Okay, maybe I should back up. This week Ben's mom brought us a lot of produce from Western Iowa. I nearly cried with joy when I saw a cooler of corn - cleaned, cut, blanched, and packaged (all we had to do was stick it in our deep freeze!) - and boxes of tomatoes.
Our vegetable garden is in a pathetic state. When my parents were here, my mother started laughing and called out to my dad, "Tom! You have to see this!" and pointed to this:
Yes, It's Harvest Time, Charlie Brown, and we have the tomato plant equivalent of your Christmas tree. So even though I feel like a failed earth mother, our karma must not be too terrible because we have continually been the grateful recipients of free produce the past couple weeks, including the corn, tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash, and a ridiculously large bag of cucumbers from Jeremy and Nan's garden.
Knowing I had to do some canning this week, I went to a Farmer's Market on Tuesday and stumbled on another large box of canning tomatoes for $5, so that brought the tomato total to this:
And my week has been a haze of this:
On Tuesday, I froze sliced and shredded zucchini and summer squash and canned salsa. Yesterday I put up pints of tomatoes and pizza sauce, and I *may* have spend 11 1/2 hours in front of a steaming cook top. It *might* have been 1:30 am before I pulled out the last pint of pizza sauce. I'm not going to lie; it was an endurance test. And I know it was an endurance test because I was using every coping mechanism I know. I quoted Shakespeare. I did this last year, quoting Macbeth. This year's choice was Hamlet. Here's my inner dialogue as I slipped the thin skins off tomatoes, "Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt. Or sallied or sullied if you prefer the second quarto edition. Mmm...solid and sullied such different implications...what does either choice suggest about Hamlet's character?" And suddenly I'm teaching the tomatoes about textual bibliography. And then as I waited and waited and waited for the pizza sauce to cook down, I visualized: "No, this is *so* worth it. Sure, its 11:30 and this damn sauce is still runny, but it will be *so* worth it. Think of eating pizza - It's a Friday night in February. After a long week you and Ben are sitting down in the basement with your fresh from the oven pizza and beer. And you're watching Friday Night Lights. And there's Kyle Chandler. And he's wonderful. And Coach and Mrs. Coach are have one of those great bits of dialogue. *So* worth it. *So* worth it." Shakespeare and Kyle Chandler - apparently these are the men who get me through.
The damn pizza sauce
The Dutch oven totally wins MVP this year -
Even cooking, no scalded bottoms to clean, no smoky sauce!
And after putting up some dill pickles this morning, this is what my breakfast bar looks like:
Isn't it *bea-u-ti-ful*?
Would you believe there are still a few more things I want to do with tomatoes? Would you believe Ben is out looking for some tomatoes in CR today? He heard, "freezing that tomato soup," and he was totally fine with enabling me.
Oy, with the canning already!Sully at about midnight
3 comments:
I love that you were quoting Hamlet while doing that...and even making us of the textual variants. Sigh. Nerds rule.
Ann, this is truly amazing. Like Stacy, I am über-impressed that you can can away while also musing upon Shakespeare. The question is: can you can can while you can? My sister-in-law just did a bunch of canning this weekend, too. You can see it here: http://smithfamilyweblog.com/2009/08/16/sunday-project/
Holy crap woman, you are crazy! J/K, actually you are amazing. That breakfast bar full of cans is pretty overwhelming, but it sounds like you are a dedicated cook over there. Maybe I'll get to try your pizza some time. (Pizza's my favorite).
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