A deciding moment for green tomatoes

 The last few nights, the the weather forecast is for near freezing, and pockets of the neighborhood are white with frost. Soon it will be curtains for all the tender annuals.

Like many tomato growers, I like the basil/tomato combination from a culinary perspective, but there's an additional reason to grow basil near your tomatoes.

Basil is even more tender than tomatoes.The leaves start to drop weeks before the tomatoes are harmed by the cold.

When the leaves near the top start to turn brown, or the stems look hideous like the one to the right, I know it will soon be cold enough to bring in the last of the green tomatoes.









Here is what a tomato plant looks like when it is first touched by a hint of frost, but hasn't gotten cold enough to succumb. The leaves are curling, the fruit start to go translucent. After a real frost, the fruit will freeze, and when it thaws its a mushy, blackening mess.  Before that happens, it's time to bring in all the usable tomatoes, ripe or not.

Tomatoes - just tickled by frost. The one to the right is further inside the greenhouse, and was unharmed

As I pick the tomatoes, I practice triage. Some of the tomato plants have gone crazy with the recent rain, sucking up so much water that their fruit is badly cracked. 

Slugs and earwigs immediately move in, and the fruit is inedible. To humans, anyway. The chickens love them. Who else gets excited to have rotten tomatoes thrown at them?

Here Aurora stands guard over a bunch of the juiciest of the lot, keeping the ducks and the lower ranking hens at bay.

The remaining tomatoes are of all sizes and degrees of ripeness. I try to pick tomatoes gently, and not pile them up. They are fragile.

I sorted the tomatoes. 

Those with cracked skin, minor blemishes, or very wide stem ends (like the red tomato at the top) will not store well. They are too attractive to fungus and fruitflies.

Very green ones, or ones that have not reached full size, are unlikely to ripen. They work for green tomato recipes (fried, chutney, pickles, salsa) but I won't try to store them.

As Shakespeare says "ripeness is all".  I think that over and over to myself as I harvest, and it makes me sad. It's not an inherently sad phrase - it's what you make of it. But right now, I think about being harvested too soon, or being past one's prime.

Fall is that kind of season. I try instead to think "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness". That sounds much better.

The remaining tomatoes, the best of the best, are set aside to ripen. I wipe off any dirt, make sure their skins are intact and blemish-free, and set them one tomato deep in boxes lined with newspaper. This way, if one tomato does start to spoil, the paper will protect the ones around it. I organize them so they are together with tomatoes of similar ripeness. 

Tomatoes don't belong in the fridge. They need a moderate temperature in the fifties or sixties. We in Seattle think of that as room temperature. I store mine in the basement just to get the out of the way. I check on them every week or so - more often if I need tomatoes. The big red tomato in the center of the picture will be ripe almost immediately. And because it has such a deep dimple in its blossom end, it will probably start to go bad soon after. I make a mental note to use it soon.

I make the real greenies and a few of the redder ones into green tomato salsa. It's tangy and sour when it's first made, but mellows over a few days and is delicious with corn tortillas and goat cheese.

Recipe

1.5  kilos green tomatoes (a little over 2 pounds)

1 very large red onion

4 cloves garlic

4 jalapenos or to taste

1 t salt

2 t cumin

Cilantro to taste (I think 2 T is standard, but I like about 1/2 C)

1 C vinegar or lime juice

Cube the tomatoes and onion into small dice. Crush and chop the garlic. Carefully (rubber gloves recommended) seed and chop the jalapenos. 

Place all ingredients in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook for ten minutes at a gentle boil. 

Cool slightly and process in a food processor if desired. Processing makes a better sauce for dipping tortillas. 

Recipe for Green Tomato Pickles

This isn't really a recipe, but it's a great idea my friend Portia taught me.

Eat a jar of your favorite kind of pickles. Save the juice.

Cut green tomatoes into quarters and put them in the juice.

Refrigerate and serve after a week or so. They are really yummy.

