Wishin' and hopin'

Sorry I've been AWOL lately. My energy has been flagging these past few weeks, which makes for not a lot of bloggable activities (unless you'd really like to hear about my time spent doing laundry and browsing the internet). My mind is very focused, however; it has but one repeating thought: when is this baby coming? I'm pretty much past my nesting phase, as far as I can tell, so it's just trying to keep myself entertained and waiting. The rest of the family is getting anxious too, as I'm starting to get daily phone calls "just checking in." My due date isn't actually until Monday, so there's no cause for alarm or even really this much impatience; I guess it's just my nature. In an effort to be less crazy, I have imposed some embroidery projects upon myself today and am determined to cook dinner every night until this baby comes (Tres, sweetheart that he is, has come home from a long day at work and cooked more often than I have these past few weeks, which hardly seems fair). The apples we like are just starting to be ready for picking and Tres is getting his hands on some cabbage, so we should have some more interesting entries coming soon. In the meantime, you can stare at my big belly and send me some happy "go into labor already" (or "stop being a crazy person," if you prefer) thoughts.

the ever-flattering bathroom mirror self portrait

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate

Long Island Cheese pumpkins

Fall is coming a bit early to our house this year, as our pumpkins (I'm using this term to refer to the whole family of cucurbita, which include both what people refer to typically as "pumpkins" and as "squash") were ready to come out of the garden this week and some needed immediate attention. Typically, most winter varieties can be stored in a cool, dry area for months after harvest, but a few of ours had developed cracks and so would not be good for long. Luckily, these Long Island Cheese were pumpkins we grew specifically for pureeing and baking/cooking (they have a delicious slightly sweet flavor and smooth texture, so they lend themselves well to this job - I love them in pie).  So, it wasn't a change in plans, just a matter of moving them up a bit and perhaps processing more at one time than we might have, if we'd had the leisure of storing them through the fall.

ready to be gutted

First, I sliced them in half and removed all of the seeds and stringy insides (or guts, as our family used to refer to them when we carved pumpkins as kids) - I find a large, long handled metal spoon works well for this. Then, I put them skin-side up on a shallow pan, added a little water to cover the bottom, and baked them at 400 for about 45 minutes. You'll know they're ready when the skin wrinkles up; flip them over and stick them with a fork to be sure they're really soft all the way through before continuing. It won't hurt to cook them for a few more minutes, but having under-cooked squash will make the next steps more difficult and result in a less pleasing end product.

ready

roasted insides

Next, it was out of their skins and into the food processor. I usually just hold a piece inside the food processor and scrape the flesh off with a fork. It should come off very easily, but be careful if you've just removed the pumpkin from the oven; it will be hot (alternatively, you could be a patient person and let it cool before moving on to this step - if you are using a blender to puree, you definitely need to wait, otherwise the hot squash will cause a build up of pressure and the lid will fly off, spraying steaming hot squash all over you and your kitchen; trust someone who's done that with tomato soup, it ain't pretty)!

ready to puree

Once it's pureed, it's just a matter of transferring your goo into appropriate freezer containers and freezing it (I like to freeze mine in 2 - 4 cup portions, as that's enough for one or two recipes, which are as many as I can typically manage before I forget about the leftover squash in the fridge).

smooth and ready for the freezer

Tres and I have been doing this for the last couple of years with a couple of large pumpkins from the farmer's market, but it's exciting to have grown and processed them from our own garden this year. I'm really looking forward to the pies, breads, muffins, stews, and other tasty dishes our pumpkins afford us this fall and winter.

The root of all evil today

In what I hope will be the last of the sagas involving our house (hah!), we are finally the proud owners (signers?) of a mortgage, which means that we have officially entered the world of home ownership. Scary? Yes, but at this point more relieving and glorious than anything. This all started several weeks ago, only a week or so after we'd moved in, when we had our appraisal. The bank requires an appraisal to "determine" (I use this term loosely because, as you will see, this is far from an exact science) that our property is worth more than the loan that they give us, so that there is something in it for them if we end up defaulting. So, the appraiser came, he seemed nice enough, we waited a week or so, and he sent the bank his number: $70,000 less than the appraisal for our construction loan.


After some significant freaking out - seeing as an appraisal that low would essentially make our obtaining a mortgage impossible, not to mention undervaluing our house and land to the point where we'd have essentially lost all of the money we invested in the property ourselves - we examined the appraisal more closely. The way an appraisal is calculated is by closely examining the house and property, then comparing it to the selling price of other similar houses and properties in the area. To this guy's credit, we have a pretty unique situation here, in that our neighborhood is rural (everyone lives on 5 - 10 acres) but still within the limits of a fairly sizable city. None of the houses around us have recently sold and there's not much else like it around. Finding comparables (as they're called) was likely difficult. Unfortunately, the comparables he ended up choosing were not comparable in any true sense. None were within our city, none had as large a property, and, most outrageously, two were sold in unusual circumstances (one was a short sale and one a relocation sale). If Tres could find this information in under an hour, how had it escaped the appraiser's attention? It all seemed pretty strange. Tres collected all of this information, as well as finding some other comparables that seemed more reasonable to us, and typed them up as a rebuttal, to be submitted to the appraiser and the bank. The appraiser refused to reconsider, even after Tres called to tell him he would be filing a formal complaint with the licensing board.


At this point, we weren't quite sure what we should do. We were pretty sure the appraisal was ridiculously low, but our confidence was a bit shaken. Should we simply order another appraisal? What if it came in low too? Were there options available to us if our house was really worth that much less than originally thought? What were our alternatives? Would we lose the house? We discussed some options with our broker and even met with some other banks, but it was hard to get our hopes up. Ultimately, we decided we would order another appraisal and go from there. The appraiser came out two weeks ago and we waited with bated breath. I am happy to say that we got a call a week or so later that his appraisal came in at $8,000 over our original (construction loan) appraisal, which is to say more than high enough to qualify us for our mortgage and finish up this whole silly process. To say that we were happy about this news is a significant understatement. I would like to kiss that appraiser. Really. So, while I think we are right in claiming the first appraiser negligent (he clearly chose properties that low-balled our property, for reasons that I can't understand), this process also illustrates how unscientific the art of appraisal can be. All I can say, is that I'm glad we came out on the right side of it in the end. 


And now, for a bit of levity, here's 8 months pregnant me (this was a few weeks ago - I'm now almost 38 weeks, so getting close!) with a giant watermelon from the garden; I'm not quite the biggest thing around here!

I know some of you will maintain that I

often make this face in pictures but, in

my defense, this was about the 6th shot

he'd taken and that watermelon was heavy!

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!