... the dangers of the country

Good morning,

Today is Thanksgiving Day here in Canada. Frank and I have a lot to be thankful for. 

We celebrated and had a wonderful dinner with family and friends yesterday at Frank's sisters house. They live about a 1 1/2 hour drive from us. 

I was driving home. The roads are all very dark and some of them are quite twisty. As I do not really care for driving dark twisty roads I was driving a bit below the speed limit.

It all happened in less than a second. 

A large deer ran right into the drivers side corner/side panel of the car.

I saw it for a fleeting second, barely felt anything and then it was gone.

Frank was on his cell phone trying to get the score of the Blue Jays baseball game. He saw and felt nothing.

I said "a deer just ran into us". 

That made him look up. We had both our dogs in the car and they had not reacted either.

I pulled over to the side of the road and we could see that there was a great deal of damage and the car was leaking fluid.

We called the police and a tow truck. The driver of the truck walked up the road with a flashlight to find the deer. He said is was a massive big doe. He said he had no doubt that she would have died almost instantly. I am thankful for that as I find it very troubling to know that it is dead. Not because of me as she ran into the car. Nevertheless, it is still troubling.

The truck driver looked at the damage and said that if she had run into the road one second sooner I would have hit her full on and she would likely have come through the windscreen and we both could easily have been killed.

Our guardian angels were definitely sitting on our shoulders last night as we walked away without a scratch.

It is hard to believe that there could be this much damage and we did not even feel it. We had been told when we bought our car, a Honda Civic Hybrid, that they are excellent in front end crashes. All that they said was true. 

I think I am still somewhat shell shocked by the whole incident. I told Frank when our good friend and neighbour got out of his bed and drove 45 minutes to come and get us and when we can walk away from this sort of thing completely unharmed that we do indeed have a great deal to be thankful for.

Thanks for visiting. I think I will go out and do some work in the garden to clear my head. Have a great day.

... purging some of my stash of books

Hello everybody,

In addition to all the other activities that have been going on around here I have also had a chance to go through my large collection of what I call "homesteading" books. 

I am selling off quite a few of them either because I have read them and will not read them over again or in a couple of cases because I have duplicate copies for some reason.

All of the books are in excellent condition and I have a very low price on all of them. I will take a photo of each of them and post that shortly. If any of you are interested, please leave a comment so I can get in touch with you.

Please note that all of these books are written in English (for all you wonderful people from countries where English is not your native tongue).

We finally finished painting the house yesterday and we are both exhausted today after 10 days of priming and painting. Today is a day off from everything as we both really do need the rest.

Thanks for visiting. Cheers.

... how to can tomato sauce

Greetings everyone,

I know that I have been MIA for a while and I do apologize for that. This is a very busy time of year for us. We have been gathering the harvest from the garden for storage. Fantastic crop of squash this year and lots of tomatoes. The everbearing strawberries are still producing quite a few berries although we had a hard frost last night so I expect that will be the end of them.
In addition to all of that we are painting the outside of our house. Huge job.

One of the things that we have been doing is making tomato sauce. I have done a blog post on that before but I did not talk about safely canning the sauce. 

At present I use a hot water bath canner, the same one that I have used for the last 20+ years without any problems.

Here is my step by step process of canning tomatoes.

Naturally, first of all you need to make the tomato sauce. I will leave that up to you to use whatever recipe and method you choose. I wash the tomatoes, cut them up, run them through our grinding machine to separate seeds and skin from flesh and juice and then cook them down for a few hours.

When we are ready to can them we fill up the canner with hot water and set it up outside on a propane heater and bring the water to a boil.

The next step is to collect the jars and rings and give them a really good wash in hot soapy water. Rinse well.

I them put the wet jars on a cookie sheet and into a COLD oven. I heat the oven to 225 F and when it has reached temperature I set the timer for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile I put the rings and lids into a pot and bring to a rapid simmer after which I turn off the heat and let them sit until needed. I have heard that there are new lids out there that do not require warming up but I have yet to find them in my stores.

The tomato sauce is brought to a boil. Sorry the picture is so misty but there was a lot of steam coming off the pot.  :)

We get all our materials ready. The canning funnel and the ladle are sterilized under boiling water and we get out a bottle of lemon juice.

We do not know the exact acidity level of the tomatoes so we do not take a chance when canning them. We simply add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to each jar of sauce. We have never had a problem doing this. Better safe than sorry.

After filling the jars, (and be sure to leave the correct head space indicated by your recipe),  wiping the rims and putting on the lids and rings, they go into the rack and get lowered into the canner. The jars must be at least 1" below the water level. We put on the lid and wait for it to return to a full boil at which point I set the timer for 45 minutes which is the time indicated in my canning book. 

I am sorry that I do not have photos of filling up the jars but we cannot waste time when doing that. The jars are scalding hot as is the sauce and it needs to be done quickly.

When the time is up we remove them carefully and set them on a towel in a draft free place to allow them to cool completely. I just love to hear the sound of all the lids pinging as they seal up. Music to my ears!

After they are all cool I wipe down the jars, either label them or write the date on the lid and store them away in the larder for later use. I just love knowing that I have that wonderful store of food available for our winter suppers.

That is all from me for today. If you are Canadian I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving as this is the weekend that we celebrate here in Canada.

Thanks so much for stopping by. See you back soon. Cheers.

...tomato sauce .. but wait! It's GREEN!

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.

... when life gives you zucchini...

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.

... heirloom tomatoes

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.

... the autumn harvest

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.