ElainaA

Dinner tonight was from the garden Pasta with slow roasted cherry tomatoes. I posted this recipe awhile ago on the gardening thread. Salad with fresh shelled runner beans Here is the before picture of the beans. Isn't it sad that fresh beans lose their lovely colors when you cook them? I was so disillusioned the first time I grew borlotti beans and cooked them.

I'd second the Beranbaum recipe, However i would add, from my experience, that it is best to refrigerate the torte for at least 30 minutes before baking. My first experience of making a linzer torte was helping a friend at one of her first catering events. When baked, the lattice completely melted into a mess, A delicious mess but still a mess. I did what any 20 something would do - I called my mother. If I recall correctly (40 years later) she laughed. And told me what to do. (And now I just love it when my daughter calls and starts with "Mom I have a cooking question.")

Dinner tonight: Grilled salmon cakes with fresh corn relish, roasted potatoes and steamed runner beans. Plus a plate of 3 kinds of garden tomatoes.

Chutney is my favorite addition to rice. And to chicken.

They are so cute, I'd hang on to them. But if you decide to put them on ebay, let me know.

Rajoress - Those are gorgeous!

I spent more time than I should have on ebay yesterday looking with no success. I will keep trying....

I love chutney and have collected recipes. I have a tomato chutney recipe that I love. I have handwritten copies from both a sister and a brother but I believe it originally came from a book on Indian cooking. I have also made, and like, the peach chutney (with LOTS of ginger!) in Ziedrich's Joy of Pickling. There are more.......

Thanks Anna. I did some research on this - it seems that the company closed down some years ago. Most of the jams/chutneys/etc. that I make are for gifts so i love different jars - I really like the little 'ears' on these. It seems they are not available anymore. They look special to me, I'd have trouble giving them away.

Those don't look like the standard Ball or Kerr canning jars I see in stores. Can you give a make and source? For 8 oz jars, I always use my steel 'pasta pot' with a round cake rack in the bottom. As long as the jars are off the bottom of the pot and don't touch each other you don't need an insert. Works fine. It's not tall enough for pints or quarts - for those I use the big canner.

Gardeners Supply (on line: gardeners.com) carries kitchen compost bins; the lids have replaceable filters that prevent odors. I have a small one on my kitchen counter (4 qts) but they also make a 5 gallon bucket. I'm sure there are other suppliers - this is the one I've dealt with. Happy gardening!

A different way of preserving tomatoes! What is the texture like when you thaw them? I often freeze whole tomatoes because it is so much easier than canning but the mushy texture when they thaw limits their use. I don't have a steam-convection oven but I'm wondering if the tomatoes could just be roasted in a conventional oven. And your jam is lovely. I love mixing flavors in jams.

It's been a good week for canning: Peach - Ginger Marmalade. This is my favorite jam. it's a good thing it is because the recipe makes lots. 12 quarts of faux- V8 juice (actually, I realize it is V6 juice) , now in the freezer. 5 jars of tomato chutney and one jar each of cherry and of apricot syrup - the syrup left after I candied the cherries and apricots. Canning tomatoes is still in the future.

I was in elementary school in the early to mid 50's - I distinctly remember a Dale Evans and Roy Rogers lunchbox. Not mine - I coveted it.

Shelby - I found a relative of Matilda's in my garden this morning. Obviously, the Northern branch of the family. She's built her web in a most inconvenient (for me) spot - stretched between the garden fence and one of the tomato cages. The web is nearly invisible and I'm afraid I damaged it before I saw it - and ended up with some web and a dead fly in my hair. She is out there repairing it as i type. I'll be more careful.

