summer's sweet and simple pleasures ~ 20 - THE END!

When signs of the fall harvest begin ...

summer seems to unwind seasonally in such a natural way.

And so it is then that we look forward to nature's bounty to fill our winter pantry food storage, fresh from the harvest of farmer's great crops.


Living in the country, with farms all about, we are still inundated by geographical landscape changes every season.

In summer, crops begin to fill the land with their summer promises of farmer crops so large, surely all our food storage bins will overflow from their goodness.


As autumn will soon return, the farmers parade up and down our streets with their bins filled to their brims with crop bounties off to market.

Farmer's markets have been incredible all summer long in our midst, with several to choose from for an early Saturday morning visit.


There are days when we have traffic jams from country food trekking when those same farmers take up the roadways with their booty. Most who travel near and around them are thankfully kind and patient without any road rage present.

Farmers are also respectful of others and moving over if possible.

A truckload of fresh from the field broccoli anyone?

For me, I like this time of year when life settles down again and this mama taxi can catch her breath once the teen's demanding summertime work shifts become more limited.

It's been quite a summer commitment ensuring their transportation to and from their many shifts, one with two jobs and two shifts a day, at two totally directionally opposite locations.


I am so looking forward to the seasonal changes ahead, when the general landscape becomes noticeably different yet again, from blasts of colorful hues screaming of autumn's palette, and the days soon become a bit cooler than we've had recently.


Aside from resuming schooling in our home on September 13th, the doctor and specialist visits continue and unless we hear again from the surgeon as stipulated (and we've been already waiting all summer long for a phone call!), the next biggie is October 7th.

Until then, travel is limited, home is right where it's at, and we will group and cuddle up together, with front row seating to the sunrises and sunsets. Weather and bug permitting of course.

Right around the corner is our Canadian Thanksgiving when our daughter will turn 18 years old, and my parents will be present for turkey dinner with our family.

So long to the dead of summer. Hello to all autumn possibilities!

Today will conclude this new series of photo vignettes called; "Summer's sweet and simple pleasures" and I hope you've enjoyed my presentations of the same.

Let's talk about "Autumn's simple pleasures" now, shall we?

Who's on board?

Wordless Wednesday

Cooked, packaged and in the freezer now.

About those roma tomatoes

My husband decided to stop by one of his favorite grocery store "Fortino's" on the way home from work one day in early September.

He noticed two very large trucks in the center of the parking lot and several line-ups of shoppers holding tickets. Asking a passerby what was happening, he was informed this was a real occasion in the local Italian area, the day when the roma tomato delivery arrived and large fifty pound baskets were sold to the public.

All it took was a split second thought, and then guess what he did?

Yes, he got on the bandwagon and joined the line-up, purchased a ticket for ONE basket, only one, most people bought 8 or more. It happened he was the last to participate in this frenzied great deal, the one where a sea of red tomatoes met every person eager to grab their goods and depart as quickly as possible.


When my husband reached the end of the line-up to collect his mighty (too heavy) basket, the woman ahead of him laughed at his "one" ticket. He asked what she bought so many for, and her response was simple - tomato sauce, tomato paste, everything tomato for the winter. She was speaking to him with a very thick Italian accent, and no doubt she heard the whisper of this sale long before.

How my hubby stumbled upon it was a sheer fluke to him, but imagine the surprise when he surprised me with this super heavy sucker back home?


"What on earth are we going to do with all of those", I said

You see our son and his children were arriving the following day. My husband saw wonderful red luscious tomatoes, and I saw WORK with a bad timing. :)

And so, we worked, for a very, very long time together. If you've never worked with freshly picked roma tomatoes, you've not experienced this incredible variety!


The tomatoes were firm and sliced like a dream. And the taste was like nothing I had remembered in a tomato before. Yum! Not acidity as other varieties, none of us ever tired of them with our serendipitous moments of feasting on such fresh garden "Italian farmer" food fair.



My hubby was chief tomato cutter, salsa maker, lime zest shredder and I depleted his bowls, boiled up the goods, scrubbed canning jars and manned the stove.

Cooking and Canning

It was hot outside and we were sweating inside! By days' end, my feet were sore, and I had had my fill of fresh sea of tomatoes still scattered about on the counters.

The next morning we rose early and began our work bee once more, determined to leap over the finish line before the airport shuttle began.



Our end result?

• Several dozen cans of tomato sauce
• A large vat of fresh tomato soup
• A large bowl of fresh homemade salsa with fresh cilantro and lime zest
• Fresh chopped and served tomato brushetta
  
• Freshly sliced tomatoes for our toast
• Fresh Roma tomatoes for the week ahead

....and one extra large empty basket.



For next year, we both agree we would love to stumble upon more of these baskets, and now that we've worked our way through only fifty pounds, certainly I can foresee managing 8 baskets ourselves for a festive Italian cooking fair, making winter preparations aplenty for our food pantry, with pleasure.

Our Summer & Fall Rewind Posts - are where?

