Brussels Sprouts and Broccoli

Lately, I've been too busy gardening to blog about it.  Actually, the work has been in the kitchen instead of the garden.

The tomatoes are cranking out their fruit.  Last week was the first week that we had enough tomatoes at once to put some up.  Nanny canned 4 quarts of tomatoes one day, and a couple of days later I picked enough to can 4.5 quarts of plain old tomatoes, and 6 pints of chili sauce.  I made the chili sauce with the Lemon Boy tomatoes.  I used red onions, red and green bell peppers, and red and green hot peppers.  The cider vinegar and brown sugar turned the mixture a pretty golden color.  It's good!  It's a little on the hot side - I threw in a few of the tiny, hotter-than-firecrackers Thai peppers - but I like it that way.

Last night I made salsa - 6 pints - and mixed the yellow and red tomatoes together.  It is prettier in the jars than I anticipated.  I "stumped my toe" on the cumin.  While it may not be so great for just plain chip-dipping, it ought to be yummy for cheese dip.

We opened a jar of squash pickle last weekend.  It's good, too!  I had thought I was tired of squash and was contemplating yanking up the plants and putting something in their place, but I might let them crank out one more batch of squash pickle, first.

On the canning agenda for this afternoon:  hot pepper jelly.  The peppers are doing obscenely well this year, and we love hot pepper jelly on chicken, pork, or with cream cheese on crackers.

We started our garden too late this spring to fool with cabbages, broccoli, and brussels sprouts.  I've always wanted to try growing them in the fall, but the garden centers around here only carry those seedlings in the spring.  Today, I bought one of those 72-pellet tray greenhouses and planted half of it with broccoli and the other half with brussels sprouts.  Now, if I can just remember to keep it watered....