Tuesday, August 11, 2020

CANNING PASTA SAUCE, BAKING CAKES AND GARDEN UPDATES

 Up to get this busy day started by greeting only IR and CA this morning. RL is with her other g-ma today. At least there is no fog this morning to burr out this  sunrise.

I got chores done and then after helping hubbie get IR and CA settled down to play and watch a movie on TV I went to the kitchen to get some baking done.   After I finished baking hubbie helped me carry the cakes into our bedroom to get them out of the way so I could transform the kitchen from a bakery to a cannery.                                                                                                                                                              We all had lunch then I started turning some of these tomatoes in pasta sauce. With all the rains we have had lately these tomatoes have very little shelf life so I will be trying to get as many as possible canned before they rot from all the water they have absorbed.                                                                                   
I weighed out 12 pounds for one recipe of my pasta sauce and then after putting out more tomatoes that hubbie had brought in early this morning you couldn't tell I had used any !!

I added a couple bell peppers and a couple onions with the spice mixture and this turned out so good.
It made 6 quarts and 1 pint of sauce. 

There are no jar lids in any of the stores in our area and I don't think I will have enough lids to do all the canning of the tomatoes I would like to do unless I happen to find some lids somewhere. Thankfully I ordered several dozen in the spring before everyone started canning. I guess the lid makers are like the seed supply places they weren't expecting the demand to go up as much as it has with a lot more people growing their own food and preserving it.                                                                                                    I will make another run of pasta sauce on Thursday probably.                                                                     When I finished canning IR had something special to show me. This reminds me so much of g-son when he was her age , he would always build things and come get me to take pictures. He once built a tower that looked a lot like the one IR built today. She was very proud of her creation.                             

These two sisters love each other so much.                                                                                                   

After daughter picked the girls up hubbie and I went up to work in the garden. I don't think I took an August garden pic so this is the update on the waning summer garden and the start of our fall garden.

Yellow squash are still bearing first in the left of this pic and the cantelopes in the same row look like we are going to have a few cantelopes for the first time this year. The freshly tilled rows are new fall plantings of Kale and Collard greens, my delicious purple beans are still bearing on the trellis at the end of the empty row next to the tomatoes and all the rows of tomatoes are all starting to get ripe now.

After the tomatoes are a couple rows of pitiful looking pepper plants, the bell pepper plants haven't even bloomed and we have gotten a small amount of hot peppers but far from what we should have gotten. Next are the 2 rows of half runner green beans that have been so prolific this year and are still giving us fresh beans each week for Sunday lunches, next is a row of okra that is just starting to bear and then the row of spent cucumber vines that have struggled this year and ending this pic on the right side is the potato patch. The only thing after the potatoes in the last pic is the 10 cabbage plants hubbie went and picked up from our generous neighbor Scott yesterday.

I planted the cattle feed bunk at the end of the garden with fall root vegetables this evening. I planted beets, radishes, turnips and kohlrabi in it.                                                                                                     After that we picked blueberries, this has been a really weird year and I can't believe we are still picking blueberries when the grapes are starting to get ripe.


And as I walked into the house for the evening I noticed this big blossom on this vine below the lower hen lot. I have no idea what this volunteer vine is but it is covered with blooms.


We came inside and I spent the evening back in the kitchen icing cakes tonight. I was so tired I went straight to bed so I am writing this post and back dating it.                                                                          I am so very grateful for the bounty of our garden this year especially with the forecast of really harder times to come this fall and winter.                                                                                                                 Thankful for the health and knowledge that God has blessed me with to be able to work like I did today.                                                                                                                                                              God Bless and Good Night

1 comment:

linda m said...

Wow, what a busy day you had. Love the pictures of the girls.