Friday, Headed for the HIlls!

     I pulled 4 huge 2 gallon bags of frozen tomatoes and one bag of green peppers out of the freezer yesterday.  I really needed to find out just how much meat we had left with what appears to be an upcoming shortage.  It made 5 large bags of spaghetti sauce to put back in the freezer. I also found 13 bananas that I thawed and put in a container in the fridge I will make banana bread this weekend to freeze.

    This did not really take very long (except for the thawing).  I had to let it coke down for 1.5 hours.  Then we just put the pots on the back porch to cool over night and I bagged it this morning.

     I have about 15 jars (quarts) of tomatoes that need to be used and I am going to make tomato paste out of those this weekend.  I do this by emptying them into a sieve, add 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of oil per jar and then boiling down the contents until is is thick, then transferring it to cookie sheets and roasting it in the oven (I stir every 1/2 hour) until all liquid quits coming out.  Then I freeze.  If you have never had homemade tomato sauce you are missing something.  I freeze in old sour cream containers and when I need a bit of paste I just cut a chunk out with a spoon.  It kind of has the consistency of hard ice cream.

Here is my planted garden, now I just have to water and weed and pick.  I am always so excited at the beginning and then those days of late August and early September come and I am picking a bushel of all different kinds of produce a day and trying to put it up or eat it or give it away.  Then is gets old fast.

We are going up to the mountains today, probably our last trip for a while as the shop opens back up on Monday and I will have to get back to work.

Are any of your areas getting back to work?

Have a great and productive day staying positive while you are in the negative.

Kim

   The back half of the garden, I still have corn to plant here, when it gets bigger.