Partying Because We Can (and also because we make puns about preserves)

Hello!
 
The moon is waxing. My neighbour just gave me a bag of cherry tomtoes. I have my own cherry (and sauce) tomatoes to pick in the next 36 hours as well, since they’re definitely ready to be harvested. AND I’m spending this Saturday – as that lovely, full, super Apple Moon gets ready to rise – hitting up the local farmer’s market with an awesome friend and then hanging out in my kitchen with her, making All Things Tomato.
 
We will be doing primarily Very Easy Crushed Tomatoes[1], and then making a variation on last year’s tomato-peach salsa wherein we’ll be using nectarines instead of peaches (and, hopefully, not having to peel the nectarines… though we’ll manage if we do need to do that). I’m going to see if I can re-jig the recipe so that it uses already-crushed tomatoes (instead of diced ones), so that we can just make the salsa by adding a dozen diced nectarines, plus rough-chopped garlic, onions, and various dried peppers, herbs, and spices to the last third-or-so of the crushed tomatoes. I think I can work that out.
 
I’ll still be making my usual fancy tomato sauce although this year’s will (a) not include any peppers, and (b) WILL include some minced basil, oregano, and savoury from the garden (and some dried rosemary from the cupboard).
I think I can probably set this up so that the cores from our Very Easy Crushed Tomatoes, along with a few litres of actual tomato puree, go into my slow cooker (and into a pitcher in the fridge, in the case of some of the puree) fairly early in the day so that they can be turned into sauce on Sunday.
 
Fingers crossed. The whole idea is to get as many different tomato products sorted out and jarred in one go as possible. We’ll be buying about 60lbs worth of tomatoes (is that too many?) so we may end up do some in the oven as the kind of herb-and-garlic roasted tomatoes that you can chuck in a tupperware and freeze, too. The cherry tomatoes from my neighbour will probably get slicedinto halves and done in the dehydrator… because why not? 😀 Although that may not happen on Saturday. 😉 Not sure yet.
 
This time, last week, I was harvesting apples from my friend’s back-yard tree (she also has a crab-apple tree and an Evans cherry – how cool is that?), and the last of the apple butter (about 3L, done up in 1C jars) is processing on the stove right now. I spent yesterday making vanilla-ginger nectarine jam (with some ground-cherries thrown in, just ’cause I had them lying around) – a recipe which resulted in ten half-cup jars (so just over one litre, really) of the sweet stuff, and my cupboards are starting to feel less bare.
 
Tomorrow, I have a date with a neighbourhood friend’s choke cherry tree (and her step ladder). I’m hoping to haul home upwards of 3L worth of choke cherries… which should net me, after some cooking and straining, about 5-6C worth of juice and cherry pulp. The plan for that is to make a chokecherry chutney that’s full of basil, mint, and rosemarry (rather than spices – although there will also be cloves in there, for what it’s worth), by mixing it up with herbs, yes, but also red onion, red wine vinegar, brown sugar, dried cranberries (and maybe dried currants), black plums if I can find them, and a red onion.
 
If I can manage to snag some of the big, toonie-sized crab apples from the trees around town, that will be particularly excellent, because crab apple jelly is a wonderful thing. Getting my hands on some of my neighbour’s pears wouldn’t hurt, either, although I’ll live if I don’t make pear butter this year. After that, we’re mostly down to waiting until this time next month (or, probably, a little bit later), so that I can make pumpkin butter before heading to Toronto for Thanksgiving.
 
So, what I’m saying, is that the Big Canning Push for 2015 is happening this week.
O.O
 
Wish me luck, folks! 😀
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad, the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] You core your tomatoes, puree them in a food processor, and then cook them down, seeds and peels and all (with a little vinegar and a little sguar and that’s about it) until they’re halfway between “sauce” and “juice”.