How to actually process tomatoes!

I'm re-posting the link to my friend Janelle's blog, where she actually tells you in some detail how to do the things I airily whisked onto my blog, not giving y'all the hint that I spent hours trying to figure out how exactly to (safely) dry, roast, freeze, puree and can tomato products.   It's definitely a learned art, and Janelle gives good directions.  (also bomb-ass pictures).

http://creativehomesteading.blogspot.com/2010/08/tomatoes.html

My only note of caution about preserving is to always follow a recipe and to never, ever try to preserve something in oil.   I had one book tell me to let my dried tomatoes sit in olive oil, to make "a delightful sauce for soups and salads".   I thought, ok, added garlic and it quickly turned moldy, thank goodness, because that turns out to be a fairly perfect botulism environment.   Vinegar kills just about everything it touches, and is safe (thus we have pickles, catchup, mustard and mayonaise), but if you want to make a flavored olive oil, I'd use it within a few days and store it in the fridge.   For the dried tomatoes, they might be acidic enough to be all right, possibly add some vinegar to the mix and nothing else,  but I'm still leery.   

More on canning soon - hopefully with pictures!

Preserving and Perservering

Beans

Well, it's August, and you know what that means: full on harvest time.  Yes, there are still many chores to be done, but I feel like in August the bulk of the work shifts to inside the house - what to do with the tons of produce we get.   This year we got a CHEST FREEZER, and so instead of having to stand over a hot canning bath if I want to keep something, I can just pop a lot of stuff in the Freezer.  Like those beans.  Cool.

And, in this garden, you win some, you lose some.  I think I got 1.5 beets, after all that fussing over them.  I (fingers crossed) will have 1 really nice canteloupe.   And the squash bit it, hardcore.   In general, my plants seem to be able to fight off most bugs that attack their leaves.   But we got squash vine borers, that get the part of the plant that goes into the ground, and pretty much finishes them off.   So no squash.

But we are pulling in 5-15 tomatoes a week, including some heirlooms, 3-4 cucumbers, and maybe 20-30 new beans every time I look outside.   The onions, potatoes and garlic are in, so I can cook with those, and the eggplants are producing on schedule.   Peppers - well, lots of green, we are holding out for red.   And I'm trying to coddle some late-summer lettuce, bok-choi and peas - so, in general, I'm feeling pretty well fed.

The food goes into stir-fries, pesto, tomato sauce and salad.   I also got ambitious with the tomatoes and beans:   The umpteen beans got turned into a sort of bean-based pesto type dip, that is really delicious, and frozen for future parties.  (Babs Kingsolver calls it "frijole mole" - most people seem to think it's: strange but good)
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Frijole-Mole.pdf

Into the freezer can now go pesto, bean dip, tomato puree, roasted tomatoes, and whole beans.   I'll get to canning and pickling in a week or two, when it's a little colder.

And with the tomatoes, I"m trying it all.   I've peeled, cored and seeded plenty of my over-healthy romas to make from-scratch sauce, run them through my roma-3000 (or whatever it's called) to freeze the puree, and even bought extras to put away. - well, I bought about $10 of almost-ripe heirlooms at the farmers market to try preserving.   As per my book (The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food, by Janet Chadwick), I sliced the tomatoes up thin and left them in Dawn's food dehydrator until they became, and I quote, "leathery" and put them on my shelf, and also roasted a bunch at 225 degrees, with olive oil, to freeze (note to self: 6 hours waaaaay too long for thin sliced tomatoes to roast - anyone want burnt-up tomato chips?).

So, to all my friends who have cooked with me, and to Dawn who has suffered the effects of my vegetable mania ("OK, so I'll cook the carrots and the beets together, the beans on their own, we'll mash the potatoes, oh yeah and the corn, and what about a salad....?"), thanks for the help.    I'm excited for the cooler weather and some canning, because who doesn't feel good with jars and jars of home-grown food on their shelf?