The Rest of the Summer Preserving

Here are the final summer preserving projects I did.  I did not blog about them at the time (for various boring reasons), but I want them on The Record.

All summer long, I made and froze batches of pesto.  I mostly used my happy, huge purple basil plant in the front porch pot.  Today, I pulled the whole plant out in preparation for winter and the children picked all the leaves off the stems - the stems were thick and strong like twigs! I made 4 more batches of pesto.  I freeze it in ice cube trays and then we can put hot pasta on a cube of frozen pesto and presto (ha), there's a meal!  I also use pesto on pizza instead of tomato sauce.

 

And speaking of pizza, here's one of several more batches of pizza sauce I made in September.  I couldn't bear the idea of using my home-canned jars of pizza sauce when there were still tomatoes on market, so I simply made more sauce when I made baked ziti, spaghetti, and pizza.

 

 

I also made several trays of roasted tomatoes, following Jennifer's directions.  I didn't take any photos -this may have been over the time that I was struggling with a virus.  In my defense, it was an elusive virus and I would feel hale and hearty for hours at a time and then, boom, weak and achey and wishing I had not hung up 4 loads of laundry and started a vat of pizza sauce.

I chopped and froze a lot of bell peppers.  I could get them 3 or 4 for a dollar at market. 

 

Several times this summer I made fermented dill pickles, following directions in Sandor Katz's book.  They were tricky to get right.  The first batch was crisp and sour and my husband could not stop eating them.  The final batch, shown here at the beginning of its fermentation, was only fine in my opinion, but my husband still stood in front of the fridge with the jar and a fork.

 

 

I got a half bushel of Concord grapes and made grape juice - only because I borrowed Rebecca's fantastic steamer that made it easy.  This will be great with popcorn on Sunday nights.

 

 

 

And finally, here is chicken stock seen from my kitchen window as it cools.  I included it here in the preserving round up because I needed to get that chicken out of the freezer to make way for the local beef that we're getting soon.

 

 

I think I preserved more this summer than I ever have before.  Wow! That was not really my plan, but I just kept finding projects I could not resist.  How did your summer preserving go?