Friday evening, I picked enough cucumbers to make a batch of relish. I'd ordered a new food processor (my old one bit the dust last year), and it was supposed to arrive Saturday. When it had not arrived by noon, I decided to go ahead and wash the cucumbers so they'd be ready to chop when/if the food processor got here. Seeing the pile of cucumbers on the counter, it seemed to me that there weren't enough. The recipe calls for "10 - 12 large cucumbers." (That's a bit ambiguous, don't you think?) I had 4 or 5 that I considered large, and a bunch of medium ones. I decided to go back to the garden for a few more. When I got back from the garden, the food processor was on my front doorstep. I unpacked it, washed the new cucumbers, and went to chopping cucumbers, onions, and bell peppers. The recipe said to soak the chopped vegetables in salt overnight. Sunday morning, I rinsed off the salt, added the vinegar, sugar, and spices, and ended up with 7 pints of relish, exactly enough to fill the canner.
While I was picking cucumbers Friday evening, I noticed that a few of the purple hull peas were ready to pick. There weren't many - maybe just enough for one meal for one person - but I picked them for fear that they'd dry up. I gave them to Nanny, along with a few squash and peppers.
We still haven't had a ripe tomato, except for one little grape tomato. When we finally do get a big ripe tomato, the first order of business will be to make a tomato & mayonnaise sandwich. Next will be a BLT. I planted only 20 tomato plants this year, so I don't know if we will ever get enough at one time to can tomatoes or salsa, but I am hopeful.
I don't want to jinx the tomato crop by saying this, but so far we have not had our usual blight problem. Maybe it's because it's been so dry, or maybe it's because of the microbial inoculant I've been using. (I hope it's the latter.) Now that we've had a good rain, I'll need to apply the inoculant again. Might do that this afternoon, if the garden is not too muddy.
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