Purple Potato Bread

I have gotten in a bit of a bread making rut lately. I bake a mean loaf of crusty, tangy, mostly whole grain bread in a free form boule shape, and it's very good. But sometimes I get bored.

I used to make a potato bread that was notable for being tender, quick, and rich tasting with a deceptively simple recipe. I had gotten out of the habit, because of the extra step of boiling up potatoes. Looking at the haul of purple potatoes from our garden, an idea begins.

Purple potato patch, summer 2012

Just over 675 grams

I tell my kid I want to make purple bread out of our potatoes. He says this would be awesome. I mention the real possibility we will end up with grey bread instead.

 He says "that's OK. It will still taste good". The bitter sweetness of a child becoming mature.

The recipe:

1 1/2 pounds (700 grams) of potatoes, scrubbed
4 cups flour (or a little more)
1 1/2 t salt
2 T olive oil
4 t baking yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
A handful of cornmeal






Place potatoes in a pot with cold water to cover. Bring to a boil and then simmer until a knife inserted in meets little resistance, about 20 minutes depending on the size of the potatoes. Drain, and return to hot pan to steam. A cut open potato shows a dark purple center and a very pale band around the skin.

Boiled and cut open

 Mash potatoes with olive oil and salt. Let them cool to lukewarm. At this point my purple potatoes were an amethyst color, with tatters of dark skin throughout. Because they were mashed without added liquid, they didn't get fluffy and creamy. They were just crumbled up.

Mashed purple potatoes

Mix yeast and water to dissolve.

In a stand mixer, with mixing paddle, combine potato mixture with yeast, and add 3 cups of flour. Set mixer on low and mix to combine.

Change to dough hook and add the remaining flour. The dough will be weird. It starts out as a shaggy mess, and then as the water in the potatoes gradually combines with the flour, it will form a heavy, soft dough. At this point it's clear the bread will be a soft shade of purple at best. All the vibrancy of the potatoes is merged with the pale flour.


Mix on low for 8 minutes, until a soft dough forms. Even after eight minutes, my dough was still not uniform, but rather a very light colored background with flecks of different purples scattered about.

Let the dough rise until doubled in size, one to two hours.

Dough with flecks of purple

Once the dough is doubled in size, gently deflate it by pressing it down. Break or pull it into two equal sized pieces, and knead them briefly and gently. I kneaded too much and started losing flecks of potato. A few moments should be enough.

Shape each half of the dough by stretching it slightly and then tucking the outside edges in so they all meet in the center, forming a ball. Pinch the seams together, then roll the ball between you hands to slightly elongate it. I found the dough to be a bit strange. It felt like children's play dough, and was perhaps the least sticky dough I have ever worked with. I barely had to wash my hands after shaping it.

Shaped loaves

Set each loaf on a sheet of parchment paper, and cover with a damp kitchen towel. Set them in the warmest part of the kitchen to rise for 45 minutes or until doubled in size.  

When the loaves have been rising for 15 minutes, place an oven stone, a cast iron griddle with the smooth side up, or an inverted cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven, and preheat to 450 degrees.

Once the loaves are doubled in size, remove the towel. Sprinkle the baking stone with a bit of cornmeal and gently life one loaf at a time from the parchment paper. Set it down, upside-down, on the stone or sheet in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes, then check the loaves. If they are deep golden brown and sound hollow when you tap their underside, they are done. If they are pale or sound solid, put them back for another fifteen minutes. 

Not grey. But not really purple either

I could tell from the golden exterior of the bread that it wasn't dark enough to be truly purple inside. What I got was a pale lavender bread, flecked with darker purple and maroon. 

The texture was velvety, tender and dense. I tasted olive oil, and just barely a hint of the potato, but I wouldn't call this a potato dominated bread. 

The main flavors were yeast, toasted grain, and a slight sweetness, although no sweeteners were used. This bread would make great cinnamon rolls with a bit of brown sugar added to the dough.

It's also pretty good just the way it is. 

Shared on little house in the suburbs , farm girl blog fest

Cider party 2012

Self sufficient we will never be. And thank goodness for that.