I'd forgotten about lunch count - up to about 3rd grade3 it was just as Melissa described. Then my school switched to a system of colored sticks (like popsicle sticks) - when you came in in the morning you picked out the appropriate color and put it in a can - one color for full lunch, another for just milk, etc. I brought my lunch through elementary and junior high. Usually either bologna or tuna (not tuna salad - just plain tuna) on white bread. I don't ever remember mayonnaise in our house - to this day my brothers won't eat anything containing mayo. (And one brother is 81 years old - some habits never die). I usually also had carrot sticks and fruit. A special day was when Mom gave me 6 cents for ice cream. In 11 and 12th grades we were allowed to leave school for lunch. However, I was in band and band met during the extended lunch/study hall period - so those of us in band had, literally, 20 minutes for lunch. If you ran, you could get to the diner across the street, scarf down something, listen to the Beatles on the jukebox, and run back to play Sousa marches for 45 minutes. This is when I discovered mayonnaise - tuna salad on toast was my favorite. I still vaguely associate Sousa with indigestion. But eating in the cafeteria was SO uncool.

Poached chicken breast over roasted peppers with a sherry vinaigrette over some bitter greens, roasted corn with basil and shallots, tomato and cucumber salad

I have multiple 'lurkers'. I usually turn them into zucchini bread ( I have the BEST recipe, she said egocentrically,) and freeze it. We just finished last years (I think 8 loaves) but yesterday my oven refused to come on. It seems the ignitor is dead. With luck the repair guy (and here there is only one major appliance repair guy) will come tomorrow or maybe Thursday. So the zucchiniis sitting in the refrigerator waiting. We had some grilled tonight for dinner,

Watch out - if you blink the zucchini expand exponentially. My garlic (where they hang) get morning sun. They also get a lot of wind. Everything here gets a lot of wind. I sopped watering but he have had rain every 2-3 days until very recently. I have about 75% hard neck and the rest soft neck.

Shelby - I'm going to miss this! I hope you continue to let us know what you are doing via the gardening and preserving threads. Elaina

I always dry the garlic - and the onions and shallots- outside. Our garage just doesn't get enough airflow to really dry them. I give them quite a long time - mainly because I can sort of forget about them and do other stuff. I've never had problems with rot. I find that garden garlic, even when well dried, is much wetter than store bought garlic. The outside can look dry but the inside cloves are still wet. I think this is especially true with soft neck garlic due to the double circle of cloves. What kind do you grow? I have about 75% hard neck and 25% soft neck. I'll dry the soft neck for a longer time.

Shelby - I'll let the garlic dry for a couple of weeks then trim off the stems and roots. I just store it the same way as I do my onions and shallots - in either slat-sided wooden crates or plastic milk crates. The wooden ones look nicer but its all in the garage so it doesn't really matter. Last year I lost several of my stored winter squash to mice - nothing like taking what looks like a perfect squash from the shelf for dinner and finding that the entire back has been eaten away. The mice have never bothered the garlic or onions. Yet. If you let your morning glories drop their seeds you will probably have more. At least in my climate they self-seed like crazy. They come up all over my garden - I weed out the ones away from the fence. I have several large flower beds besides the veggies. The flowers do get neglected this time of year though. Cyalexa - I am so jealous of your figs! And I do like your herbs; I have a small herb garden. I also have a clay container with rosemary, sage, thyme, marjoram and mint right outside the front door. It's so easy to get to that I find I rarely go to the actual herb garden except for chives, which I don't grow anywhere else. What do you do with the blackberries? And all the figs? Elaina

4 day sweet pickles. I never grow enough tomatoes for all my canning projects (tomato chutney, ketchup, salsa, faux V8, and as many quarts of tomatoes as I can get done) so today I bought a 1/2 bushel. I think this week will be V8 juice. Elaina

Some garden pictures: The garlic harvest was about a week ago. This should be enough for seed garlic and to get us through the winter. Maybe. We use a lot of garlic. My third planting of lettuce and other salad greens is about an inch high. The first planting has mostly bolted and the second will soon. I need these little guys to grow. There are 4 kinds of lettuce, green and purple mizuna and arugula. Shelby! You've taught me to look more closely at the flowers in the vegetable garden. This is a sunset runner bean. There are masses of beans and they are very good. Sadly many developed while we were away and a re too big and tough to eat. I'm going to try saving seeds. These were so pretty and prolific I want to do them again. I'm growing cardoons for the first time. You have to blanch the leaves for a month before harvest. I just did this yesterday. In September I'll have to figure out how to cook them. And, as usual, my best 'crop' are the morning glories. I planted 4 plants by the gate years ago and they have self-seeded ever since. Elaina