A Sure Sign that Summer is Almost Over
The calendar says it; a feeling of fall is in the air and the kids are going back to school: all these things are signs that summer is almost over. But the sure sign that summer is almost over is…when you open your refrigerator and all the green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn and squash, that you are trying to ignore, fall on the floor. This is the time of year that all the little packages of seeds, that you couldn’t wait to plant in the spring and water in the summer, have turned into grocery sacks full of goodies that kids refuse to eat.
We live on an acreage, and we have plenty of land for a garden, so Paul and Grandpa like to bill themselves as…the World’s Greatest Gardeners. In the spring, they can’t wait to plan out Colorado’s finest vegetable garden. They roto-till and rake, plant, water and weed. Then in August comes the time they have been waiting for…harvest time. Harvest time starts out slow and pleasant, just enough green beans for supper, a few tomatoes and cucumbers for salad and an ear of corn for everyone. The first few suppers are fun, with a lot of oh’s and ah’s about how much better vegetables taste when you grow them in the garden, other than buying them in the grocery store.
Then it starts happening. Instead of walking in the door with a few fresh green beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes, the gardeners start walking in the door with Safeway sacks full of vegetables. After this happens, it doesn’t take long before all the oh’s and ah’s turn into –“Oh yuk! Green beans and tomatoes again? We hate green beans and tomatoes.” What is a mother to do?
Canning is one solution, but this Mom hasn’t always had a lot of luck with this solution. I tried to can dill pickles one year and after all the work of washing jars, cleaning and packing the pickles, making the brine. (In a 98 degree kitchen). I ended up with at least 40 jars of soft, salty dill pickles that the garbage disposal didn’t even like. Now, I have never had to feed a jar of Vlasic’s to the garbage disposal. I also made grape jelly one year and it looked so nice sitting on the kitchen counter. I was so proud of myself. Proud of myself, that is, until someone opened the first jar. When they pushed down to break the wax seal on the top, they pushed their finger into a jar of grape syrup. I had made a pretty batch of grape syrup that certainly made messy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Someone did give me a good tip on how to freeze tomatoes. They told me to put whole ripe tomatoes in a plastic bag and throw them in the freezer…now this one I can handle.
So for the next few weeks, every time a friend walks in the door, I’ll be trying to push off some of the fresh, home-grown vegetables that are packed in my refrigerator. The only veggies that I will keep are the tomatoes. In the winter, it’s a lot of fun to take a plastic bag out of the freezer when the contents look, feel, and sound like…red, ice cold, billiard balls and to know that you have finally succeeded in preserving something.
