Late first frost/freeze scheduled for Monday night. So I need to collect all tomatoes, sweet peppers and hot peppers this weekend. Funny, I was complaining about WAAAYYY too many cherry tomatoes to can this year, and too few beefsteak, then DH says he prefers the canned cherries for his chili. WHO KNEW?!?!?
Ducks', DW prefers cherry tomatoes for her salsa! I know because she's generally the one who makes salsa. She slides things under the broiler - tomatoes, green onions (yep, they are from the store these days), cilantro, hot pepper. Everything is taken down to a "wilt" then they go with salt into a mortar and pestle. She has one special for that, it seems.
The cherry tomatoes are in gallon bags in the freezer. She just shakes them out on the tray for the wilting; it doesn't take long with anything.
I once read that if beefsteaks had as much sugar as cherries - they would burst! It's okay, they are easier for snacking without making a mess of myself. However, it . can . just . take . forever . to . pick . a . gallon . of . them . . ... Take a stool.
I have my jalepano pepper harvest dehydrating in my "cooker" right now. Every tray is full and it will take one more day to dry to cracking. If I just dry to "leather" the humidity in IL can mold them.
I bought a bushel of pears that went super right at an inconvenient time. My plan was to can them, but I dehydrated the firmest ones, and made pear sauce with the rest. That was so delicious! I don't know why I haven't done it before! We love homemade applesauce, but that pear sauce has a butterscotchy caramely taste. We had it on pancakes last night and I warmed up a big bowl for breakfast this morning. ( I was all out of Espresso Madness )
Pickled eggs! Don't know why I haven't done this before. I am getting lots of eggs, today I got 15, yesterday 9, the day before 14 and the day before that was 16. I have a few egg customers and that takes care of the feed costs. I pickled some with cayenne and some without.