Back in the Garden Again
Well it’s that time again. We are harvesting the vegetables that were planted last spring. Two of my friends have large gardens and need help with the canning. Last year we did over 11,000 jars of food: Half gallons, quarts, pints and jelly jars. The size of the container depends on what kind of food we have to put inside. We have even more jars stored in the attic, so only God knows how much we will be canning this year.
We are on our way. Yesterday we canned pickled beets and pickled beans (we call them dilly bean.) Earlier we pickle cucumbers into all sorts of flavors. They are pickling in their brine, kosher dill pickle spears, bread & butter pickles, and sweet pickle slices. We’ve done three bushels of peaches in preserves and peach slices. We have done a variety of beans: yellow wax beans and green beans canned to be reheated and eaten when desired. We pickled yellow wax beans and green beans in brine with a teaspoon of dry Italian dressing mix. They are very delicious. My favorite thing we can is “Marie’s Pepper Mix.” It was a recipe given to me by a dear widow lady friend Marie Ohler. The recipe consists of ketchup, oil, sugar, onions, and hot and green bell peppers. It is a great topping for hamburgers, or a roasting sauce for beef or chicken. It makes a great sloppy Joe mix for burger. I have been splitting a crusty bread loaf, buttering each slice, and drowning it in a skillet, almost like the bread for a grilled cheese sandwich. I will put the pepper mix on it to eat like brochette. It is so good.
We have gathered some blackberries to make blackberry preserves, some half the amount of sugar for diabetics like me and another lady. We have a good running start with preserving the garden’s bounty, but the tomatoes haven’t started to ripen yet. We have salsa and tomato sauce yet to make. The corn stalks are developing their ears. We have butternut squash, zucchini, carrots, and more beets. The pepper plants and tomato plants are hanging heavy with ripening fruits.
There are zucchini, pumpkins and melons spreading their leaves and shading their bounty beneath. Snap peas are climbing their trellis and sending out shoots to climb ever higher. On a nearby farm, we have access to a pear tree and an apple tree that have limbs that are drooping with the weight of the apples and pears. God has been bountiful this year, I pray He gives us the strength and time to store His blessings.