Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Garden Roundup

Today we picked the last two cucumbers, which my kids quickly ate. They love them peeled, with a little salt. We will *definitely* be planting more cucumbers next year.

Based on something I learned at An Oregon Cottage, I checked my tomatoes for splitting due to the wet weather. Sure enough, at least 10 tomatoes were splitting & starting to rot on the vine, which was frustrating. I picked most of the remaining tomatoes that were orange/red & and left just a few on the vines, as we're supposed to have a few days of sunshine this week. We shall see. I don't trust the forecast these days. ;-)

Here's my question for all of your experienced gardeners/canners. I don't want to can, but am okay with cooking/freezing. I want to use up about 25+ tomatoes & would love recipes for either freezer salsa (does this exist?), or cooked tomatoes that I can just throw into recipes. Also, I have a ton of jalapeno/chile peppers, so if there's something that uses both of those, that would be even better. Do you have any recipes you could share?

Check out the garden roundup at An Oregon Cottage for more great garden harvest links.

4 comments:

  1. Your tomatoes look lovely! I wish ours grew as well. Next year. And I think we'll be tryingf cucumbers next year too - our kids liked the ones we got form the farmer's market (who would have expected?!). Thanks for sharing!

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  2. The tomatoes here seem to be just about done. Our rain has split the ripe ones, too. I'll see how my pink ones fare. Sorry no recipe from me, but I can help you eat the ripe ones. :)

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  3. I roasted a bunch one year with garlic and drizzled with olive oil in a hot oven. Then put in blender skin and all. Froze in ziplock bags and used as the base for red sauce all winter. Wish I had more now!

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  4. You can freeze salsa- and since you're not canning it, you can use any recipe you like and not have to worry about adding vinegar/lemon juice. I've done it when I had extra and it's OK.

    You can also peel & chop tomatoes and pack into freezer containers to freeze- no problem.

    I chop any extra peppers I have, spread them out on a cookie sheet and freeze them, then pack into ziplocks. I can then remove what I need all winter long.

    My favorite, easy tomato sauce is roasted & frozen - search "Roasted Tomato (& Vegetable) Sauce" on my site- www.AnOregonCottage.com.

    Hope this gives you a few ideas- thanks for posting to the TGP!

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