GottaDEAL 2024 Prize Club Discussion Thread

[HomeinKS]

9 hours ago, Gator Pam said:

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.

Are San Marzano tomatoes later than some?  Ours are just now starting to produce.  We did plant then later than some of our others though.

[Gator Pam]

2 hours ago, HomeinKS said:

Are San Marzano tomatoes later than some?  Ours are just now starting to produce.  We did plant then later than some of our others though.

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.

[marathonshopper]

So excited to still be in the running, now if I can remember to post next month too!!  LOL!!  Congrats to all who have made it this far!

[Kanyon71]

Went to Lowe’s yesterday to look at a few things. Saw that across from the Halloween decorations they are starting to put out the Christmas decorations. 

[cllehto]

Lots of Christmas decorations in the stores now. Already got advent calendars for out of state daughter and family. One year I waited until November and was checking everywhere because the one wanted was out of stock all over town. So now I order online early and have them sent to them.

 

The dollar tree near me has lots of cute decorations right now. You have to be careful to check the price because a lot of the stuff is over the $1.25 they went up to. It used to be really easy to take little ones there with a few dollars to let them pick out a few things...now they might not have enough for one thing. I remind myself of older relatives...I remember when....lol

[Gator Pam]

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.

 

 

[magickallight]

On 9/3/2024 at 11:15 AM, Bopeep said:

I'm happy to see the BF forums opened. We lost Mom last week, so Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and especially Christmas are going to be a little weird this year. But I am determined the holidays will be just as special as she always made them.  

 

Happy BER months everybody!

 

[Bopeep]

11 hours ago, magickallight said:

 

Thank you!!!

[gatorburg]

Happy College Football Season.

[Gator Pam]

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.

[ytmomof4]

So a few weeks ago I thought we were entering fall weather but nope I was wrong. Consistent days in the 80’s. It hasn’t rained in probably a month. I hate the rain but we need it terribly everything is brown and crispy. 

[Bopeep]

1 hour ago, ytmomof4 said:

So a few weeks ago I thought we were entering fall weather but nope I was wrong. Consistent days in the 80’s. It hasn’t rained in probably a month. I hate the rain but we need it terribly everything is brown and crispy. 

Yeah, fall teased us here for a week or so, then we were back to triple digits this weekend. 

 

[tinkrbel]

On 9/10/2024 at 2:32 PM, Kanyon71 said:

Went to Lowe’s yesterday to look at a few things. Saw that across from the Halloween decorations they are starting to put out the Christmas decorations. 

Our Sam's literally has Halloween on the main entrance aisle and then Christmas on the backside of same display with no division at all

[berry1014]

On 9/16/2024 at 6:57 PM, tinkrbel said:

Our Sam's literally has Halloween on the main entrance aisle and then Christmas on the backside of same display with no division at all

I noticed that at our store too. 

[Kash]

On 9/3/2024 at 11:22 AM, Brad said:

I'm going to be messaging those of you still in the club to get your addresses to send out your prizes soon, so be on the lookout for those.

I just replied with my address. 
 

September has been busy. Walked the Mackinaw Bridge in Labor Day and been just busy busy busy since. 
 

gator Pam those tomatoes are awesome!

[Gator Pam]

2 hours ago, Kash said:

 

gator Pam those tomatoes are awesome!

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.

[stationchief]

Ended our 100+ degrees streak at 113 consecutive days. A new record. Woohoo!

And by the end of the month we plan on beginning a new 100+ degrees streak starting with one. Boo!