Freezing tomatoes for later canning

We grow mostly indeterminate tomatoes, which means that we get ripe fruit in dribs and drabs, not all at once like we would if we planted mostly determinate plants. This has its benefits, namely, we are not inundated all at once with a big harvest. But the drawback to that is that I rarely have enough tomatoes to do a big batch of canning. I’m always straddling the line between not-ripe-enough and too ripe.

So it was exciting when I learned that you could core tomatoes and freeze them whole, gradually adding to the pile, until you have enough to fulfill whatever canning project you have in mind. I started doing this a month ago. Whenever we had too many ripe tomatoes to eat fresh, I would core them and stick them in a ziploc in the freezer. Today I looked in the freezer and realized we had four huge bags of them, so I knew it was time to process them.

First I thawed the tomatoes slightly in the bags, then stuck ‘em in a pot. I had to use Tom’s big jam pot because they wouldn’t fit in anything else. Even then it was a struggle. I kept them on low heat for a while until they started to break down. In the future, I think I will cut them into quarters before freezing them, because I think this stage would go faster in that case. Once they were mushy I turned up the heat and let them simmer for a bit. And that brings me to my second discovery - I’m not sure I would use these frozen tomatoes for anything but sauce or paste. They tend to lose quite a bit of structure in the process of freezing and thawing, so even making crushed tomatoes might be a stretch.

Anyway, when they were the right consistency, I put ‘em through the food mill and went ahead and followed Ball canning book’s instruction for making sauce. It worked perfectly.

Some folks say you can just leave the tomatoes whole in the freezer over the course of the winter and take them out when you want to add them to soup or whatever. I think that would be an interesting experiment. But I can say with certainty that the resulting tomato sauce I’m making today looks and smells exactly the same way it would if I had made it from fresh tomatoes. So this is a nice option if, like me, you have trouble gathering enough tomatoes at once to make a large batch of sauce or paste for canning.

Have any of you ever tried this trick? What did you think of it?

We Discover Quince

Since we moved to this property fourteen years ago, we’ve wondered what to do with the quince tree that was stubbornly holding up a corner of the landscape, not to mention the rock-hard fruit that ripens on it each fall. The tree itself is more of a bush; multi-trunked and messy, and the spiders seem to love it. The only recipe we ever found for the fruit was jelly - and it required so much sugar to make it palatable - and we so infrequently ate jelly - that we never experimented with it.

image credit: tumblr_lzyuuuaF2C

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate our quince tree for things that have nothing to do with its fruit. For one thing, it requires no irrigation. I suspect that the roots are spread out far enough that it gets the water it needs from nearby flower beds. It’s super nice to have drought-tolerant trees that produce food in the landscape. The chickens use this bushy tree as a shady place on hot summer days, and it offers them protection from hawks flying overhead. Its looks are nothing to speak of, but once a year the tree blooms, and it has the most beautiful blossoms. And no matter how often I hack it back, it regrows, flowers, and fruits the next year.

So the tree has earned its place in our landscape.

But every year, we see this fruit hanging there, and wonder what we could do with it besides throw it in the compost pile. It never gets soft. Quince requires cooking to make it palatable. And I guess we just always preferred fruit that we could pop into our mouths right after picking. But we’ve also become big fans of jam. Tom makes between 5-10 batches of jam every year from our own fruit trees and vines and farmers’ market fruit. We use it on toast and sandwiches of course, but we also stir it into homemade yogurt, or mix it with granola. So this year, we began to look at the quince a little differently.

Quince used to be very much in favor as a fruit used for cooking. The tree requires few chill hours (between 200-300), handy for our mild California winters, is self-fertile (meaning you only need one tree), and bees love the blossoms. The fruit has had a bit of a resurgence in popularity due to the permaculture movement and it’s flexibility in both sweet and savory applications. But it takes a different mindset to work with quince.

