We have a history of neglecting the fruits of our garden, and here is another instance. We grew a bunch of little delicata squashes last year, which were a bit of a pain to use because they were kind of petite. So down into the basement they went. We’re trying to pinch pennies these days, so in scouring the food storage, Alicia found them and decided it was time to make some risotto. They had changed colors from white with green seams to a golden yellow, almost like little pumpkins. Those things were over a year old, and still going strong… talk about staying power.

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Alicia has been making applesauce like crazy with the bags of apples that we brought home from Wenatchee back in October, and we have probably 20 or 25 quarts so far. I kept saying that I was going to make some apple pie filling since we just used up our last batch, but it’s been busy. Finally last night the Venn diagram of motivation and time overlapped, and I canned 10 quarts of pie filling. It looks like a good batch this time around; I followed this recipe (mostly, and despite the Comic Sans). Blanching the apples after they were peeled and sliced seems like it helped keep the whole production from oxidizing too much, though I had to run the sauce through the blender to de-lump it before pouring it in the cans.

A week or two ago, I also made some apple jelly with rosemary, which is an amazing combination of flavors. Rosemary usually overpowers things, but with the apple, the flavors are perfect together. We received a jar of this jelly from someone a few years ago and loved it, but I can’t figure out who it was. If you’re out there, reveal yourself! At any rate, it is tasty, tasty jelly, and it’s all Hannah wants on her toast for the time being. Just take any apple jelly recipe, and add a sprig of fresh rosemary after filling the jars, right before you put the lid on; the rosemary flavor infuses the whole jar.

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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.

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The little crabapples out in front of the run-down church next door are ready to go, so Robbie and I filled up a basketful yesterday. The sauce they make is really tart, but the batch we froze last year was perfect as a base for pie filling, adding either apples or rhubarb. The first batch today made 7 pints of applesauce, and I have the rest prepped to cook down tomorrow, hopefully for another 5 or 6 pints. That should get us through to next year in pretty good shape. Though pies have become my go-to potluck dish, so I think we’ll also do some apple pie filling this fall.

I got a little artsy with the photos this time, just to warn you. Here’s to steamy August nights in the kitchen.

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I meant to post a couple weeks ago when I started a batch of sauerkraut, but never got around to it. We got a head of cabbage, and aside from the fish tacos Alicia loves, we don’t have a ton of uses for cabbage. For some reason, fermenting it seemed like a good idea.

Well, after a week or so, it really started to stink up the kitchen, so I moved it down to the basement thinking, “out of sight, out of mind.” But it never really left my mind because every time I went to the basement, it smelled like Hannah had hidden one of her dirty diapers somewhere down there. It smelled really bad, and Alicia was getting on my case about it.

Well, we got another cabbage in our produce box this week, and I thought I’d try it out again, paying more attention to cleanliness, etc. However, I discovered that under a nasty top layer of mold, the sauerkraut was looking (and tasting) really good. So I skimmed off a liberal amount from the top, and saved the rest of it to mix in with the fresh cabbage. On the first batch, and this new one I combined with it, I followed the recipe on you find on the 2nd hit if you Google “sauerkraut recipe.”

That is, I basically tossed the shreded cabbage with some salt, tossed it in a crock, and was ready to go. This time, though, I did add a ziplock bag filled with saltwater on top of the cabbage to act as an airlock to hopefully prevent too much mold from growing. I sealed the crock with plastic wrap for good measure, and if I can be patient and not peek, in a month or two, we should have some tasty sauerkraut. Which is funny, because I don’t really know what we’ll do with all of that sauerkraut. Oktoberfest in January, anyone?

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