When life gives you hail, IMPROVISE!

You saw the damage. Not pretty.  This was my best year for tomatoes.  I lost four plants, two of which were massive!  They were magnificent.  But amazingly, the plants did their job and protected the tomatoes...everything was stripped except for the tomatoes.  I lost some, but I had 17 pounds of perfectly good green tomatoes.  What to do, what to do????  Usually it's in late fall when I have this problem and I just let the green tomatoes ripen inside.  I've been seeing so much on green tomatoes lately that I wanted to try some things.

Here's a sampling of some of my tomatoes.  They were just gorgeous.  I decided to make a green tomato salsa, picalilli (which is a green tomato relish), and also with some of my zucchini, I made mock pineapple.

It all turned out beautifully and the mock pineapple (zucchini) tastes just like pineapple!  We put it on some pizza.  It's awesome.  I found something else that I will no longer need to buy.  I rarely use pineapple so that's going to be a real treat!  I hope through life's storms you find the unexpected treasures!  Blessings to you!  Happy canning and harvesting!

Summer's end update...

Wow...I can't believe we're in the middle of September already.  I started the kids' school right after Labor Day.  We also went on vacation at the end of August so I am literally two weeks behind where I should be.  I was thinking I should probably wrap up the summer.  The garden got a bit neglected this year as two of my kids were going to do a major competition and it required a lot of our time.  I still have a lot of tomatoes and my pumpkins are awesome...one in particular is the largest I've ever grown.  I'm anxious to see what it weighs!  In a few weeks it should be ready!

I've been doing quite a bit of canning.  Remember all those raspberries I told you about from my yard?  Well, I used them all up (all ten pounds) for my yearly jam session.  This year I tried many different varieties of jam.  One delicious creation has raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries.  It is delicious.  I also make a mango+raspberry=the sweet nectar of God!!!!  Oh, it's good!  Then there's the new this year: raspberry + peach.  All in all, I made 62 half-pints & pints.  While I was finishing up my jams, lo and behold, peanut butter went on sale for $1.49.  We have been skimping on the peanut butter around here because it is so WICKED expensive.  This sale did it for me...I have enough for a year (I hope).   I am not one of those people who likes to stockpile for ten years worth of food...I just want enough to last us for a bit.  I know prices are going up and I just want to be prepared.  I also canned up a bunch of peaches and some peach jam.  I also got in a salsa session.  I think I will need another bushel of tomatoes because I need to make some more.  I'm hoping to do some beets.  I have pictures to share from our vacation that goes hand in hand with canning.  Plus, there's been a lot of crafting/sewing going on, too. I hope you are winding down from the summer.  We are enjoying some cooler temperatures here because this summer was a scorcher.  Blessings to you!

Garden happenings

Cilantro
I don't know about your garden, but one of my self-seeding plants in the garden is my cilantro.  I can seriously consider it a weed because it grows everywhere!!!!  Every year, I let it flower because it is so inviting to all the beneficial insects and then it goes to seed (which I try to control) and then it's growing season is over while everything else starts ramping up...like tomatoes.  I always make salsa and can it and you have no idea how infuriated I am with myself because I have to buy cilantro...from the store...and it's not very cheap...and I had pounds of it weeks before!!!!  Well, no more, my friends...I picked half a pound of it today and I could still get a lot more...I'll keep picking as this week progresses.  I'm freezing it so that I have plenty when it's time for salsa making or if I want to make Chipotle-style burritos!!!  I saw a blog where they clean the cilantro, take off stems, barely put olive oil on it so that everything gets an extremely light coat of it, then I bagged it up and stuck it in the freezer.  I am so thrilled!  Here's what half a pound of cilantro looks like:

The salad spinner I have the cilantro in is not a small one--it's a pretty large hefty one that can really hold some greens!  (I got it at the thrift store for around $5...this brand usually runs around $30...it's already earned it's keep around here!)

Other homestead updates

The garden is just swinging along.  I have my own personal army of ladybugs...it's been so exciting to see that because it helps me feel that the garden is in balance. The lacewings are out, too, so the beneficials are really working hard this summer season.

 I will probably have some yellow squash and zucchini by the end of the week.  We've had some beautiful salads lately and we are just chomping at the bit for the zucchini!!! The peas are prolific and tomatoes are forming left and right.  All in all, it's been a good growing season so far.  

The chickens have been so fun to watch and feed.  I give them tons of garden scraps and I never knew chickens could "honk" like geese.  It's the funniest thing.  Here is something I found on clearance at our local grocery store.  I wanted to do a rooster stencil on our chicken coop, but the bargains never cease to amaze me.  This is the before...

