Are Weekends For Rest?

Shock of all shocks, K did not complete the coldframe yesterday. 🙂  At this point, I will be grateful if it gets done before the first frost, and am not holding my breath since that could be any day. I know how it is with my husband. 🙂 Oh well, at least we’ll have it for the Spring next year.

Farmers market was pretty good yesterday, but the one day I decide to buy a new basil plant, the herb people don’t come!  I bought a hydroponically grown basil plant instead, and am planning to try to make pesto again later this week, but hopefully the herb vendor will be back next week because I want to buy another one to plant over the winter in a pot.  The one I’ve had for the last 2 years is on its way out.

• 1/2 gallon apple cider from Maynard Farms
• 1/2 gallon of reduced-fat milk and 1 quart of cream from Battenkill Creamery
• 1 basil plant from Shushan Valley Hydro Farm
• 1 dozen eggs from Coopers Ark Farm
• 8 oz. feta cheese from Heamour Farm
• 1 quart tomatoes (only 2 pictured here), 2 green peppers and 1 acorn squash (hidden beneath the basil plant) from Barber Farm
• 1lb ground beef from Sweet Tree farm
• 1 apple turnover from Our Daily bread

The feta cheese was very wet this week, so it was on “sale” for $2 – when normally it’s double that! She said it didn’t drain properly or something, but we took it to make pizza with this week.

And, speaking of Coopers Ark Farm (above), we pre-ordered our turkey this week from them!  This is going to be the first time we will ever have a local turkey for Thanksgiving and I’m so excited!  We are hosting Thanksgiving this year, and ideally, hubby and I would love to serve an all-local meal.  But our families will insist on bringing things and we know those things won’t be local, so it probably isn’t going to happen.  But at the very least our turkey will be!  We put in an order for 16-20lbs yesterday but then changed it to even smaller (max of 16lbs) because we’re not sure how many people we’re going to have over.  It could be anywhere from 4 to 13! Two of my family members are nurses and don’t know if they will be working that day, and that would then count their significant others out too.  Then, we’re pretty far away from everyone so logistics have to be worked out.

At the very least though, we’re planning on the turkey, acorn squash, pumpkin and apple pies, all being made with local ingredients.  The hubby has recently found a venison farm near here that we want to check out too.

I have to say, I often get frustrated with where I live because I grew up downstate close to NYC, so often times I feel stuck in the middle of nowhere.  But on the other hand, I absolutely love the amount and variety of farms and locavorism community that cannot be found downstate – at least not on as big a scale.

After the market, while hubby worked on the coldframe, I whipped up some salsa.  I bought more tomatoes this week to make some more canned salsa, because I enjoyed the jar we cracked open this past week and we only made 3 jars a couple months ago – not nearly enough to get us through till next year!  But I felt like some fresh salsa, so I took 2 tomatoes from the quart I bought, a bit of green pepper, 2 jalapeños from our deck pots, 1 red chili pepper from the garden, and two of my onions (hanging downstairs in the closet on my onion braids), and tons of cilantro.  A little lime juice and we were set.

Man, let me tell you, these were the freshest ingredients ever, made from veggies that were literally picked the day before or even the day of.  And my onions, man, I love them.  They are so crisp, so potent, I am so excited about growing them again next year. 🙂

This weekend I also FINALLY made cherry jam, thus bringing to an end our jamming efforts for the season.  I used two cups more cherries than the recipe called for and it still only brought me the amount of cherry jam I was supposed to get for two cups less.  Gosh darn it.  And again, all the berries were so full of water this year, the jam is more syrupy than jam-like.  Still, it’s delicious.  And here is our pantry shelf full of jam.  Yes, we have 25 1/2 pints of jam, and one 1/4 pint.  Ridiculous. If we don’t give this away for Christmas, I’m not sure we need to make any jam next year.

Not to mention we have 4 opened jars of jam in the fridge already (the leftovers each time we made jam that didn’t fill up a full jar, so we just stuck it in the fridge).

In the pic, we have:

• blackberry
• blueberry
• raspberry
• cherry
• strawberry

Craziness.

Trying to do something today…

Yesterday I did the most I’ve done in a month! Too bad I forgot to bring my camera for most of it.  My family came up to visit, and we went to the farmer’s market, which is in full swing.  It was kind of funny watching my aunt, who couldn’t comprehend why anyone would go to a farmer’s market.  She actually asked the milkman – “Is that milk in bottles?” He answered nicely, “yes, milked and bottled on our farm.” I think she couldn’t comprehend that 🙂

Booty from yesterday

• 1/2 gallon apple cider from Migliorelli Farm (amazing how there’s still some left from last year’s crop!)
• 1/2 gallon low-fat milk from Battenkill Creamery
• 2 hydroponic tomatoes from….I forget
• 1lb processed chicken cutlets from Cooper’s Ark Farm (this was the first time we found processed chicken for a good price!)
• 8oz. pesto from Buddhapesto (OMG, this was the most delicious pesto I’ve ever tried. It was made fresh that morning!)
• 1lb fresh mozzarella cheese from another place I forget (my brain is so not functioning lately)
• 1 french baguette from Our Daily Bread
• 2 ears of corn from Barber Farm
• 1 quart of local plums (even though only 2 shown in picture) from Maynard Farm

We came home and had pesto with the french baguette and fresh mozzarella with tomato and basil (from my basil plant). All of it local. How awesome is that?

Later, in the heat of the day, we went to the garden and everyone except me helped weed.  The garden is in shambles.  Our tomato plants never got tied to the stakes, and the sugarsnap peas are a tangled mess that are leaning over into the golden chard.  If I were better, I’d go over there now and get it all sorted out, but I am not strong enough yet for it 😦  There was only one new zucchini this week, which didn’t look very good so we left it to rot.  We picked some more sugar snap peas, and the garlic scapes (which are a little past prime I think, oh well).  K mulched as well.  We were there for quite a bit of time, I think I over did it, even though I basically just sat there in a chair and watched – but the sun was quite heavy.  Had a bad night as a result, but even so, I think I am getting better.

I’m going to try to get some laundry done today…if I can lift it.  I don’t know if it’s still too much for me.

On a political note, I am obsessed with the Sotomayor hearings this week.  I can’t explain it, and I can’t get into it politically.  I’m Puerto Rican, darn it, and I’m taking untrue statements about her personally.  That’s all I can say about it. For now 🙂