Harvest

We had our first light frost this week and while I know that weather and climate are not the same (see this funny Second City video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5nNbPWYHOA ), our first frosts in the last two years have been later than in the previous eight that I've lived in Idaho.  Tomatoes in October!

The first frost represents the final push for harvesting, consuming and preserving food for the winter and early spring.  This fall the girls and I picked 77 pounds of apples at a U-pick orchard.  Yum!  We have eaten lots of slow cooker applesauce (10 cups peeled sliced apples, 2 T. cinnamon, 1/4 cup honey: cook on low for 4-6 hours. Stir and eat warm!) and I have dried about 3 pounds of apples (I mean three pounds dried -- probably 30 pounds of apples).  I also dried zucchini for soup, onions for soups and sauces and made jams and jellies.  I like dehydrating as a food storage method.  The food takes little space and no maintenance.  I don't have to run an extra freezer all winter or stand over a steaming canner in the summer.  In the summer I dry outside on screens in the sun, at this time of year I use a dehydrator or my convection oven set at 140 degrees F.  It warms up the kitchen a bit on cool days and it is very little work once things are diced up.

This weekend I need to make some tomatillo salsa, eat it fresh and that will probably be the end of our garden produce except a couple of pumpkins.  

It will be a little sad to lose the garden to a harder frost that must be coming soon but also nice to get my kitchen back from canning jars and the hum of the dehydrator.  I guess it is no wonder I posted last about buying a little convenience food.  I have been peeling, cooking and drying constantly for the past few weeks! 

I know I'll enjoy all this preserved produced during our usually long cold winter here.  It will be nice to have a reminder of the garden and orchard harvests, eat well and cheaply and gear up for next spring.