It's a rooster chalkboard.  I paid $3.59 for it because it no longer came with it's stand.  No problem.  I didn't want it as a chalkboard anyway!  Here's where it is now!

This is actually the door of our chicken coop.  We painted the rooster white like the trim, and I hardly had to put any effort into it!!!

Here's the actual full coop pretty much finished.  I have one more thing I have to do with it if I get some time, but it is fully functional and complete!  My husband did such a nice job!!!  The flowers on the front give it a nice touch, too.

The yellow flowers, calibrochoa, I picked up from the store, and just peeking up in the back is one of two agastache (will be purple) that I started from seed indoors.  They should be a striking combination!!!  

I hope all is growing well in your part of the world.  To all my fellow Americans, happy Fourth of July!!!  Be safe and God bless!!!

Strawberry Jam and Bargain Kitchen Essentials

I had the wonderful opportunity to go to a private greenhouse and glean from their strawberry beds.  I came home with 25 lbs. of ripe strawberries!!!  My goodness!  I definitely had my work cut out for me because I had to attend to them right away.  I turned it all into jam because my family could not live without the sweet stuff and after many, many hours of work, I've got enough to last well into next year.  I may even have the chance to go pick more!!!  I ended up with 24 full pints and 6 half-pints!!! I am really happy with my jam stash now!! 

I've been doing a lot of thrift store hunting lately and have found some real gems!  It seems that I've been in a real stainless steel kind of a mood lately.  Our local thrift store has offered $10 off for a $10 purchase coupon per email so our family has cashed these in and I have found some "steals."  First on the list is what I call my baby stockpot.  In the picture on the right is my huge stainless steel stockpot I bought over 10 years ago at Dillard's (I think) for half-price which was $18.  It still looks practically brand new even though it's a work horse around here.  I can cook 20 pounds of potatoes, it holds 25 pounds of strawberries (that's right, I took it strawberry picking), plus I can make stock in it from a huge turkey carcass!  The one on the left is the one from the thrift store.  The first thing that came to mind when I saw it was JAM!  It's the perfect size to make a batch of jam!  It has high sides so the jam can sputter away without making me a mess!  Can you say $1.99???!!!  Oh yes, I've already used it to process all those strawberries into jam (in separate batches, of course).

My next bargain was this ginormous stainless steel mixing bowl.  I had one years ago that I had sent with my husband to a church function I couldn't attend and he obviously never made it back home with it.  I just never had the heart to spend $16-$20 on one and finally found one for $3.99!  I absolutely love it! 



My next acquisition were these Wearever AirBake cookie sheets.  I figured I was taking a gamble on these because I couldn't figure why anyone would want to get rid of them unless they weren't any good.  After a minimum amount of cleaning, we baked some cookies on them and they are great!  Can you imagine how many cookies I can bake now at once!!!?  The big one is 15" x 20" and the smaller one is roughly 14" x 16 1/2".  They were only $2.99 each.  Remember, I had my coupons so I basically got all these things for FREE!!!  These cookie sheets are totally expensive brand new...I think the big one goes for $20. 

And finally, who couldn't use a few more gravy boats.  These awesome stainless steel gravy boats were priced at $1.59 and $0.99.  I think I am so ready for the holidays now!!!

I hope all of you are finding wonderful bargains and I would love to hear all your stories of what you're preserving on your homesteads.  I have much more to come in the next few days as we are on fall break...

Blessings to you on your homesteads!

Canning is "peachy" keen!

I bought twenty pounds of peaches because I got them dirt cheap!!! Here are the "fruits" of my labor! I canned 11 pints of sliced peaches in light syrup, 7 pints of peach jam, and 4 of the tiny little jelly jars of peach butter!!! Not bad for twenty pounds. I think I will be getting another twenty pounds since it was sooooo inexpensive ($0.39/lb.). I can't wait until winter to eat this summery goodness!!!

When I started with the peach jam a few days ago, I could not get the peels off the peach. I think it was because the peaches weren't quite ripe. I waited a few days for them to ripen to can the sliced peaches, and the peels came off like it was nothing. That saved me a ton of work!!!! Now they look so pretty and I'll check the seals tomorrow. In the background you'll notice Ball's Blue Book of Preserving. It has been such a valuable guide as I can this year. It is quite the resource and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn to can things properly. What are you canning or preserving this season?

An update on my zucchini: not so good. It's very embarrassing that I'm zucchinimom and I'll barely have any zucchini this year. Last year was such a stellar year for zucchini around here and horrible for tomatoes. This year, the tomatoes are growing like gangbusters and the zucchini are doing miserable. Such is the life of a gardener!!!

Happy growing and happy preserving!!!