Veggie Math Made Simple!

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The garden has surpassed all expectation and is yielding an enormous amount of produce. The squashes have out-done themselves and show no signs of letting up.

With the zucchini alone, I have made loaves and loaves of bread, sliced and fried them Italian-style, tossed in salads, whipped up tomato sauces & frozen and passed them off to friends and neighbors. I have parboiled and frozen fresh; shredded them into 2 cup bags and frozen for use in future bread making activities and offered them to chickens. And still they appear. Daily.

But I have run out of ideas and freezer space for zucs and yellow squashes. In my on-going attempt to stay ahead of the veg processing, I have enlisted the aid of a food dehydrator. It stacks 4 levels high and I have sliced up 4 squashes and they are drying as I type.

Now, add to this the number of bags of tomatoes in the freezer and no room for another thing! But of course, I had ANOTHER thing that needed to BE in the freezer. So I dragged out 3 large bags of tomatoes and thawed them. Then I thought, now what?

I began to scrape the chunks through a sieve to get pulp and after the third or so cups worth, my arm was getting sore. These, apparently, aren't muscles I use very often. (who knew?)

So I thought, hey Wally World will surely have a food mill! and off I toddled to pick one up.

No, but I got the dehydrator so it wasn't a wasted trip! I returned and continued passing the chinks through and got a goodly amount of pulp.

I made ketchup!!!! It is really good, too. This is fun!

And LK came over to help control the black-eyed pea population and set me straight to the timing of pea-picking. Now I "get" why I have so many out there drying. Oh well.... it isn't like there aren't 4 quart bags fresh frozen in the freezer already. These will go in a jar in the pantry till winter.

Another future grocery trip averted! It's GOOD to be a farmer.....

PS I am open to suggestions as to what to do with the zucs.