Friday, October 12, 2012

HA! I have sweet potatoes! And other food for the winter!

The evil burrowing creature did not get all the sweet potatoes - I actually got a few pounds.  Only three of them were of any real size - the rest might generously be referred to as "fingerlings" but I am going to cook them all this week anyway.  I also dug up the rest of the potatoes, which will last us a bit longer.  All three types are delicious (one red, one russet, one Yukon Gold (my fave)).

Also, my lovely neighbor let me (and the girls) glean the last of her tomatoes and so I did get a batch of  chili sauce canned, around 1:15AM last night.  This is in addition to the honeyed orange tomato butter and the orange tomato chutney and the tomato-apple chutney and the salsa I made a few weeks ago from her tomatoes.  Also, since it's been so long since I posted, I realized that I didn't mention that the university DID decide to have a fruit sale after all, though it was far more veggies than fruits - I came home with the largest head of cauliflower I have ever seen, and enough apples for a batch of curried apple chutney, and 6 heads of cabbage I cannot do anything with until the ten pounds of cukes in the brining pot actually finish so I can pickle them - come to think of it I should check them today (I have to dump in more salt every Friday).  That sentence was a run-on into looney canner land.  The cauliflower was so large that I made 5 different cauliflower recipes with it over the course of the week it lasted us, in addition to just tearing off bits and munching them raw whenever I felt like it.  Even the Pirate liked the some of the cauliflower recipes. 

We've also been trying green bean recipes.  I can no longer say that I utterly despise green beans - I actually found two recipes I like, and I discovered that fresh beans picked and eaten while standing in the garden are decent.  Nowhere near as good as peas, but they'll do.  The girls have decided they like picking and eating the carrots in the garden, too.  This is good, because those carrots are NOT to my taste.  I have gotten another few icicle radishes, though, and I still love those.

Best of all, the figs are beginning to ripen.  We've eaten about a dozen, and taken a few next door.  I hope that having the plastic on the hoop house will be sufficient heat for the rest to ripen, because they are delicious.  It would be fabulous if I could get enough to try some of the canning recipes that call for figs - fig jam particularly.  Num num.

Still, for all this canning, I am realizing that we will need a LOT MORE garden space next year.  There were many, many veggies we didn't grow, or grow enough of, to supply us til next year.  Then the question becomes where will I store all this stuff I can?!?!  And that doesn't  include the meat issue- which is that there isn't enough room in the freezer, so some of that has to be canned, too.  At least I fixed the pressure canner this week.  As the Pirate has been going around saying..."Yea Me!"


2 comments:

  1. We had gophers eat numerous potatoes and parts of potatoes. For whatever reason, they are preferential to red potatoes.

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  2. They much preferred the sweet potatoes to any of the regular ones here. I was SO mad!

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