pantry 09 update

life is all about our pantry right now. of course regular summer activities are happening too. my youngest, romneya martin grey omelay, will be one year old within the week. he is great, very happy and self entertaining. he has found his place here at the pile of omelays--the feistiest omelays yet. somehow he has assimilated all of the feisty behaviors of all the kids and added his own special brand of feisty for good measure. we encourage this... why might you ask?

everyone needs their super-power that they can fall back onto throughout their life. here at the pile it seem to be feisty.

tabitha has been logging a canning legend over at her blog. follows is my attempt at making a list out of it.

pantry 09
pickled beets 15 quarts
pickled beets 18 pints
plain beets 26 quarts
pickles dill spears 54 pints
tomatillo salsa 6 quarts
pickled pepperoncini 5 pints
tomatoes 92 quarts
zucchini relish 26 half pints
green tomato salsa 10 quarts

one of our rows of tomatoes was so stricken with blight we decided to harvest all of the green tomatoes from it and close that row down. it made over half a wheelbarrow load of green tomatoes. what good are green tomatoes is these quantities? our first year here we discovered a recipe from susan over at farmgirlfare. it is absolutely profound, unique, delicious and loved by all of the omelays. she calls it relish, don't be fooled by the name this is no two year-old christmas present here. we had tacos from the green tomato salsa left-overs. it is better than i remember. it is not sweet, my closest comparison is to chile verde sauce but not as spicy.

the table is full once again with tomatoes and will likely make more than 25 more quarts. we are hoping for more than one hundred and fifty quarts of tomatoes in the pantry total. canned tomatoes enter our weekly diet more than two times and could easily ramp up to three times per week minimum. three times per week means that we can eat one hundred and fifty six quarts of tomatoes. these numbers seem staggering but omelay boys are healthy eaters and never seem full.



this years pantry fervor is fueled by having been so sick all last winter. last year with a new baby, an almost completely failed garden and all of our other issues we had a tiny pantry. hence, we ate relatively poorly all winter. not this year. tabitha is also planning to make echinacea tincture (thanks tansy) very soon. this should help bolster our winter health also.

i have already started warning fellow employees that if N1H1 takes a grip and threatens pandemic to expect me to wear a mask and gloves while at work. call me paranoid but i'm not adverse to looking funny for the sake of my families health.