In a hot kitchen at the height of harvest I simply cannot make proper sauces and preserves. The counters are overflowing with vegetables that need to be washed, peeled, cut and cooked in large pots steaming on the stove for an eternity. The kitchen gets hotter and hotter and by the end of the day the heat has spread to every room in the house. Nope, that’s not my plan, thank you very much.
When it is hot and I have baskets of veggies all over the kitchen it’s not time for jam, not time for sauces, stews or ratatouille. I wash the vegetables, I do not peel, or chop them, and I cook them minimally, if at all possible outside. And I do not can, never on a hot day, I pray that my freezer is large enough.
Right now I have an overflow of purple tomatillos. They get husked and quickly blanched for one minute. Once cool they can go straight in the freezer. I used to roast them but no more, blanched tomatillos end up being more useful for our cooking style.
I’ve also got baskets of eggplants and peppers. Those get grilled. I grill the peppers and long eggplants whole, just coated with olive oil. I do prick a few little holes in the eggplants for steam to come out. The fat Italian eggplants and zucchinis get cut into thick slices, coated in oil and onto the grill they go. Again, once cool straight into the freezer, peel, seeds and all. Actually, I do pull the stems out, it slows me down but it saves freezer space.
The one step where I need to slow down, is peeling the spines off nopales, on the grill behind the peppers. There is no way around this one. I take a deep breath and set out to slowly and carefully take every spine off. Then they join the peppers and eggplants on the grill and in the freezer, either whole or cut in stripes.
Grilled tomato halves can also be packed and frozen as they are. I like to process some of them a bit more, just a bit more. I will run them through a couple pulses in the food processor and pack and freeze the resulting puree. If the peel is loose I will take it away before pureeing. I don’t bother seeding the tomatoes, I don’t mind the seeds at all. Pureeing the tomatoes does not involve heating so if at that point I still have energy left I’m glad to do it.
This has been the bulk of my preserving this year. I didn’t get any cucumbers. The cool temperatures and the nematodes did them in, so one less thing to do. Unfortunately it’s also one less thing to eat. Oh well… Since I don’t like pickled or frozen green beans we are eating beans every day at every meal. I don’t need to preserve greens since they grow year round in my garden. Any excess goes to other kitchens or the compost pile.
We are getting a heat wave these days in southern California. This means fruit is ripening nicely in the garden, a new round of grilling and freezing awaits. I am praying that my freezer is large enough.
For more delicious pictures and stories of harvests and to add your own, head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions, host of Harvest Monday, and take a look at what other gardeners have been up to this week.
September 27, 2010 at 11:41 am
I like your idea of grilling and freezing produce. Next year, I’ll do this.
September 27, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Let us all know how it turns out!
September 27, 2010 at 3:24 pm
We don’t mind the tomato seeds either. I haven’t grilled many tomatoes, but that sounds like a good alternative to heating up the oven. Maybe next year – the big tomatoes are pretty much done for this year.
I haven’t grown tomatillos in years. I remember them as being very prolific. What all do you do with yours? Salsa and sauces come to mind.
September 28, 2010 at 9:30 am
Salsa and sauces is what we do with them. They can also be used in lieu of green tomatoes for things that don’t call for big fat slices.
Besides making salsa verde to eat by itself with chips and add to enchiladas, tamales, and so on, tomatillo sauce goes very well with pork stew, beef steak, with leafy greens, with purslane.
September 27, 2010 at 7:37 pm
I like your preserving ideas, and I wish we can grow green beans year round here, it’s one of our favorite veggie.
I love those eggplants, they are so pretty.
September 28, 2010 at 9:33 am
Oh, I love beans. I too wish we could grow it year round! And eggplants too, that would also be nice to grow year round.
September 27, 2010 at 10:30 pm
I know what you mean about a hot kitchen! I’ve been canning tomato sauce all day, and it raised the temperature of the house by 5 degrees!
September 28, 2010 at 9:34 am
Yep, that’s it, it raises the temperature of the whole house. And right now the nights here are not cool enough to bring the temperature down again. I hope your nights are being cool back east…
September 28, 2010 at 8:12 am
Angela,
The bounty is so impressive. I’ve just had to take in all my green tomatoes to let them ripen inside because frost is on the way soon here in Manitoba. One question: if you had cucumbers, what would you do with those? Thanks! Heidi
September 28, 2010 at 9:39 am
You are getting frost, we are hovering around 100F, with 86F to 90F at night…
I would eat them fresh if possible, otherwise pickling them is always a sure bet, of course, but I would also try freezing them. I’ve always had trouble growing cucumbers, so I’ve never been able to harvest enough to keep. This year has been the worst, though…
September 28, 2010 at 11:52 am
That is a huge harvest! I think it’s really need you grill and freeze them immediatly – it doesn’t get any more local and fresh! I know I’ll have to grow tomatillos next year too – yours look awesome!
September 28, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Thanks. Tomatillos are very prolific plants. Do give them a try and tell us how it went.
September 28, 2010 at 7:07 pm
It looks like you’ve been busy! Hopefully, you’ll get enjoy these all winter long. One of my dogs has developed a taste for my purple tomatillos. She disappears behind the garden and gobbles them up!
September 28, 2010 at 10:00 pm
That’s too funny! A true gardener’s dog.
September 28, 2010 at 9:51 pm
I just bought some purple tomatillo seeds, and I can’t wait to grow them next year! I’ve been hearing about this heatwave in CA this week. Did you guys not get the memo that the summer is over?
Hope you’re avoiding turning on the stove/oven as much as possible this week! Beautiful harvest, by the way, and I’m impressed with your ability to “process” them as much as possible while minimizing heat usage.
September 28, 2010 at 10:11 pm
I hope the tomatillos do well for you next year. We are getting the seasons all mixed up here, we had winter in July and now we get summer in late September!
September 29, 2010 at 4:24 am
I usually wait until we get a cool day to can, but then we usually get them here. Not so much this year but in normal years. Thank goodness our weather has cooled a bit. And your peppers look so beautiful. I wish I had that bounty of peppers.
September 29, 2010 at 8:52 am
Good for you, we are still in the thick of a heat wave here. Good time for grilling though, as long as I do it in the evening. I love peppers so I tend to put in a good number of plants.
September 30, 2010 at 8:54 am
Nice amount of garden work there. I love the idea of freezing tomato paste in containers… I use plastic freezer bags which inevitably end up a tangled mess but haven’t really gotten into canning them yet. I must buy a bunch of single serving reusable freezer ‘containers.’
September 30, 2010 at 9:16 am
I do use plastic bags too, but for solid things that hold their shape, like apricot halves. They are hard to stack, though, and as you say, it all becomes a mess. I guess we need a variety of container and bags to store all the different types of food we put by.
October 1, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Although we’ve been canning more this year, tomatoes generally are still destined for the freezer, as I haven’t ventured to pressure canning yet…and live in mortal fear of botulism! I also prefer some of our harvest frozen, rather than canned. I’d much rather eat a frozen green bean, than a floppy canned one. I must admit though, with the grilled tomatoes, I’m not sure I’d be disciplined enough to get all of them to the freezer, they look so tasty!
October 1, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Yep, those floppy canned beans are not on my list of must eat veggies either. As long as there is space in my freezer I prefer to freeze, but it is nice to be able to can when the freezer is full.
Number one destination for the tomatoes is dinner. Only the excess goes into the freezer. All my discipline gets spent tending to the garden daily, non left to resist just roasted tomatoes