End of Summer

The end of summer brings many things. This weekend we canned 16 quarts of tomatoe sauce. Using a pressure canner (an overgrown pressure cooker) isn't difficult at all. A lot better, faster and cooler than the old fashion boil-the-bottles-in-the-kettle method that Jeff talks about doing with his mother. We had been picking our chocolate, grape & cherry tomatoes for salads when that so-called hurricane hit and with it came the tomatoe blight. We lost all our plants and most of the fruit in 2 days. We were able to salvage enough and buy a couple pounds of plum tomatoes on sale to make 7 quarts of sauce. Peter, a friend of my cousin Fran, had offered us his tomatoes after he had had enough. Yesterday we went up to his house and picked over 100 tomatoes. Jeff's got about 50 of them slated for dehydrating. It's amazing to see how the fruit shrinks after spending 8 hours being dehyrated! Two pounds of carrots end up looking like wood shavings in a sandwich bag! Zucchini, peppers and tomato chips are great with a spinach dip and the best part is that they are crunchy but not fried!

I sent out a couple of end of summer swaps with 1 or 2 more to mail. It's fun to see how much you can stuff in an envelope! All of the above I got into a 6x9 padded mailer held together with half a roll of packing tape! I hope the power-that-be don't decide to use that size again.