Productive Day

It's Friday. Have a drink. Listen to some music. It's summer...kick back.

We've been canning yummy food all day, pickled banana peppers, garden fresh tomato sauce, green tomato mincemeat. Green tomato mincemeat is a great use for tomatoes from a plant inflicted by blight, which is a fungal infection that becomes a problem as the tomato turns red and looks like this:

There are a couple of plants, of the many dozen, that have been producing tomatoes like this, so we figured we cut them to the quick, pick them green and make a mincemeat - a mixture of (sometimes, green tomatoes) raisins, apples, spices, lemon and orange zest, sugar, and vinegar. Mincemeat is commonly used in pies and pastries (it grew out of fashion some time ago, but is popular in Europe, and likely in the south). Also, we learned tonight, it's GREAT with plain, unsweetened, yogurt.

So...it's been a productive day:

4 pints pickled banana peppers
2 pints experimental cucumber pickles (we're developing some canning recipes)
5 pints garden fresh tomato sauce

6 pints green tomato mincemeat

Some of the production! Our tomato sauce!

Now, we kick back, listen to some Van Morrison (and many other artists) and enjoy a refreshment, or two...or three.



The point is, relax, it's summer...and it's coming to an end. We saw Halloween displays being set up at Menards (a local building/home improvement store) yesterday. Talk about scary.

Happy Friday, world.