Gator Pam

#1 “I don’t care what anyone says. Isn’t Bullseye the Bestest Boy ever?” #2 “Bullseye might be in the running for Bestest Boy, but he still doesn’t beat out Best Buy for deals.” #3 “Mo-OM! Enough with Target, Best Buy, and everywhere else. You promised us Denny’s for all-you-can-eat pancakes. LET’s GO ALREADY!!!”

Ooo…

Definitely! Layering, knowing the order to layer, and why for different ingredients is very important for in an IP. When you have time, look for up different spaghetti recipes for the IP from various bloggers. Most of the reputable recipes will tell you the order to put things in and not to mix things. The thin liquids or items which will produce liquid as they cook and break down, such as vegetables or raw meat, need to go one the bottom. Starchier or thickening agents, such as beans, oats, rice, pasta, pasta, etc., need to go on top. They can be gently pressed into the liquids so they’re just submerged, but don’t mix them in.

Thanks! I just finished packaging up 10 lbs plain sauce for the freezer out of the 13+ pounds of sauce I got out of making with 10 lbs of fresh tomatoes from the garden and some canned tomato paste in my 10-quart Duo Nova Plus Instant Pot doubling Simply Happy Foodie’s recipe . Two and a half pounds of various cherry tomatoes, four and a half pounds of chopped Mortgage Lifters, and three pounds of chopped San Marzano-style Romas. While it is “plain sauce” to be added to recipes or for use as a base for Sunday gravy, it does get a few seasonings and red wine. The recipe calls for a few cans of paste to give texture to the finished sauce. Here are the 10 lbs of various tomatoes added to the 10-quart Instant Pot insert. The tomatoes are sautéed with some onion, garlic, and red wine to help the tomatoes exude some liquid so the IP will pressurize. Then the other seasonings are mixed in. All of the tomato paste is layered on top but not stirred in, otherwise the liquid will be too thick to pressurize the pot. That said, I still had issues, as the countdown started without the pin popping up until 15 minutes into the cook cycle. When the pin did finally come up, I stopped the cook and reset the time at pressure. I did have a tiny bit of scorching on the bottom of the pot, but the flavor of the finished sauce was not affected, B”H! After the pressure cook and natural release, I purée the sauce with an immersion blender, which takes care of not putting the tomatoes through a food milk first to remove the skin and seeds. I then add an additional step of adding fresh basil and dried bay leaves, then stirring throughout. If the texture is still a bit runny, I then put the insert of sauce into a 145 degree F oven overnight. The finished sauce. I packaged up two To Go containers to bring some sauce to several friends. Since this is plain sauce to be added to recipes or used as a base for various tomato pasta sauces, I package it in 16 oz measure by weight. Similar to if a can of plain tomato sauce is purchased for such a purpose. For my purpose, I freeze 16 oz by weight in quart size zipper freezer bags. I use a canning jar lifter to hold the zipper bag open so I can pour the measured sauce into the bag and use a silicone spoonula to scrape the sauce that clings into the bag before removing and sealing. Of course, 16 oz fills the quart bag about halfway. This enables me to lay the bags flat on a half sheet pan to flash freeze before final packaging. The first sheet pan ready to be flash frozen. All the bags ready to flash freeze, plus the two containers for my friends. Flash frozen and packaged for long term freezing. I had 10 bags of sauce for final packaging. I put three quart bags in a gallon zipper freezer bag with a quarter sheet of paper towel between each to try and prevent the bags sticking together due to condensation. This should be enough for us for about six months. After that we’ll use canned until next year’s crop of tomatoes are harvested.

I received an email saying Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days will be October 8th and 9th. I don’t remember if this event happened before or if it was this early if it has. But it definitely feels as if it is earlier than ever.

While my San Marzano-style tomatoes have been ripening for two weeks, I still have tons of green tomatoes on the vines. This GRITS will make fried green tomatoes at some point, but like with my cheese stuffed fried squash blossoms, we don’t indulge in breaded and fried items often, so I’ll probably only make a batch once at the end of the season. Meanwhile, I’ve had a pound of green tomatoes fall off the vine on their own over the past few days. I kept the ones which showed no damage, and considered what to make with them. I realized I haven’t had the traditional Jewish delicatessen sour green tomatoes in awhile; they’re not a common table top offering here on the Eastside of Seattle. I decided to look up a recipe, found one which didn’t look too difficult, and gave it a try. I went with Meathead of Amazing Rib’s procedure. You can find it here: https://amazingribs.com/tested-recipes/snacks-and-munchies-recipes/quick-and-easy-kosher-dill-pickles-and-tomatoes/ Mise in place for the “dry” ingredients vinegar, water, and salt to be boiled for the brine The finished jar of tomatoes. It will sit until next Sunday in the refrigerator before we give it a try.