Several Gardens Farm includes an old orchard with majestic standard apple trees that had not been pruned in decades when we moved here.
The trees produce generous crops of sometimes questionable quality fruit.

Some apples are good for eating, but many are too small, spotted, puckery tasting or damaged to save or give away, and instead get ground up for cider. 

Over time, by removing and destroying every prematurely fallen apple and picking and harvesting all the healthy ones, we have reduced the population of pest bugs and spot-causing fungus.

This is an ongoing process, and cider making provides a thrifty way to capture what's best from apples that don't please the modern palate.



As time went on, we came to cherish our annual cider making party as much more than just an exercise in orchard hygiene.  It has become a focal point for taking control of food production, and having fun doing it.

Among our first guests of the morning one family with young kids asked if we needed help raking up the few truly unusable bad apples. The apples that fall too early are often mushy, pecked at by birds, and starting to ferment. They host apple maggots, scab and coddling moth.

Cleaning them up is no one's choice job - our friends offered because they knew it would be most helpful. We love that there are people who understand how important the tough, icky jobs are and jump in to help. Hopefully that's not their only association with us!


In any case, they filled a wheel barrow with downed fruit before most guests even showed up.

Fort builder and defender

Next came Noah's scout den. These boys needed a team building activity, and had some extra energy to burn.

Their awesome den leader put the scouts to work hauling bales of old hay into long rows to serve as forts for a water balloon fight.

It shaped up to be a hot day, and later the younger kids benefited from the dose of cold water and the excitement of battling in a fort built by the big kids. It got them through the difficult mid-afternoon slump, when kids' tempers often take a nose dive.

  Meanwhile, the serious fruit picking had begun. We gathered boxes, bags and buckets of apples.

People picked from ladders, stood on the ground, or climbed up in the branches and picked from inside the canopy itself.

Our three beloved orchard ladders had their busiest day of the year, and any other ladder we could get our hands on was pressed into service.

Even an old children's ladder/slide combo was put to use, for a little boost to get those almost reachable apples.

For me, it was a chance to be inside the canopy of a tree, where I feel most at home. The feel of scaly bark on my hands, the slight sway of branches under my weight, and the lure of apples just out of reach. I would have stayed all day if my guests weren't still arriving!

 Once the the apples we picked, buckets of them were tossed into bins for cleaning. There were always a couple of wash bins full, and over the day, more and more apples waiting in line to be cleaned and made into cider.

Friends showed up with boxes and bags of apples from their own trees. One guest brought some honeycrisp apples that weren't as sweet as they should be. A crowd of knowledgeable friends tasted, assessed, and suggested techniques to help grow a tastier fruit.

There were always hands at work with the cider press. The apples go in the tall wooden hopper, where they are ground into pulp and dropped into bags.

Then the bags of ground apples are pressed dry, and the juice is caught in pans and then transferred to a honey storage vat we temporarily gave a new job to.



All day long, people brought and ate goodies. They saw old friends, picked apples, made juice, filled their bottles and jars with juice, played with the animals, told stories, and met new friends.

Either because the work wore them out, or because the food was so good and the sun so bright, all the children and animals were in an exceptionally good mood.

Cosmo, our little rooster, got so relaxed he fell asleep in a young childs' lap, as she gently rocked on a swing.

More helpers arrived in the late afternoon. One great-spirited person did a load of dishes and the folks who had been picking and juicing got a late lunch break.

Tired kids started nodding off, and the first round of families headed home. The sun beat down, and a few people needed to take serious hydration breaks, either by drinking cider or getting hit with water balloons.

A mountain of pomace (ground up apple pulp) started to grow. Anyone who wanted took buckets of it home for their livestock.

Then David fired up the tractor and hauled the rest off to an overgrown part of the yard where its acidity will kill the weeds. Later we will cover it with lime and plant a garden there.


Entomologists and beekeepers stood in the late afternoon sun, talking about ways to keep pesticides out of beehives. A guest who showed up a bit late offered us a flat of organic tomatoes. A friend dropped off a pile of wood chips, saturating the air with the scent of shredded fir. Honey fans sampled honey made from three seasonal flower sources.

