I teach color theory every spring, and when we talk about color psychology I always say that blue is an appetite suppressant because there are no naturally occurring blue foods. I’ll have to add an asterisk to my lecture next semester. We grew these blue potatoes this year, and when they are mashed, they make the most impressive blue color. They get a little more purple when they’re heated up.
More canning… I really don’t know how this all fits in with everything being so busy these days. We brought back a box of beans from Yakima and pickled them. My grandma made these and I loved them as a kid, both the regular dill ones, and the spicy ones with red pepper flakes in the bottom. My mouth is watering just thinking about them now.
I’ve been doing a little bit of design work for Panacea, an awesome dinner delivery service here in Seattle. I am all for getting paid in food, especially when it’s this tasty. They did house-roasted beef sandwiches earlier this summer, and it came with a really good Tomato Jam, with big slices of ginger in there. I used the leftovers on egg sandwiches, a burger, and shamefully, straight from the spoon. So I took a shot at approximating it with the Tomato Preserves recipe in my trusty Ball Home Preserving bible. It’s close enough and will have to do… until I can get them to pass along the secret recipe.
Every August we spend a weekend in Yakima picking up (and u-picking) produce to preserve for the coming year. The first year we went may have been pre-children, and I think a couple other times we managed to leave them with the grandparents, but by now it’s become a full-blown family vacation. There is the hotel with a pool, Mexican food for dinner, the quirky winery we go tasting at, and of course our favorite places to buy produce.
This year we made quick work of the tomato fields, picking 140 pounds in 20 minutes or so. Even when the tomatoes are 35 cents a pound, they end up costing quite a bit when you get 4 huge boxes full. When we got home and realized what we’d done to ourselves… the project was pretty daunting. The first half of the batch we peeled, pureed, and cooked down to a really tasty pizza / pasta sauce (the recipe in the photos is what we added to each stockpot of sauce after it had reduced by about half.
The second half of the batch we peeled, chopped, boiled, and canned as stewed tomatoes; it was a lot less work and we put those away as quarts rather than pints. All told, we ended up with about 25 pints of pizza sauce and 25 quarts of stewed tomatoes. The best part was getting that bucket of tomatoes out of our fridge.
Back in July we were invited to tag along on another orchard gleaning out in Wenatchee (we did apples last fall) at Peter and Maryann’s and we ended up with a significant quantity of Rainier cherries, plus a couple bings thrown in for good measure. Apparently the Rainiers were being selectively harvested for just the right size and color at the end of the season, and a bunch were just going to be left to the birds. Dodging rain showers, Paul, Michaellynn and I spent a couple hours up on ladders filling bags.
Alicia had the foresight to get on Amazon and buy the highest-rated cherry pitter she could find, and we put it right to work. We were going to be pretty busy with a home-improvement project, so we froze them in gallon bags until we would have a chance to work on them.
(Time passes… one month to be exact.)
OK, I’m back and have finally started processing the cherries. Michaellynn had suggested freezing the cherries before drying them because when they thawed, they would release a lot of their liquid, which she made into jelly. We followed suit, and indeed, each gallon bag of cherries drained about a quart of liquid. After that it was into the dehydrator for about 16 hours, and we had what looked like giant raisins on hour hands. I reduced down the cherry liquid into a thick syrup, and we’re trying to decide what to do with it. Probably keep some for pancakes, and maybe make a bit of jelly too?
In the precarious, cold, wet months when we’re starting seeds, transplanting the seedlings, and hoping the plants take root, a lot of things can happen. This year I find myself with three yellow crookneck squash plants, and two of them are starting to produce pretty heavily. These are yellow squash pretty similar in taste and texture to zucchini, so we have a decent idea of what to do with them, but we’re still scrambling to stay out in front. Alicia made squash quickbread and squash risotto the other night. Last night she wanted to try open-faced squash Parmesan sandwiches, so I got to work.
I sliced the biggest of our crop into 1/8″ planks, and marinated them in some balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, and smoked paprika. After a half hour or so, it was onto the bar-b-que with them, monitored closely so they didn’t get too soggy or overcooked. I made plenty so there are leftovers for lunches.
To finish the sandwich, the squash was placed on grilled sourdough, then topped with marinara sauce and Parmesan cheese, and broiled to brown them. Robbie was convinced they were pizza sandwiches and ate it right up, but Hannah decided she was back to being a picky eater and cried about dinner. You can’t win them all, especially where squash is concerned.
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