So 2011 has been a weird year for our garden. The overly wet spring really slowed down the start of getting some plants like tomatoes to get going. However we have had lots of green and yellow zucchini, a surprising number of green peppers and our corn loved the wet spring. How wet you ask??? Well...... one morning after an all night rain storm I went outside to this.
Let's just say the tomatoes didn't think that was very nice and I was worried my corn seeds would float away.
Meg had 2 cabbage plants from school that she wanted to grow and we decided we would try to grow a HUGE one for the County Fair. We actually let them both get huge and we picked one a few days before the fair after deciding which one to take to the fair. Here is Meg with the one that didn't go to the fair.
So how big was the Fair worthy cabbage. Look and see.
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| For the Fair you have to leave the outer leaves on. |
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| Filled up a whole laundry basket |
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| Christie got permission to take it into Winegars to weigh it before they took it to the Fair. Just over 12LBS!!! |
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| Meg's cabbage took 2nd place. The winner was only a few ounces bigger than Meg's |
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| Davis took a couple of Ichiban Eggplants to the Fair and won first prize. Not bad considering someone else did most the work..... wonder who that was......... hmmmmmm. |
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| BTW - Christie's quilt also won 2nd place. Not bad for 5 years of quilt school. ;) |
Now for the fun stuff. Once our tomatoes finally got going we began to scramble to get a GREAT salsa recipe. After bottling tomatoes for days and days last year we wanted something more "ready to eat" and since our salsa supply from the church wet pack was about gone we wanted to try our hand at this. Earlier in the year one of our neighbors had shared some of his homemade salsa during a Fathers and Sons campout. We decided to give it a go since it was really delicious. We needed 26lbs of tomatoes (roma's) and we were able to get just over 30lbs picked. Then cutting everything up took a couple hours and then 3 hours of simmering on the CampChef.
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| We are hoping for at least one more round of salsa before the freeze starts. 2 if we are really lucky. So delicious we want to horde it. |
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| Those who show up at our house with a bag of chips will possibly be rewarded with home made salsa. |
We have since found some pretty cheap stainless steel pots for processing the next batch in. If anyone has some excess tomatoes (preferably Romas) we will gladly make them into salsa and share with you. The true test of the salsa will be in about a month once all the peppers have fully developed in the jars. Then we will know how hot it will be. This has been so much fun that we are thinking of getting one of the city's free food plots for next year to grow more Peppers, Jalapenos, Seranos and more Roma's.
PS. Recipe available after you show up with that bag of chips!!! Scoops preferred!
4 comments:
Awesome!! The fair look like fun! I'm proud of Christie for that quilt! Beautiful! We also have a TON of tomatoes and have been wondering how to can/store them. I promise a bag of chips if I can get the salsa recipe now!
I'm impressed ! Taking things to the fair reminds me of my youth in Cache Valley. Way to have a green thumb! Congratulations Meg, Davis and Christie. Quilt looks great. I miss quilt school...but not for the quilting.
That is Awesome... Kevin and I need Help we have no idea how to can. Next time you do any canning can we come over for a lesson? We will bring Scoops :-).
ditto to everyone else comments! that first pic of meg with her cabbage, when we sere swimming she said to me "Aunt Kim it's bigger than your head!" very fun summer! (and I may be visiting you soon with a bag of chips)
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