LysmachiaMoon's blog: The Big Cook Up

Holy cow, my veg garden has exploded! I harvested more beans, a dozen full size cukes, six "snack size" cukes, and three big zucchini. The tomatoes are suddenly ripening, and I also picked a pint of blackberries. What to do, what to do? Most of the cukes will be give aways, but I chopped up 6 big ones to make relish; that's draining right now, I'll put it in jars later this afternoon. I simmered the blackberries and strained them for juice; I'll make a couple small jars of jelly probly tomorrow morning. I've got the beans cleaned and sorted: not enough I don't think to warrant getting out the pressure canner. Plenty for a couple of suppers and a bowl full of older pods and shelled beans that will be good for soup/stews. Those are all in the fridge. I grated down two of the big zucchini; they are really too big to steam/boil, but shredded they'll make good mock crab cakes, etc. I've got a big bowl lightly salted and draining on the counter.

I also have about a loose quart of shredded cabbage left over from the saurkraut making (I got 5 quarts fermenting in the basement). And there are 6 big sweet peppers in the fridge, bought from the discount rack at a local supermarket. I'm thinking I'll pick some of the tomatoes, dig out a few more carrots, and make a big pot of veg soup for the freezer. (I got this tip from a friend: I save those plastic pint-sized cottage cheese, yogurt, sour cream, etc. containers. Then, when I make soups, I portion the soup into these containers, put on the lid, and pop them into the freezer. Whenever I want soup for lunch, just run the plastic container under hot water to loosen the contents, pop into a pot and heat. Much better and cheaper than commercial canned soups, a lot less salt).

I am holding off doing any of this right now because we are getting some real heat and humidity these couple of days. The last thing i want to do is start cooking and canning. I have a small house and it really heats up fast. We try to "conserve" the a.c. as much as possible, so I try to limit this sort of "kitchening" to early morning when it's cool. I'm thinking of putting my electric 2-burner hot plate out on the deck and doing the soup out there. Every year at this time, I acknowledge again the wisdom of the older generations in having "summer kitchens," little detached buildings with stove, sink, etc. for cooking and canning during the heat of summer.
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New young chickens, bought as day-old peeps in February, are now starting to lay. I'm finding small "pullet eggs" both in the nest box with the big girls' eggs and also in "hidden" nests around the property. I was too late finding one of these hidden nests....all I found was a bunch of broken eggshells (somebody got a feast). But I discovered another one and got 6 eggs this morning. The eggs are small but perfect; two of them equal one regular large egg.

The two free bantams are doing well. However, Dolly and Dory are in fact Dolly and David. Dolly is laying an egg a day. David is crowing every morning. *LOL* All is well. They are fitting in surprisingly well with the big chickens, but I don't let them free-range because of hawks. They are small enough that just having the henhouse and hen run to play in is plenty of room.

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Spotted a couple more Monarchs, but no eggs or larvae on my numerous milkweed plants. I'll keep checking; with this heat, anything that is there will hatch/grow quickly. I like to get the larvae as small as possible and raise them up. I've learned the hard way that collecting very large caterpillars, although much easier to care for (less time to have to house and feed them), often means they have been infected by some disease or parasite or other and either die before going into chrysalis or fail to emerge. This doesn't mean I won't collect big ones, but the success rate is a bit less than with tiny ones who haven't had time to get infected. I encourage everyone to try raising up monarchs. it really is not difficult at all and it's very rewarding. Monarchs were placed on the Endangered list last year so it's important to help them out and earn blessings ... Tikun olam.

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