On Monday I spent the whole day getting the budget/bills caught up while it rained and rained, 1½” worth. On Tuesday I got up and got the kitchen cleaned up, chores done, and went out to the Small garden to harvest onions, peppers, and tomatoes. Above were all the tomatoes ripe enough to use, 5.65 lbs.
I got 1 Kapiya pepper on left and 3 almost red enough bell peppers.
I needed the equivalent of 9 medium onions. I had harvested all the Walla onions. There was only 1 large one in the whole row, middle left.
These little ones were the rest of the harvest. Amazing how severely not enough sun all summer affects onions.
This is the usual harvest for Wallas.
Once I knew what I had I got myself together to make the run to the co-op for more tomatoes. My general helper wasn’t coming on Tuesday so I had to go. I survived road construction, a good wait because the ordered tomatoes were not ready, and the drive back through construction to home. No one died or was frightened.
I had ordered the boxes of tomatoes last week for pickup on Tuesday. They said the boxes should be pretty ripe by then. The good thing was, they were VERY ripe and because of this gave me an additional discount on the price. I got 25#. I won! I also got a couple peppers because mine were not quite ripe.
I got all the labels off them because they had them out for sale and got them washed up. I got the peppers washed, then started on the onions for the sauce.
My helper friend arrived at 9:30AM and I set him to chopping peppers and onions. I started blanching and peeling tomatoes for the sauce. There was very little waste on these!
I didn’t finish the tomatoes because I was getting too tired to stand. I got them all blanched and my helper friend took over as he’d finished his chopping. I took the garlic and sat down and peeled and pressed it.
Then I cleaned up a bit of the kitchen while my helper friend took the compost out, brought up more wide mouth jars, and got them into the kettles and filled the kettles with water. He mopped the floor where I’d made a mess with the tomatoes and it was time for him to go.
Shortly after my helper friend had arrived, we heard noise outside and I thought it was the neighbor chopping corn.
Sometime later my helper friend looked out the dining room window and saw this. The hayman had been cutting the front pasture and moved onto the middle. He did the front part of the back 40 as the acre over the sandhill was too weedy and full of ferns to bother with. He had bushhogged it on Sunday.
After my helper friend left I ran the tomatoes through the Squeezo 6 times until the remains looked like jerky, dry and stiff.
It all just filled the red roaster and I got it started about 3PM on 300F.
I had saved the greens from the Wallas. I chop them and freeze them and use them as scallions or green onions in recipes.
I had gotten them and the remaining onions cleaned up so they could be chopped for the freezer.
I was exhausted by then and watched a movie until suppertime. Heated leftovers, closed up the house as it was to be another night in the 40’s, pulled the shades, did chores, and went to bed around 7PM. I turned the roaster to 225F for the night.
On Wednesday when the sauce cooks down to thick enough, I have to can it. I will have a mess in the kitchen to clean up. I also need to do laundry and finish the bills/budget from Monday. It’s supposed to be a gorgeous day again, but oh, well…