The last of the apple pickers, our fanatical cousins and an awesome neighborhood garden mentor, brought me a surprise - dozens of perfect apples and pears, sorted out from the cider fruit because it was of eating quality. If I can preserve it, this fruit will last us all fall and into the winter.

I started preparing cider to bottle. We guessed that upward of fifty gallons had been made that day, and nearly all was carried home by our awesome helpers, leaving us with a very manageable six gallons of our own.

The bird (a failed attempt with an iPhone).

And then, as if the day had not already been perfect, a huge pileated woodpecker flew across the orchard and landed in the neighbors' tree. It's shrill "wick wick wick wick wick" cry poured down over the remnant of friends still on the porch. Its flight and song became part of the act of washing off the cider press and of clearing the empty serving dishes.

Today was all about shared work, shared joy, and the need to depend on others. Even without the help of so many friends, we probably could have spent a grim workday and made the six gallons of cider we kept - but how many apples would have lain rotting in the orchard? We would have gone inside, ordered pizza maybe fallen asleep in front of a movie, aching from work, unaware of the spectacular day we could have had.






Moments of great need so often remind us that we are not self sufficient. We all need help in times of loss and grief, or to celebrate important transitions. We need help in times of abundance too. It isn't always easy to ask, but when we do, it sometimes becomes its own celebration.

Thank you everyone.


Shared at: Green idea reviews, Frugally sustainable, Simple Lives Thursday, LHITS DIY

Better than buttercream

Sometimes, there isn't time to make cheesecake. Or I simply don't want to get every pan in the house dirty and heat up the kitchen. The fruit is piling up and attracting fruit flies. My family is tired of my seasonal fruit obsession, but I know how good it is, and how sinful it is to waste it.

And still that relentless, generous, sweet, epic garden keeps pumping out fruit. Berries, and plums, and now the pears are ripening, and soon the grapes will suddenly change color, and the figs will droop down in that ugly but delicious way they do when they need to be eaten.

 The acid juices are seeping into tiny cuts on my fingertips from the plum pits scraping my fingers as I pit them to go in the drier. My hands are stained with berries and ache from milking and my shins are bruised from leaning into the rungs of the orchard ladder.


I love trees, but I'm tired of getting bits of twig in my hair and spiders stuck to the sides of my face as I harvest. I'm tired to looking down the ladder at the hungry goats hoping a bucket of ripe plums might fall raining down on them.

 Buckets and flats of fruit, as far as the eye can see, and it's boring. I just want everyone to eat it now. I wish I had some shortcake. I wish I had an angel food cake. I want to make the fruit seem special, because it is, but right now it doesn't feel very special.

Meanwhile, the goats' milk keeps coming. I mechanically turn gallons of it into chevre, the very simplest recipe I know. To a gallon of milk, add 1/4 cup buttermilk, a drop of rennet in water, and let it sit at room temperature till it forms a curd. Drain in a cheesecloth bag. That's all there is to it.

David is bringing home boxes of honey. Soon it will be harvest time for that, too, and bees will come looking for the enticing smell. Jar after sticky jar, or if there is enough, buckets and barrels of it.


All I can think about is ordering pizza. I need to get a grip.




These are the times to pull out the mixer and make the best goo on earth. I call it buttercream, because honeycheese sounds a bit weird, and this should be comfort food.


Take chevre, or very dry yogurt cheese. Process, blend or stir to completely soften and break up any clumps. Add honey till it's sweet and completely combined.  I add about 1/3 cup honey per 2 cups of cheese. You could also add up to 1 t vanilla, but I usually don't. I prefer the texture when mixed with a paddle blade in my Kitchenaide mixer.