Apparently a critter decided to taste two of my stalks of corn, one in each raised bed. They snapped the stalks, but the ears weren’t touched. This is the first stalk. You can see the ear dangling to the left of the snap. The full damage to the first stalk. Here’s the damage to the stalk in the other raised bed. At least this one fell towards the trellis. Again, the stalk was snapped right next to an ear which wasn’t touched. I decided to harvest the two ears, even though they’re immature, and treat them like baby corn. Definitely long and skinny. The kernels aren’t plump and juicy yet, so I chunked the ears. Since we were already planning on steamed broccoli for dinner, I decided to add the ears to the broccoli. Definitely not sweet, yet. But not bad. I served it buttered with dried dill weed. Someone on another forum suggested sprinkling around the stalks and between the ears with ground cayenne pepper. I need to get some, but I’ll give it a try. In the meantime I’m almost afraid to see if the critter returned overnight. I only have about 12 stalks of corn in each raised bed.

I believe they are a 75 day maturity tomato, according to the packets. However, I did an experiment this year where I transplanted a seedling out in February under agricultural fabric for one of my San Marzano plants, and the other I transplanted in late May. Both didn’t start ripening until last week.

Fun, fun, fun!

Tomato harvest has continued since September 3rd with two more Mortgage Lifters. I gave these to a couple of friends, so I didn’t weigh them. They were a bit smaller than the first one. On September 4th my first San Marzano-style Roma and some Sun Gold cherry tomatoes.came in. September 5th saw two more Romas and the first Purple Bumblebee cherry tomatoes. September 6th is when things really started to roll in. Saturday, the 7th was a quiet day harvest wise, but I added two more Mortgage Lifters and several Romas and cherries yesterday. The first Mortgage Lifter weighed about a pound and a half: The second weighed about a pound and a quarter. The rest of yesterday’s harvest came to just over half a pound. All told cherry tomatoes totaled about a pound over the five days. The Mortgage Lifters and Romas totaled about four and a half pounds over the five days. All told five and a half pounds over pretty much my first five days, plus the slightly over a pound Mortgage Lifter in August and the two more I gave away which I didn’t weigh.

It’s probably early for Trader Joe’s seasonal items, but I know their autumnal offerings should be in full swing.

Done!

And for me, Iced Pumpkin Chai Tea Lattes with Pumpkin Cold Foam and Pumpkin Spice.

Did you grow New Zealand spinach, a specifically summer variety? My understanding is summer is generally too hot for spinach (and romaine, good for you on getting a decent harvest) and should be sown for spring and fall gardens.

I believe most countries of the world follow Meteorological Autumn, which starts on September 1st, rather than by Equinox. So, you’re in rhythm with most of the world.

May her memory be a blessing.

Rabbit Rabbit! Rabbit!!

First of the season! Last night our temperatures fell into the mid-40s. I was so concerned of catastrophe as I headed to the garden. But, I was greeted by a couple of nice surprises today. I was certain at least one variety of the several different cherry tomatoes I’m growing would ripen first, especially since one had a cluster slowly ripening over the past week. But, no. Mortgage Lifter for the win! I’m quite happy with a tomato weighing just over a pound to start! My corn then had a surprise for me by having some silks starting to peek out. Now I need to figure out when to start hand pollinating. The proud gardener.

Summer here in the Pacific Northwet had a few summer days, but it’s been very fall like later into the summer and earlier into the end of summer. My raised beds are doing well, but none of my tomatoes (I have nine plants between my two beds) have ripened yet. Both beds with the trellis in between. I’m experimenting with sweet corn for the first time along with tomatoes, herbs, and some greens. The bed on the north side of the trellis. And the one on the south side. This is my first year growing Mortgage Lifter, along with the San Marzano-style Romas I save seed from last year and several varieties of cherry tomatoes. All are coming along nicely, they just haven’t ripened yet. Waiting is…

I should probably post this in the Discuss GottaDeal section, but I want to thank Brad for fixing whatever was causing the Black Friday archives to occasionally show a new post notification when there wasn’t one.. The only way I knew to have the new notification disappear was to go into the forum, open the year listed, and mark as read. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened in a while. Thank you, Brad!

Pictorial update of my two raised beds at Marymoor Community Garden in Redmond, WA. Zone 9a, up from 8b last year. I’m basically treating it as a mixture of both zones. South side of the arching trellis: Purple collard trees Various tomatoes I got for free from one of my gardening Facebook groups Asparagus crown from a deserted plot at the gardens Various herbs and field greens Sweet corn I sowed from seed last month, so it has a ways to go Underneath cardboard towards the front carrot seeds I sowed yesterday North side of the arching trellis: Various tomatoes Various herbs and field greens Another asparagus crown from a deserted plot at the gardens Sweet corn I sowed from seed last month, so it also has a ways to go Under the cardboard towards the front of the bed are parsnip seeds I sowed yesterday

Rabbit Rabbit! Rabbit!! eek! I almost forgot.

Back in June I cut back my rosemary and started 40 cuttings in potting mix after dipping in honey water and Ceylon cinnamon powder. I kept them in a dappled shade area of the porch in a couple of Costco pie keepers with the lids. Of the 40, 17 developed roots. However, 3 are iffy as the leaves are more brown than green, and 2 don’t look to be rosemary. Google Lens says they may be blue tomatoes. Probably a bit late to start them, but I’ll see how it goes. If the other 12 up pot well , hopefully I’ll have a dozen rosemary plants to trade at my first Green Elephant Plant Swap in September.

Again, it’s been discontinued. I was lucky to find one at Big Lots a few years ago.