Good morning everyone; I stand before you, guilty as charged, reminded fairly regularly these days about my promised "rewind posts" which have not yet come, at least not within the promised time frame.

Just as in other people's lives, I too have moments when my best planned and tweaked schedules offer grand interruptions or conflicting schedules to suck dry my blogging moments.

Naturally, I know full well you all understand, perhaps this is why I am seemingly attempting by way of this post to console myself that it's okay to be late with a deadline, something I have a hard time with as I am usually a very punctual sort of person. :) Happily as I mentioned once before, indeed the posts are nearly on their way.

Fast forward please to the delay as also mentioned prior to now. The said posts had been written on my hard drive which were not saved onto disks before the laptop had to be rolled back into factory condition after suffering from a bout with a virus.

Thankfully all of my stored photos were backed up onto "many disks" which I have been working wildly to reload to my computer. Whew! What a task to complete the process of, um, let's see, about 5300 photos. I am not kidding you about that number either, so many from this self professed photographicolic (my new word of the day....lol).


On a brighter note, as the process of reloading the photos onto the computer is nearing completion, I've managed to simultaneously upload many favorites to my "Flickr" folders" (click here) for safer keeping. (wink) Please feel free if you have a moment to visit our life in pictures over at my "Flickr account personalized pages"there, by way of clicking onto the *Flickr* links shown in this paragraph or by using the screen saver Flickr icon on the right side of this blog.

I have yet another 1000 pictures I would like to upload and feature in those personalized file folders, bits at a time, while up town at a favorite coffee shop due to issues with our rural satellite internet system. Uploading photos are near impossible after a dozen or so at home. Keep checking back for more over the next few weeks, as I promise there to be many yet unseen from my recent archival photo bunches.




Meanwhile, as a gentle way of teasing you for the rewind posts to come, here are a few photos of our summer harvest and kitchen work bee sessions.

As our autumn has turned into a pre-winter frosty beauty, let us linger for just a moment over this beautiful season which does indeed, pass all too quickly.

Blessings to all; Renee

Farmer's Market Booty - Corn!

Don't you just love this time of year? Not only has the dreadful humidity drifted off this past week and the temperatures still lovely and hot for any summer's day, one begins to recognize autumn is nearly right around the corner. You know what that means, right?

Farmer's Markets!

This week I was able to load up on three types of corn; "Peaches and Cream, Incredible and Miracle". I had never heard of the last two types of corn, normally used to my purchases being "Jubilee" and/or "Peaches and Cream". I had no idea there were so many variations of sweet corn, all growing according to type of yellow, white, and red, and even edible multicolor varieties.


Depending on where you live, there are many factors for which type of corn to grown in your area. A few include; soil, light, and climate. Throw in a few summer monsoon storms, a couple of tornadoes and your corn crop should provide tasty treats for the multitudes.


We have plenty of farmers' markets locally, and the random vegetable and/or fruit booty awaiting visiting customers never leaves one feeling hampered by poor selections.


I'm so in love with my own idea of "harvesting" from our farmers' booties to provide a wide variety of nutrition for my family over the winter time. So, we've been working hard - washing, cleaning, blanching, chopping, grating, peeling, stuffing containers.... anything to do with filling up my freezer and canning jars for the winter's cache of fresh food bounties.

Back and forth she went, one pot full after
the other ready for blanching for five minutes
or so before chopping up for freezing.

Corn is a controversial food for nutritional fare given fad diets avoiding it, its an allergy issue for some but did you know how rich in antioxidants this veggie is?

Cook it too much, you'll lose all of its Vitamin C, though in return cooking "sweet" corn releases not only increased levels of ferulic acid, but it also retains its antioxidant activity. Oh, and if I may be so bold as to blow out the fact we support "local" who are prone to using mostly heirloom/organic corn seed rather than resort to buying from engineered corn seed productions. (ah-hem).... (sorry to others out there for stating this as I prefer the old fashioned good stuff instead).

Blanche, and cut. Yeah baby, we are going to really enjoy this harvest booty come snowy cold wintry days.

Several of these bowls were filled up, one after the other, the corn bagged and placed into the freezer for later.


Hmmmmm, wow did my kitchen SMELL GOOD!


The best part of the kitchen load; knowing all of this fresh food is right at my fingertips, ready to use, a blessing.

Farmers' Markets?

Oh yeah! Right up until the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend I was told today, the second weekend in October. Weekly I will continue to visit, support local and lovingly prepare our winter's booty at home for my family. It is so exciting to see all the fruits of our efforts in the freezer, pantry and canning jar storage room. And oh, oh, oh, I feel a lovely batch of creamy corn soup coming soon to our family's dinner table with a fresh loaf of Rye from the local baker at the next farmer's market. Yep, bakers are there too, gotta love it!

Just a tip; The hardest part of food preparations for winter is avoiding the temptation to eat it while working, like my young son who requested "just one cob mom" because "it smelled so good".

Finger licking good!