Pioneer Woman at Heart

  Cherry tomatoes are selling for $5 a quart right now.  We planted a few plants this season.  However one of the plants were knocked all the way down in one of the recent storms here.  I re-staked it, but it's looking very iffy.  Regardless, we are getting cherry tomatoes thankfully. We have made roasted cherry tomato sauce in the past, but this year, I made us this . . . Cherry Tomato Salsa.  It was very good, and we will be making it more often during the garden season.  Making salsa from our home grown cherry tomatoes is a "first" time event for us this year. It is much like a Pico.   You need 1 1/2 pounds of cherry tomatoes.  Ours are somewhat larger, and very delicious this year. I put them in my food processor and pulsed them about 12-14 times.  The tomatoes were chunked, but not purreed. I also let them drain for 15 minutes with a pinch of salt.  To that in a bowl, I added fresh garlic, home grown jalapeno, freshly cut ...

Garden season brings us fresh jalapenos, and we use them for so many recipes, canning recipes, salsas, etc.   In anticipation for summer garden goodies. . . I had a few fresh jalapenos leftover from a recent meal.  Store bought of course. I dehydrated those fresh jalapenos per the temperature guide that comes with my dehydrator.  Many people today have dehydrator settings on their actual kitchen stove, or even their air fryer.  I have an actual dehydrator.  I do like my smaller one, now that we are cooking for two.  I am able to dehydrate, using either 1 up to 5 trays at a time, so it's super adjustable. Once the jalapenos were dry, I ground them in a coffee grinder (specifically used only for such foods/herbs). I then mixed it equally with salt (and ran all of the mixture in the coffee mill/grinder), and I stored it in an airtight (or re-purposed spice jar) jar.  I used fine pink Himalayan salt for ours.  You can do your measurements however...

  July 1st was fantastic weather here.  I was literally in the garden the entire day. I came in about dinner time, to start making breakfast for the next day.  I was at my limit of energy, so it was a big batch of scrambled eggs, with some Canadian bacon and blueberry sausages.  There may be pancakes later this week.  There may be radish hashbrowns depending on if they are ready soon (planted late this year). Kitchen time is so much better , now that I have a new kitchen faucet. It's had problems with water pressure, and getting hot water (build up most likely) for awhile now, and the hose recently broke.   We are heating up this week now.  We are to be back to the 90's today. Our peach tree.  Despite it looking half dead (as it has the last few years), it's still hanging on.  The apple trees are full of apples again.  Tree baffles are on the to-do list.  We plan on making our own, but every year we forget due to other projects...

  It is tough getting the day started this week.  The cooler weather, just screams "sit, sip and enjoy the morning while you can" and then I delay the day ha ha ha!  It's worth it, as we are heating up now to the 80's again.   I picked all of the hot peppers that were on the plants.  I don't think we'll get  anything more, as this could be the very last warm fall week we have this season.  There were zero Anaheim  peppers, two baby hot banana, no serrano, and just these jalapenos.  Not enough to can hot pepper jelly this year.  I could buy extra from a farm stand, but I decided not this year.  I will freeze these remaining jalapenos, and keep a few for cooking this week and next. If you read yesterday's post, I forgot to pack my husband's breakfast for the day (2-day's prep in photo).  I decided to use up some of the smaller eggs, from the newer laying hens, and scramble them.  I added them to his breakfast (and mine)...

  I've gotten most of the jalapenos sliced and frozen for the winter/spring season.  I used a few to make another batch of fresh salsa as well.  There are a few more hot peppers to pick yet. I canned one batch of hot pepper relish, using up the hot banana peppers, two bell peppers and some jalapenos.  I am not getting enough hot banana peppers to make it twice.  I'm okay with that. We are still enjoying our slicer tomatoes for meals like tacos, breakfast side dish, topped on burgers, or in other meals.   I will do a re-check on our hot pepper jelly, but I honestly don't feel I will get enough hot peppers over all to can any this season.  The evenings are dipping to the 40's here, so unless we heat up again, the plants won't last much longer.  We never did get any fall planting done.  Life can throw a wrench in your plans once in a while. We hope to get back to the chicken coop this week, during evenings.  It's on the top of the list...

Here is a photo of the waste funnel that goes to my food strainer/sauce maker.  There are 3 plastic tabs that secure it onto the metal strainer.  One tab broke off.  It has happened before, and I have talked to my husband about upgrading to a metal food strainer.  I have now figured out how I broke it off too.  If you are not careful when you slide the  the piece on, that is the splash guard/strainer, it will brake those tabs off. The white tray that drains it off into your pot is what I am talking about.  Now my gasket has gone bad that is inside the metal stand part of it, and where you insert the handle to hand crank it.  Juice from the tomatoes now seeps out, so when I crank I have to wrap a towel around the base.  I could not replace the funnel for a year, as it was out of stock, and now the gaskets are out of stock.  With the amount of paste tomatoes we grow, and the amount of sauce making I do, I think an all metal food strainer/s...