Canning
I wish I could say that I'd spent the past month tending the garden, but for the most part, everything's finished but the last few harvests and final cleanup. We had our first light frost this past week, which damaged several of the tomato plants and scalded the tops of the Green Zebra tomatoes. Last year, we didn't see a frost like this until late October-- so on top of the late spring, the end of the season is rushing up to meet us, making the 2007 growing year even shorter.
That said, the garden was productive this year, mostly thanks to the addition of the second bed out back. I've harvested about seven pounds of tomatoes each weekend for the past month and a half, many of which ended up going to friends. Besides the tomatoes, I have a surprise bumper crop of tomatillos in the back bed. Who knew that two plants could pump out so many mysterious, husked, green fruit?
I'm used to dealing with a certain amount of excess. In past years, I've dried all of my leftover tomatoes for use over the winter. This year, with three times as many plants in the garden, I knew that I was going to be in more trouble than usual. But it didn't occur to me to can anything until I looked at that pile of tomatillos. There was no way I was going to be able to give them all away, and I rightfully assumed (since at that point, I'd still never tasted a tomatillo in my life)* that there was probably a limit to the number of tomatillos our tummies would tolerate in a short period of time.
That was when I remembered the stack of food preservation books I'd accumulated over the past few years-- a copy of the Ball Blue Book. Putting Food By. The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving. I did some quick reading, remembered that we had grabbed a boiling-water canner a couple of summers ago to use as a clam pot, and then picked up a few supplies at work. By evening, I was up to my ears in chopped tomatillos.
Two weeks and three batches later, I think I may be hooked on canning. It seemed intimidating at first-- you hear so many concerns about spoilage and bad seals, but after getting some practice and reading up on the potential hazards (especially Putting Food By), I'm feeling pretty confident. I'm glad I started with the tomatillo salsa, since it's such a high-acid food and the liquid consistency of the cooked tomatillos turned out to be forgiving of my neophyte errors. But all the uncertainty and labor was worth it to be able to look at my small stockpile of jars and think, "hey... I made that stuff!"
The score so far? Five jars of salsa verde, four bottles of tomato-basil sauce, and three jars of chunky tomato salsa. Next stop: spiced plum butter... and then there will be more tomatoes and tomatillos to deal with. Now I have another reason to look forward to next year's growing season (and farmer's markets)-- no more lost harvests!
Please excuse me now while I go off to gloat at my pantry.
* - P.S. The tomatillos were great in salsa verde! but I still don't think we could ever eat three pounds of them in a week.
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