Gourd Or Gargoyle?

Every year, somewhere on the property, there will grow a volunteer squash plant. Usually the compost pile, of course. This year, one grew up through some cracks in the concrete pad behind the house that I believe was meant as a place to park an RV. Though the cracks were small, the plant was large, and entirely covered the concrete pad by mid-July. 

Volunteer squash are unpredictable. Their fruit might be anything from boring old round pumpkiny type things to enormous warty colorful gourds like the ones we got this year. The vine grew three of them, each about two feet tall. I gave one to a friend and placed the others as autumn sentinels on our beautiful new porch. 

Last year’s volunteer squash plant, in contrast, produced dozens and dozens of tiny hard shelled pumpkins. They made a cool October altar. 

What most volunteer squash will NOT be is palatable. Grocery store zucchini, crook necks, and other common varieties are all hybrids, and so plants that grow from their seeds will revert back to one of the (usually useless) parent types. However, they are often beautiful. 

And no matter what the fruit is like, all squash plants have delicious blossoms. This year’s volunteer vine provided us with plenty of squash blossoms for tucking into quesadillas or dropping into chicken soup. 

And now it is dying back. I wonder what next year’s volunteer squash plant will look like? 

It’s Pear Time!

We had a bit of a windstorm a couple days ago, and as usual, it knocked a bunch of pears off the trees. Went out and collected some today - just some - and here’s the result. 

On the left - pears that need to be dealt with NOW or never. Mostly Comice pears - my favorites. They are buttery and delicious and dependably ripen off the tree. There are approximately twenty perfectly ripe pears on that platter, which will be past-perfect tomorrow. 

On the left, a humongous bowl of unripe pears. These blew down off the other two peat trees - I can’t remember their varieties - and every year I am perplexed by their stubborn refusal to ripen. I’ve tried various things - closing them up in a box with some ripe pears or with a banana, and it doesn’t help. I’ve tried putting them in the refrigerator drawer because I have read that some pears won’t ripen without chilling. Nada. They just stay hard like greenish brown rocks until they eventually begin to rot. Someday I will unlock the secret if these pears, but this year I’m going to try cooking them and see what happens. 

But what to do with the ripe pears today? We can probably eat six of them out of hand. Or I could make a pie. Pear pie is delicious. There’s always the dehydrator. Or, of course, pear sauce. But my kids don't usually eat a lot applesauce or pear sauce, and it tends to just sit on the pantry shelf for years. Plus, there’s a severe shortage of canning jars at the moment. 

Maybe I’ll give them away. That’ll probably work! 

Preserving Log (Late Summer 2020)

I’ve been on an absolute tear in the kitchen the last two weeks. Late August/early September is the middle harvest season (Mabon is coming right up), the prime harvest season around here. Here’s a list of what I’ve done lately - as far as I can remember. 

Today the girls and I pressed about ten gallons of cider, from the apples you see above. My friend H. down the way has a dozen apple trees and was only too happy to let us pick some. Tomorrow I will bring her some cider. 

Cidering is hard work. Picking the apples, carrying the crates, washing the apples, hauling the press out and cleaning it, bending down and standing up approximately 7000 times, pressing the buckets, pulling the tight-packed plate back out of the buckets, carrying the apple mast to the compost. It’s messy too, with little bits of apples flying everywhere and juice on everything. By the end I was so sweaty and sticky and tired! Working outdoors in this horrible smoke isn’t a lot of fun, either. But this was the first time we’ve pressed cider in a couple years and overall it’s a great experience. 

The smaller of my two carboys, three gallons, will be made into hard cider, and we’re keeping the rest sweet. I threw two gallons into the freezer, which leaves us about six gallons to get through before it turns into tepache. Not that there’s anything wrong with tepache. 

Plums. This in an on-year for the Italian plum tree, and there are hundreds and hundreds of plums. I’ve dehydrated enough to fill a gallon ziploc bag - more plums than you probably think - and the dehydrator is full of plums right now too. 

I’m taking another swing at plum wine. My past efforts have been drinkable, not fantastic.  Probably I won’t get any better unless I buy a little more equipment - like a hydrometer - and start taking recipes more seriously. But hey - there are so many plums. How far wrong can you go? Right now there’s about two gallons in a primary fermenting chamber and I’ll pitch the yeast tomorrow. I have to go buy another carboy because all of mine are currently full of apple cider. 

One of Homero’s clients brought him an enormous side of  salmon as a tip. I cut it into five approximately 1 1/2 lb pieces, and we ate one fresh and then I smoked the others. One of the smoked pieces is in the fridge to snack on and the others are vacuum sealed and will keep in the fridge for a few months. Probably not until Christmas though, sadly. Smoked salmon is my favorite thing to send friends and family as a Christmas gift. I could throw them in the freezer but I’m not sure how well the texture would hold up. 

Let’s see, what else? Oh, I canned six quarts of salsa ranchera  this week with tomatoes from gleaners. But I’m not doing a lot of canning for the simple reason that I can’t find canning lids anywhere! Apparently canning lids are the toilet paper of this phase of the pandemic. I have one package of small mouth lids left. 

A couple days ago I hit my favorite local farm stands just to see what was available. I brought home some sweet corn (which we ate), some cherry tomatoes (ditto), five pounds of green beans, and three smallish kohlrabi. I started kimchee with the kohlrabi. Earlier this summer I made a batch of kohlrabi kimchee and it was the BOMB. It’s only about a quart, but we will enjoy it. 

I’ll have to decide if I want to use the last of my canning lids to make canned dilly beans with the green beans, or if I will lacto-ferment them like kosher dill pickles. Both ways are good. 

I haven’t even started in the pears. Good lord, the pears! WHY did I plant FOUR pear trees? 

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