Sustainable Eats

It’s true – my tomatoes have blight. I spent some time with them this afternoon, trying to cheer them up and picking most of the green tomatoes off the saucey and stupice vines and tomorrow I’ll pull up all the plants. Nuts. They were just developing a whole new round of fruit that would have rivaled what I’ve gotten off the vines already this year.

For all my complaining about having to beat the rat to the tomatoes I still can’t believe I have only maybe 4 gallons of ripe sauceys waiting for me upstairs to process and then the party is over.

I’m hoping the black plum, sweet 100, green zebra and cherokee purple can hold on just a little longer but the rat has chewed any red blush on all the big cherokee purple so those are probably done too.

I’m saving seeds now before it’s too late. I followed directions that I found here but instead of putting them on a plate I put them on a paper towel over a wire rack to dry. Once dry I put them back in the envelope I ordered from Territorial Seed last winter. Except this time it didn’t cost me $2.85 for 30 little seeds. Hah!

The zucchini and acorn squash have powdery mildew but the acorns were ready so I harvested a box of them tonight. Chicken Little was amazed at how many we got so he quickly grabbed a few and ran off to sell them before I could say anything. It’s hard to contain his exuberance. He came home 10 minutes later and told me he had traded them for 2 plums. Umm…I think it’s time to read Jack and the Beanstalk at bedtime.

I cut the zucchini back hard last weekend and they are full of new healthy growth and *may* set another round of fruit. We’ll see. Frankly I’ll be shocked but it was worth the experiment.

That just leaves the cucumbers which are looking a little spotty, the watermelon which have yellowing leaves and the butternut squash which have only a few mildewed leaves so far. I’m hopeful since it finally decided to set a few more fruit. Until now I had only one butternut squash on the vine!

It’s time to get the pumpkins in out of the rain I think and try to make them last until Halloween. If you have any tips or advice on when to pick and storing carving pumpkins I would love it. This is all new territory for me.

Tonight I harvested the first of the brussel sprouts even though they were only large marble sized. I cut them off the plant and took them directly in to braise with a little butter, dijon & tarragon. Even Chicken Little loved them, gobbling them up alongside his chicken and dumplings. He made sure to leave enough room for dessert though.

I realized this week that I’ve been so busy this year I completely forgot about blackberries so Thursday (the only warm sunny day last week) we went in search of some. The huge Himalayans that are so abundant around Seattle are completely different this year. I’m assuming because of the dry weather they were small berries resembling wild blackberries. I got a few quarts before the kids finally wore me down (Are you done NOW?) which we used for a quick blackberry cobbler. Blackberry is my all time favorite of the cobblers and these ones were particularly intense. I could have sat there all night making that bowl last forever but alas I had a huge kitchen mess, bread to start for the morning and two young ‘uns to get to bed.

I’ll leave you with one last photo – from breakfast this morning. I saved one bowl of peaches from yesterday’s peach-o-Rama. We had oatmeal shortcakes, fresh peaches and creme anglaise. I figured creme anglaise is pretty much milk with eggs and the shortcakes were freshly ground whole wheat with oatmeal so why not?

If you haven’t had fresh peaches yet this year you’d better get a move on!

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