First of all, it’s very hard to prep. The fruit remains extremely hard, even when ripe, and Tom cut up about 3 pounds of the stuff yesterday and had a very sore hand afterward. So use care when preparing! Then, the fruit needs to be cooked down for hours, with equal parts sugar, which leads to a golden wafting haze of deliciousness coming from the kitchen. At one point I asked Tom, ‘Are you making cookies?’ Quince, while cooking, smells divine, like maybe the edge of clouds. The flesh also turns color from a pale yellow/white, to a golden orange, to a pink orange, and apparently eventually to red. This is because the tannins and pectins (both extremely high in quince) are breaking down and becoming palatable.

About halfway through the process, Tom ladled off a jar to use as ‘quince butter,’ and we put that in the fridge. It tastes amazing. I can’t compare it to anything I’ve ever had before. The texture is a little different, a little gritty, but not off-putting. And the flavor more than makes up for it. And isn’t it gorgeous to look at?

Tom continued cooking the rest of the pulp down to make membrillo, a sort of jellied paste. After cooking it for hours, you put it in your dehydrator for another hour, and it comes out like this.

It has the texture of a gummy bear. It’s used in Spanish tapas, sliced thinly and eaten with charcuterie and manchego cheese.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the fruit we have been ignoring for all these years turns out to be our favorite? I’m now interested in researching how to use quince in more savory applications.

For more interesting information on quince, please check out this article in Heirloom Gardener magazine, and this one in the online magazine Render. And, if you’ve been enjoying quince and have recipes, please share.

P/S I forgot to mention that you need to puree the pulp sometime in the middle of your cooking process.

P/P/S I just cleaned the kitchen. Cleaning up dried splattered quince pulp is a drawback to this project. I recommend cleaning oven surface and cabinets above DIRECTLY AFTER cooking.

Autumn Greenhouse

Here it is Autumn again, and the greenhouse is full to bursting with all kinds of winter veg. Today, I spent the entire day potting up my seedlings: Broccoli, Romanesco, Chiogga beets, Savoy Cabbage, Kale (both frilly and dinosaur), Carrots, Leeks, Parsnips, and Romaine. I also potted up Sorrel, Oregano, and Thyme for the herb garden. I re-seeded everything for a second batch, and also seeded braising greens. I’ll direct sow spinach and also more greens, at the beginning of October. Probably also more carrots and beets.

It’s been in the mid-90’s here, not unusual for September, but the nights are in the 50’s and it feels chilly in the mornings. I don’t know about you, but I definitely feel the change coming. The tomatoes and peppers are still producing but showing signs of late blight. The cucumbers I harvested yesterday tasted slightly bitter. The beans are drying and almost ready to pick for winter storage. The winter squashes are coloring up. The ripe melons fall off the vine and scent the air with their musky smell. Shelling peas and fava beans are starting to sprout and grow taller. It’s time to pick the last of the basil and make a bunch of pesto for the freezer.

How is your summer-to-fall garden transition coming? What have you planted already, and what is yet to go in? What have you decided to forgo this year? I thought we’d take a year off of Swiss Chard. I’m slightly regretting that decision. Oh well, there’s still time.

Goodbye, old friend

Our beloved cat Tasha died yesterday. She was older, and had a lot of health problems that were getting worse, and she was losing weight rapidly. Then, she started sneezing blood, and the vet and I decided it was time.

Tasha was a great pet, though not overly affectionate. Love had to be on her terms, which sounds very feline, I suppose. When she was younger, she used to climb up on the fence rail and howl. The neighbors called her “the Foreigner,” as she seemed to be keening for the old country. But as she grew older, she spent less and less time outdoors, preferring to snore away the day on our bed. Every so often, she’d make her way out to the fountain and lick the water from its sides, along with the birds and the honeybees.

She had a good, long life. We are very glad she was a part of ours for a while.

I use the garden as my sounding board, it seems, whether I’m sad or happy, so here’s some pictures I took this morning. We’re enjoying the last of the summer produce; soon it will be time to transfer over to the winter garden.

Pollinator Paradise

Let me take you into the garden and show you an area of which I am quite proud: A pollinator garden in a south-facing location. I have pollinator beds all over my garden, and each seems to have a ‘moment.’ Well, right now, this one is having that moment.

