbs of Lemon Boys for eating. I’ve given a bunch of the Lemon Boys away to friends and family. I think I’m going to save them up and make a batch of chutney.
I’m really sad that tomato season is almost over aren’t you?
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When Life Gives You a Wind Storm (part 2)
As many of you know, on the 14th a huge windstorm (remnants of Ike) came through Ohio and left many of us sans electric for a few days. Since Mr Chiots and I both work from home and we didn’t have electric we had a few days of unplanned vacation. I was planning on doing some canning so I had bought a bushel of tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market the Saturday before. I wanted to grill them so I could can a batch of fire-roasted tomatoes (I’m a huge fan of Muir Glen Fire Roasted Tomatoes, they were the inspiration to can my own). Since we had an excess of sticks in the yard and time on our hands, we decided to build another fire last Monday evening and roast up our tomatoes.
Roasting tomatoes is super easy. You just cut the tomato in half and put skin side down on the grill or fire (you can coat with olive oil if you aren’t canning them). When the skins get blackened pull them off the grill. The skins will easily slip from the tomato then all you have to do is process them in your favorite way. I like to crush mine or cut them up and add them to sauce.
I was able to can 7 quarts of fire roasted tomatoes on Monday. Add that to the 7 quarts I did a couple weeks ago and we’ve got the makings for a good many batches of chili or sauce in the pantry.
I had a bit of sauce left over that wouldn’t fit in the jars and I made some pizza sauce, it was so delicious. I think next time I get a bunch of tomatoes a batch of pizza sauce will be in the canner. So what’s your favorite way to use tomatoes?
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Picking Pecks of Pears
On the 7th of this month Mr Chiots and I headed over to my parents’s house to pick pears. They have 2 pear trees that were just loaded with pears this year.
Since they didn’t want them, they told us we could have them. So we spent an afternoon picking Barlet & Bosc pears. I picked all the low ones while Mr Chiots scaled the ladder and got the high ones.
So how many pears did we end up with?
We picked 116 lbs of pears. Not bad for FREE (hm, I wonder how much 116 lbs of organic pears would cost me elsewhere). Our table was covered with pears for a week while we waited for them to ripen.
We actually should have picked them a week earlier, they were already pretty ripe and some of them had fallen off the tree. I guess the deer & other critters will enjoy those. I’ll have to mark the first of September on my calendar for picking pears next year.
So what am I doing with these pears. Well, this is what we were canning on Sunday when the lights went out. I dried some (super delicious you should try it), I made a batch of gingerbread pear butter and I also made 1 quart of spiced pickled whole pears for Thanksgiving.
Anyone else out there enjoying the delicious pears this season?
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When Life Gives You a Wind Storm
When life gives you a wind storm, build a fire with the fallen branches. Chiot’s Run is surrounded on 3 sides by mature woods with towering trees.
When strong winds blow, sticks litter our yard. On Sunday evening, we were hoping just sticks would be littering our yard and not whole trees. We did lose a huge branch from an old oak tree, fortunately the wind was coming from a different direction than normal, so it fell into the woods and not on our garage!
On Monday morning, we went out and picked up sticks all around the yard. We decided since it was cool, it would be the perfect day for a campfire.
I remembered all those poblano peppers I bought at the farmer’s market. I was going to grill them but I decided fire roasting them would be much tastier.
We found 2 old cinderblocks and an old grill grate and fashioned a grill over the fire. The peppers were neatly lined up shoulder to shoulder over the fire.
I grilled several batches (I bought 4 quarts of them at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday). Poblano peppers have a great flavor to begin with and when grilled they’re fantastic. These peppers fire roasted will add that perfect smoky flavor to anything we put them in.
After grilling, I trimmed them and they were neatly stowed away in freezer containers. I can hardly wait to make up a pizza or a batch of chili.
What kinds of veggies do you grill with success?
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We’re Back!
We’re back on-line after a few days sans electricity. Mr Chiots and I had a great time. When you live your life working in front of a computer all day, it’s a welcome reprieve to have to take a few days off. Since we had a generator to keep our fridge & freezer cool we didn’t have much to worry about. We felt like we were on vacation! So what happened around here over the last couple days? Here goes Sunday.
We lost our power on Sunday evening. What were we doing at the time? Canning of course. We were canning pears we got from my mom’s (more photos of that later). So we had to finish canning by candlelight, not as easy as it sounds (not that it sounds easy).
Mr Chiots came out and helped me since he could no longer work in the office. It’s a bit harder to peel pears but we managed to get the batch finished. It was a romantic evening of canning by candlelight together, not necessarily romantic, but we had fun.
Seven quarts of delicious pears were labeled: Lights Out Pears 9.14.08. Every time we open a jar we’ll have a good laugh about the event.
Sometimes you can find beauty in anything.
More adventures to come tomorrow.
