Hi there everybody,
I noted in a previous post that a couple of the tomato varieties we are growing this year are green ones, namely Green Zebra and Green Sausage.
Because the Green Sausage is a paste variety we decided to try to make some tomato sauce from them with a few of the Green Zebra thrown in.
They all get washed then cut into quarters and then we put them through our trusty, hand crank tomato press.
I am sure it has a proper name but I do not know what it is. We bought it about 20 years ago and it still works a treat. It separates the skin and seeds from all the flesh and juice.
I sauteed up an onion with a couple cloves of garlic in some olive oil and added the tomato pulp and cooked it down for a couple of hours. It looks a lovely shade of green and I am sure it will make a fantastic pasta sauce with that wonderful unusual colour!
In this case because there was not all that much sauce I simply put it into containers and froze it. Normally when we make a large batch I process it in mason jars in a hot water bath.
We are in the process of making sauce from all the red paste tomatoes we have collected but that is for another day.
The weekend is upon us so. I hope everybody has a great weekend and thanks so much for stopping by to visit with me. Cheers.
Greetings everybody,
Anyone who has ever grown zucchini or courgettes knows that they are prolific little beggars. That is probably an understatement.
For some reason that I simply cannot fathom, I actually planted 9 plants this year. I had started the seed in pots and then just separated them and planted out everything that had germinated. Absolute madness, I tell you!
So, as was to be expected, we have been overrun with zucchini. We have been giving them away to anyone who is willing to take them. We try to keep up with the production, honest, we really do!
But every once in a while I find it, just lying there, hiding under the leaves. A whopper as big as my arm. And sometimes even bigger.
Now if you have read my blog for a while you know how I feel about wasting food. Even the unending zucchini.
Thankfully there is something that can be done with these bigguns.
I make zucchini bread.
I grate up all the big zukes I have on hand and then measure it all out.
If I am going to turn on my oven, I like to get maximum use from it so I bake as many at the same time as I can.
My recipe makes one loaf and calls for one cup of grated zucchini. So yesterday when I made the bread, I had enough for 5 loaves which just so happens to be the number of bread pans that I have. :)
Here is my recipe for those of you who find yourselves besieged with zukes. I have tried quite a few different recipes and finally adapted one to suit my purposes. I often find that they have more oil than I would like to use and then they are greasy afterwards. This recipe uses less but it is still moist and delicious.
Zucchini Bread
1 beaten egg
1 cup of grated washed and unpeeled zucchini or summer squash
1/4 cup of oil (I use canola)
1 1/2 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
A good handful of chopped walnuts or pecans, about 1/2 a cup of so. You can
leave out the nuts if you have allergies or just prefer not to use them
Grease a 8x4 loaf pan. I use one of those baking sprays but use whatever you would normally use.
Mix together well the beaten egg, the zucchini and the oil.
In a separate bowl stir together all the dry ingredients except the nuts.
Add the moist ingredients to the dry all at once and stir until just moistened. Remember the laws of quick breads - DO NOT OVER MIX.
Stir in the nuts briefly just to combine.
Pour into the loaf pan and smooth the top.
Bake at 350F degrees until done, which is about an hour. That means that a cake tester stuck in the middle comes out clean. Times can vary so I start to check just before the hour. I find that it also seems to change the time depending on the number of loaves that are in there. When I baked the 5 loaves it took one hour and five minutes. They should be lovely and golden when they come out.
Cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes and then remove from the pan and leave on the rack until completely cool.
I put one of them into a tin to eat right away and the remaining ones I wrap in aluminium foil, label them, and into the freezer they go. In the dark bleak days of February, they will be a delicious reminder of hot summer days and my mental breakdown for planting so many! :)
Enjoy!
Thanks for visiting with me today. See you back here soon. Cheers.
A very good day to you all,
It would appear that the heat wave has finally broken here. We now have all the windows wide open and some cooling air is finally coming into the house.
Just as well, as you will see shortly.
We have been out collecting the heirloom tomatoes from the garden. Pretty much all of them have wonderful flavour but not all as I will note later. The one thing we have noticed from a great many of them is the size which can be absolutely HUGE!
Just take a look at this one. It clocked in at over 2 pounds! The problem though is that there is so much waste what with having to cut off all the icky bits. This one and this second picture of a much more reasonable looking tomato are called Dr. Wyche's Yellow and the taste is superb.
This next photo shows the following varieties, left to right:
Green Zebra, Black Icicle, Green Sausage, Purple Bumblebee and Black Cherry. They are all delicious. We are thinking that next year we may plant out more of the Black Icicle and make a batch of tomato sauce with them. I am sure it would be wonderful as it is one of the best tasting tomatoes we have grown this year.
We gathered all of the tomatoes that were ripe, both the paste variety which is mostly San Marzano and all of the other ones and made a batch of tomato sauce. The larger tomatoes were somewhat watery so we added a couple cans of tomato paste to bulk up the sauce. This small batch is not enough to haul out the canning jars and the kettle so I will just freeze it for now.
One comment I do wish to make on one of the tomato varieties, namely Chadwick Cherry, is that I found it to be very bland and lacking in that zing of tomato flavour that you expect from an heirloom. We will not grow it again.
Well that is all from me for today. With the arrival of the cooler weather I will be back out in the garden getting in those new veggie beds and a few other projects before the weather turns cold. I have seen some maple trees turning colour already so the autumn season is fast approaching. It is absolutely my favourite season of the year. I love the crisp temperatures meaning I need a sweater and the stunning autumnal colours.
Hope you all have a terrific week. Will be back soon to report on the squash harvest. Thanks for stopping by. Cheers.
Hello there everyone,
The title of the post may be "the autumn harvest" but the weather here in eastern Ontario could not be less like autumn. We are once again in the middle of a horrific heat wave with the humidex up into the 40s.
Despite the heat we have been out in the garden gathering produce when it is ready. We planted quite a lot of squash this year and one of the varieties was Green Hubbard. We peeked into the mass of squash leaves and saw this beauty lying there just growing away happily.
We will let it sit outside on the porch for a couple of weeks to allow the skin to harden and then bring it in and store it in the larder. When it comes time to use it I will cut it all up, steam the cubes of squash flesh and pop them into the freezer. They will make great soups and casseroles in the winter time.
Of course we are still getting lots of courgettes daily. I have been freezing them and we give lots away. The fall planting of lettuces are doing well and I hope they will not all bolt in this heat. The Day Neutral strawberries are exceptional. Huge and delicious. We are also getting some fall fruiting raspberries and a few blackberries every day and they too are wonderful.
I have just received another delivery of wood and we will be putting in 8 more raised beds this autumn so they are all ready for spring planting. The more work we can do now the easier things will be in the spring when sowing and transplanting make construction of new beds a challenge as we just do not have the time.
Well that is it for me for today. I am hiding out in the house trying to stay cool until this heat wave breaks. Thanks for visiting. Cheers.
