Food, glorious food

We have been eating like royalty around here lately. The tomatoes are finally in, and I mean IN! This despite the efforts of the chickens, who have managed to penetrate every barrier we have constructed thus far and are eating the fruits as they ripen. I've taken to bagging the individual tomatoes (which for some varieties are over one pound each) in paper lunch sacks to conceal them from the chickens. This works pretty well, and there are so many ripe tomatoes right now that even the chickens can't keep up with them. One good thing about the chicken situation though is that we haven't had a single tomato hornworm! They are at least paying us back slightly.

It is now routine to eat entire meals off the farm. The other night we ate a wonderful meal of kebabs, all from the farm. Breakfasts have been off the farm too. Some eggs, hash browns, and a deep red sliced tomato makes a seriously good breakfast.



And despite the oppressive heat, which isn't letting up even at night, I have been canning. Normally I would freeze stuff until later in the season and can in the fall, but I won't be here for the entire month of September AND we just butchered a cow so all the freezers are quite full. I'm doing the more complicated stuff first. Here's some salsa roja, salsa verde, and ketchup. I made 3.5 pints of ketchup, 3.5 pints of salsa verde, and 7.5 pints of salsa roja. I'm estimating that between selling at market, giving away, eating, and canning tomatoes we have been through 200 pounds already.



We've decided that Tuesday night makes for a great putting-food-up night. Chris had a great time this evening putting up green chile while I did tomatoes, all the while listening to the Home of Happy Feet show on KUNM. Hopefully the heat wave will break soon so we can do more canning without creating a sauna in the house.