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Kitchen

How to Pit Plums for Jam and Sauce

Well, there I stood, picking away at the mess in my colander.  I had boiled the plums as the recipe said, and then strained them through a colander to get the pits out, as the recipe had said.  The trouble was that a good deal of plum was left with the pits and it was […]

Today’s Tomato Projects

This is what’s left of our tomatoes after two days of salsa-making and a lot of eating: piles of tomatoes ripening on trays and on the lids of our plastic storage boxes.  Today I plan to can all the red ones.  Usually we freeze more than we can, but this year we’re making space in the freezer for the next […]

A Mountain of Chard, Twice

See, this is what I dealt with yesterday.  A mountain of chard.  Doesn’t it look impressive?  This is after washing the chard and taking out the center stalks.  When I saw the pile, I felt like crawling into a little corner and hiding. Less than two hours later, however, it was all chopped, microwave-blanched, and packaged.  That huge mountain […]

Second Breakfast, Hobbit Style

Seventy-five years ago last Friday, Tolkien published The Hobbit.  That book, together with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, changed the literary world.  Miss 14 decided that we should celebrate by enjoying a second breakfast, as hobbits would.  So she gathered recipes, planned, and, early Friday morning, started cooking.  Miss 10 helped her, dressed in […]

Harvest Wrap Up

I’m  too busy to post my normal weekly wrap up, because we’ve been harvesting.  We expect frost tonight, so the last three days we’ve picked tomatoes, raspberries, hot peppers, sweet peppers, watermelons, pumpkins, squashes, cauliflower, rhubarb, and beans. We froze a few things, but we really canned a lot: the last cucumber pickles:  3 1/2 […]