I’ve been drying the juliets from our garden all summer as they’ve ripened but I also ordered a half-bushel from the farm for an all out, run the dehydrator non-stop for a week, drying bonanza. Next year I should really try to get a quarter bushel at a time. We cut each tomato in half and toss them on the dehydrator tray. They should be arranged cut side up but honestly, there are just too many of them for me to worry about it.

They shrivel down to a pretty small size, nickel or quarter sized I’d say, so I usually use more than a recipe calls for. Most often I rehydrate them in some hot, even boiling, water before adding them to a dish but this year I want to experiment with grinding them up into a powder and adding it to sauce and soups. The flavor is so intensely tomato. We store them in a couple of vacuum-sealed canisters and I keep a small jar of them in the kitchen pantry.

FRUIT: half-bushel of peaches
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: the usual
YIELD: 5 quarts

DATE: 09/12/2011
FRUIT: half-bushel of roma tomatoes
SOURCE: CSA farm
RECIPE: from the Ball Blue Book
YIELD: 7 quarts, 3 pints

I had hit the wall when it came to tomato canning and needed a break but our farmer told me that she thought it was the last really good tomato week so I took them anyway. And they sat in my kitchen, and they started to ooze, and then they started to smell. Sunday I was going to deal with them but it was the urchins’ last day of summer before school so we played outside instead. Monday morning though I went through those tomatoes, pitched a whole bunch, and cut up the good ones for salsa.

DATE: 08/29/2011
FRUIT: celebrity tomatoes, italian hot peppers, and jalapeño peppers
SOURCE: CSA farm and the garden
RECIPE: from a friend
YIELD: 8 pints

DATE: 08/24/2011
FRUIT: tomatoes, apples, onions
SOURCE: CSA farm and the farmer’s market
RECIPE: BBQ Sauce
YIELD: 18 pints
NOTES: I probably should have let it reduce a bit more. I also added half a jar of tabasco sauce this year to give it a little more kick.

I should mention here that Papa is, in general, a very capable shopper and he certainly knows his way around a farmer’s market. I can trust him to know the difference between a butternut and spaghetti squash or a pickling and slicing cucumber. However, as you know, this little story is leading to a moment and that moment has something to do with volume. You see, at the slightly further away but larger market the raspberries are sold in half-pints — and when we pick we pick half-pints as well — so I was expecting two flats of half-pints for a total of 12 pints of raspberries. Instead, what I found on the counter when I got home was two flats of pints for a total of 24 pints of raspberries. And the craziest thing is he got all those raspberries for less than what we normally pay for half the amount!

Needless to say we made a lot of jam.

DATE: 08/21/2011
FRUIT: 18 pints raspberries, picked over
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: from the pectin box
YIELD: 36 half-pints

DATE: 08/17/2009
FRUIT: a little more than a bushel of celebrity tomatoes
SOURCE: CSA farm
RECIPE: Family Secret Tomato Sauce from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
YIELD: 14 almost-quarts

DATE: 08/12/2011
FRUIT: about 6 pounds peaches
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: on the pectin box with the addition of the seeds from three vanilla beans
YIELD: 13 half-pints
NOTES: I also let the vanilla pods cook in the jam. I removed them before processing.

Friday morning Stefan picked up some horseradish for me and I pureed the remaining tomatoes to get, one-and-a-half quarts of puree. So, every tomato, big or small, that I had available went into the food processor. We’re talking cherries, grape, sungold, and red — just enough to get to 2 quarts of puree.

DATE: 08/12/2011
FRUIT: 2 quarts tomato puree
SOURCE: CSA farm and garden
RECIPE: cocktail sauce from Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
YIELD: 10 half-pints and one that didn't seal so went into the fridge
NOTES: I grated the horseradish in the food processor and ended up with long strings of horseradish. I let these cook a little bit and then pureed the whole thing with the immersion blender. This seemed to give it the perfect consistency.

DATE: 08/12/2011
FRUIT: 8 cups pureed peaches
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: Slow Cooker Blueberry Butter from Marisa at Food in Jars substituting peaches for the blueberries
YIELD: 8 half-pints