Chill. Serve. The texture should be velvety smooth, opulent and plush. The flavor should be slightly tangy, floral, milky, and evocative. Whenever we eat this, my son starts speculating on what blue whale milk tastes like. We've heard that it's thick as whipped cream, rich with butterfat and sugars, and makes baby whales gain three pounds an hour. This butter cream evokes such thoughts, but the ingredients are really no more decadent than putting cheese on a sandwich and a few spoonfuls of honey in your tea!

Everybody loves parfait

If it's too thin, it's called cream sauce and I drizzle it over fruit, or add it to oatmeal.

If it's just right, it's called butter cream and one could frost cakes with it. It won't stay perfect for long. It will eventually weep and separate, so don't use it for a birthday cake. This is daily fare, meant to eat now. Mostly we use it as a layer in a parfait, with fruit of any kind, or dip large fruits into bowls of it.

I've never had a batch that was too thick, but maybe you will one day. If you inhabit such a parallel universe, no fears. Add coco powder and call it a truffle.

However it turns out, it is a great emergency dessert. It tastes special without being hard work. There's plenty of work to go around without trying for more!

The harvest season is one of those strange times, when we complain about the things we love the most. I've heard kids do this about video games (Oh, I hate this level where you get stuck trying to rescue the princess) and adults whine about rock climbing and about solving jigsaw puzzles and about weaving in the loose ends in knitting.

When people say they 'hate' some element of a beloved activity, they are searching for some other meaning. Something akin to 'my passion for what I'm doing is being proven  by this most tedious or difficult task.'

In this century and community, it is a privilege and a choice for me to grow so much of my family's food. I know that, and I never regret the choice or compare myself to those who rely on farming without the fallback of a day job. Not just that - the harvest is a time of solemn gratitude, of wonder at the abundance around us. But the sheer work of it does knock me on my backside every time. 

Thanks to butter cream I have a little more backside to cushion the fall!

Shared on:frugal days sustainable ways, gastronomicalsovereignty, spain-in-iowa simple lives Thursday , littlehouseinthesuburbs

Harvesting the hazels

You need to stop reading this and go outside right now. Find the nearest hazel or filbert hedge, and break off one of the clusters of nuts.

Hazelnut in the husk

If you live in the Pacific northwest, it won't be hard to find one. Any planting with trees and shrubs probably has a few. If you live elsewhere, you might have to search. That's ok. The journey is what matters, right?


If you don't break of this cluster, the squirrels will in a matter of days, so don't feel too guilty. Of course, don't do anything that will get you in trouble, either!

The cluster of hazelnuts in their cases will be jade green and frilly, a group of lacey collars enclosing green or tan seeds. Put a thumb on the tannest nut, and try to move it. If it roles free from the husk, it's ripe enough to eat, though perhaps not for long-term storage. If not, it doesn't matter for what you are going to do. Peel back the husk instead.

Insert nose here

Now smell the husk, and the green stem of the nut. Isn't it divine? It could be a mens' or womens' cologne, or a laundry product, but it's too pure really for either. It smells like, of all things, spring. Funny in early September.















I have no idea why hazelnut husks smell so wonderful. Maybe to help attract squirrels? Though they consume many nuts, squirrels greatly benefit the few that survive. By dragging them off and burying them, squirrels serve as the distribution system for the seeds, allowing them to grow far from the tree. That is idle speculation, though. Seriously I have no clue. But seriously, they smell great.

We are trying to harvest hazels this year, for the first time. Usually by the time I decide they are ripe, the squirrels have taken them all. This year I am picking them green but loose in the husk. It will be a few weeks before I know if the meat shrivels up and is ruined or if it is edible. Good nut and seed crops are one of the big gaps in production at Several Gardens Farm. We will never meet our caloric needs with our nut crop, but a harvest will help us make at least a few more meals from entirely farm-grown food

Litter of nut husks - a squirrel has been here!

 Note - squirrels leave lots of apparently intact hazels scattered around the lawn. Nearly all are "blanks", hollow  inside. 

It is a total waste of time to gather these dropped seeds and open them.The good ones are either eaten in situ, the empty shells dropping down to form a mulch beneath the plant, or dragged off and  buried, where they will sprout a few years later.

A good nut

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