Let me be absolutely clear: I do not have any particular ‘magic’ that makes a space turn out like this. Anyone can make this happen. There are a few perennials here (both natives and exotics), and a lot of annuals (both natives and exotics). I add perennials whenever I notice a place with a large hole, and the annuals are added four times a year by seed. Mixed with compost, they are scattered in any open spots. Each season gets different seeds. For instance, in November, I plan to scatter all the California native seeds like poppies and clarkias and phacelia and tidy tips. Then those will bloom in early spring. Doing it this way, I have almost continual bloom. The perennials fill in where the annuals cannot. This whole area gets regular irrigation, but that’s about the only input other than the compost that is added with seeds or plants. A couple of times a year, I go in and cut down a bunch of dried up plants, and it looks a little bare for a few weeks. Then the new flowers have a chance to take over.

Why do I go to this trouble? If you can even call it ‘trouble,’ it’s hardly anything planned (I just know that everything needs to handle full sun), and I’m never sure what’s it’s going to look like. Well, for one, it’s beautiful, and that gives me joy. I can cut bouquets as gifts or for my own house any time of year. There’s a living root in the ground at all times, which improves the soil. But the biggest reason is this: It’s a great diversity of plants, therefore a great diversity of forage, for the pollinators.

Beekeepers in California are inundated this time of year with warnings about ‘summer and fall dearth,’ or, a scarcity of pollen and nectar. Due to the fact we don’t have rain for many months (usually May-November), we can expect most native landscapes to look dry and bare right about now (summer is our dormant period, not winter); and most landscaped yards have very little that insects can use (grass, oleanders, mulberry trees, crepe myrtles - they do nothing for pollinators). And sure enough, in the September issue of my beekeeping association’s newsletter, there was a mention that we should begin feeding our bees pollen patties. Likewise, in the UCANR publication “Beekeeping in California,” there is this paragraph: “If they are going to build up quickly the next spring, colonies should go into winter with large, well-fed populations of young fat bees. In many locations in California there is not enough pollen to sustain adequate brood rearing through August and September and colonies should be fed pollen, pollen supplement, or a substitute.”

I have to say this bothers me.

When I started out with my first hive, I vowed that I would do as much as I could to provide for my bees. Would you adopt a new puppy, only to let him find what he could? Would you buy some chickens without also buying some feed? Why should it be any different with a colony of honeybees? Shouldn’t we plan to have as much forage as possible for them, as well as an adequate, year-round drinking source? It’s one thing for a colony of bees to establish themselves in an area with plenty of food, but it’s another to bring them into a bare yard and expect them to manage with whatever they can find. Most beekeepers feed their bees sugar water and/or strore-bought pollen patties during times of dearth to keep them alive and happy, and this works fine. It’s certainly better than letting them starve. But what nutrients are missing in those man-made foods? Wouldn’t it be better to have a large diversity of different flowers available for them, for as much of the year as possible?

Tom and I just stood out here in this pollinator patch today, watching and listening. This garden is alive. I think of the spiders who feed here, and the other predatory insects like mantids. Lizards! Birds! This is a healthy ecosystem and it’s not just about my honeybees.

My fellow beekeepers who start hives with no plan to feed them (other than making sugar water or buying pollen patties) are really missing an opportunity. I want to encourage them, and any landowner, or anyone who even rents property, to invest in feeding the ecosystems naturally. Many of us feel helpless in the face of habitat loss for things like the monarch butterfly. Well, here’s something we can do! Here’s how we can combat just a tiny bit of climate change. Here’s how we can help. Plant flowers. It is that simple.

P/S If you’d like a list of perennial plants and herbs I have planted at Poppy Corners, I can send you my plant inventory. This has common names, Latin names, and bloom times. I very much relay on perennials to get me from January through December, annuals are just icing. For annuals, I tend to plant California natives for early spring bloom; sunflowers for early summer bloom; cosmos, nasturtium, and zinnia for late summer blooms; and tithonia for fall bloom. I also rely on my annual vegetable plants to really help feed pollinators. Anything in the cucurbit family (cucumber, squash, melon) is a hit, as well as pepper flowers. Fruit trees can help with those early spring months. Ornamental trees native to your area will also help with different times of year. For winter, I rely on native perennials in our area, though winter bloom is nearly impossible in places with lots of snow.