Gazpacho and Green Beans

Sitting here, waiting on the pressure canner to come up to 11 pounds so I can start timing the green beans.

I wasn't planning on canning today.

Things have been a bit nutty around here, not all in a bad way.  Last weekend, we had a mini-vacation.  We came home Monday, and spent Tuesday mostly laying around, resting up from our restful vacation.  I straightened up my sewing room a little bit, and mowed the yard.  Wednesday, we painted the living room and the bedroom.  Thursday, we painted one of the bathrooms, and the doors and trim in the bedroom and bathroom.  Of course, this required re-arranging of furniture, scrubbing of floors, We spent yesterday cleaning up the painting mess, changing burnt-out light bulbs while we had the step-stool out, doing laundry, changing sheets....

We're plumb worn out.

Today would've been a good day to lay around doing nothing again, but we had no groceries in the house, so I went to the grocery store.  When I got home, The Husband said Nanny had picked beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  I figured I'd best go help her with them.  She'd already snapped most of the beans.  We washed them and packed them into jars - 7 quarts and 8 pints, with a few left over.  Nanny fired up her pressure canner with the quart jars, and I brought the pints up here - we'll run two canners at once and be done with it.  Meanwhile, we scalded, peeled, and chopped the tomatoes.  We'll probably just have 4 quarts of those.

While this canner is doing its thing, I've been making gazpacho with a few of the fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden.  Stole this recipe from Ina Garten:

GAZPACHO

1 hothouse cucumber, halved and seeded, but not peeled
2 red bell peppers, cored and seeded
4 plum tomatoes
1 red onion
3 garlic cloves, minced
23 oz. tomato juice (3 cups) [this is half of one big can]
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup good olive oil
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions: 
Roughly chop the vegetables and put each vegetable separately into a food processor.  Pulse until coarsely chopped.  Do not over-process - you want little bits, not a pulp.

Combine the chopped vegetables with the remaining ingredients.  Mix well.  Chill before serving.

Naturally, I did not follow the recipe exactly, mostly because I didn't have exactly these ingredients.  I used a white onion instead of a red one, red wine vinegar and a shot or two of balsamic vinegar instead of the white wine vinegar, and I used the whole big can of tomato juice, since we don't have any vodka to make Bloody Marys with the left-over juice.  When I take these green beans to Nanny's house later, I'll get another cucumber, another tomato, and another bell pepper from the garden to add to the mix.

Oh, and I put a tablespoon of sugar in the jug.  Didn't hurt it a bit.

Update on the Pea Hull Jelly:  I made the stuff.  It tasted pretty good - surprisingly like grape jelly - but it's W-A-Y too "tight."  It's like tar in a jar.  I expect that the problem was that I used liquid pectin instead of the powdered stuff.  Typically, liquid pectin is added to jellies at a different stage than the powdered pectin that the recipe called for, but I didn't have any powdered pectin, so I winged it.  If I ever make it again, I'll use the powdered pectin, or cook it half as long as the recipe said.

Except for the tomatoes and the okra, the garden is pretty much shot for this year.  We could probably salvage another picking or two off the green beans, but I've canned about enough, and Nanny probably has, too.  The okra is just now starting to make.  We planted it very late.  The tomatoes are just now in full swing, so we should have a little more work to do there.

As for the rest of the garden, I'm getting ready to plow it under and see what else I can grow before cold weather hits.  We ought to have enough time for more squash, and I still have enough purple hull pea seeds to plant a couple of rows - might be pushing our luck on those, if we have an early fall.

I still don't have the beet trough ready.  The stand needs assembling, and I need to go buy dirt. 

Timer's beeping.  Canner's done.  See ya.