We are the village green preservation society

High times are officially here in the garden and we're trying to keep up as best we can (with moderate success at best - the chickens are definitely getting a lot of "past its prime" garden fare these days).

We are swimming in eggplant, so I picked as  many as were "big enough" a couple of weeks ago and tried my hand at freezing them. 

the current crop

First, I peeled and chopped them into 1/2", or so, slices.

chopped and peeled

Next I blanched them in boiling water, with a bit of lemon juice added to prevent browning from oxidation. I did the first batch for 5 minutes and, finding them quite soft, did my subsequent batches for about 2 minutes instead. We'll see what we end up liking better/if there's a difference once we actually use them. After blanching, they went immediately into an ice water bath, to stop the cooking process.

ice bath at the ready

After letting them dry thoroughly, I froze them on cookie sheets, then put them into containers and into the freezer.

blanched, cooled, and ready to be frozen

I suspect, based on what their texture was like when I put them in, that these will be best for things like baba ghannouj  or stews, as the eggplant will probably only get softer when it comes out of the freezer. I'm totally fine with that and love eggplant so much, that I'm super excited at the prospect of having some in the winter! We've got about 6 times this many eggplants at various stages of maturation on our plants, so I will likely be doing some more of this, as well as freezing some baigan bharta (I already put one giant batch in the freezer last week - yum!) in the coming weeks.

As I mentioned earlier, we have been canning tomatoes whenever we have enough ready in the garden. I did a batch, Tres did several when I was in Glacier, and then we did a big production this past weekend. I think I prefer the big production, but I suspect that has more to do with the companionability of working with someone else than time spent/saved.

our haul (and hauler)

blanching

blanching pot

peeled and cored

our sweet set up 

(Couch and tunes? Yes, please!)

our stash for the winter (41 quarts)

Luckily for us, produce is all running a little late around here, so the peach variety we were interested in preserving just came on this weekend. We went out on Saturday morning and picked 46 pounds - it only took us about about 15 minutes - and I got started on peach butter. I decided, after Tres' success making apple butter in the crock pot, that I would try out his method. 

sliced and trimmed of any bruises

mixed with spices and water and cooked until soft

going through the food mill

we commence the cooking down

I used the same recipe as I did last year and followed it exactly through pureeing the peaches with the food mill. After that, I poured the puree into the crock pot (I found that 2 double batches filled our 6.5 quart pot to the brim) and heated it covered, on high for an hour. This made it nice and hot, so I could be less concerned about bacteria growing in it. Then, we turned the lid perpendicular to the pot, so that steam could escape, and cooked it on high for the next 25 hours, stirring occasionally. At that time, its volume had reduced by about half and it looked like this

Then, it was into hot, sterilized jars and a water bath for 10 minutes.

ready for the pantry

Lastly - actually in between tomatoes and jarring the peach butter - we put up some peaches in syrup.  First, we blanched them in boiling water for a minute.

ready to blanch (and clearly happy to have his photo taken)



blanching

Then, it was into cold water to stop the cooking process.

cooling

It was easy, then, to slip off their skins.

peeling

Once they were halved and pitted, we dipped them into a mixture of lemon juice and water (1/4 cup lemon juice to a quart of water), to prevent them from browning, and then they were ready to be added to the syrup and warmed up.

ready for  syrup

Once the peaches were warmed through, we packed them into warm, sterilized jars (about 6 -7 halves fit in each quart jar), filled the jars with syrup, leaving 1/2 inch at the top, and put them in a water bath for 25 minutes.

14 quarts of canned peaches!

We're really happy to have all of this delicious food squirreled away for winter but (suffice it to say), by the time we'd finished at 8 last night, we were pooped!