Sunday, August 11, 2013

p.s.

I thought I'd give a quick green tomato and purslane update before calling it a day - I miraculously managed to stay awake just now as Alida nursed quickly to sleep after "helping" us snip beans (not surprising since it was not too much before 11:30 p.m. when we finally curled up together for a story and some mama milk...)

It's a "normal" August night for us in that we started our canning project around 9 p.m.  I was picking beans until almost dark, with the sound of Kali and Alida giggling at the swingset in the background and watching the clouds turn colors as the sun set.  There is now a load of canned beans cooling in the pressure cooker and a load of dilly beans and pickles cooling on the counter.  And two of the pickles are green tomato pickles - we were not impressed with our ripe tomato pickle experiment from last year so we'll see how these turn out.  That's as far as I got with experimenting with green tomatoes but I think fried green tomatoes will be on the menu for sometime soon (if they don't ripen before I get to them!).

Now purslane - what a fun supper with it included in pretty much everything.   I found some fun websites and more ideas than I could ever make use of.  We had a venison gumbo over couscous that had onions, garlic, tomatoes, amaranth and purslane from our garden.  Then I made a salad with cucumbers, tomatoes and purslane from our garden (http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/tomato_cucumber_purslane_salad/).  Then I made pesto with purslane and garlic from our garden.  We also have a large jar of purslane covered in apple cider vinegar that is supposed to be quite tasty in a few weeks.  We'll see what we think of that experiment which came from http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/food-drink/experiments-with-purslane/.

It's amazing how hard we have worked to grow things like spinach and then purslane comes along and before we know it we have a garden bed full of it without trying.  I'm pretty sure we'll be eating more of it! But for now it is time to sleep! 
Alida uses her little scissors to snip beans but normally gets distracted after a few and runs over to the counter to help herself to one of the tomatoes (she is already becoming a "tomato snob" - liking some varieties and not others!)
Here is our weirdest three-some of tomatoes yet.  We have a lot of "cat faced" tomatoes this year, which supposedly are more common when tomatoes ripen in cooler temps.


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