Enjoying last year's harvest...

Here's a reminder to use your canned foods. I had tomato soup in my cabinets from last summer that I'd nearly forgotten about. It's especially helpful when you are famished and don't want to run out to the store, but also don't want to slave away in the kitchen for hours.

I made a quick & delicious late lunch of tomato soup topped with fresh homegrown oregano along with a yummy arugula salad.

Pop open your canned soups and after just a few minutes on the stove you will have a perfect piping hot meal that will taste just as flavorful as the day you made it. The salad is just a mix of local arugula, a splash of olive oil & lemon juice and s&p. Add some parsley if you want a little kick. Then toss lightly.

We're in Pasadena now, so get excited for new restaurant and vendor reviews!

Homemade Ketchup

Homemade ketchup is a tasty way to savour your tomatoes all year round. This recipe yields about 3 pints of ketchup. Feel free to multiply it for larger quantities. Other recipes use a food mill or food processor, but this blender ketchup recipe seems more accessible for the basic kitchen setup.

Step 1: Grow tomatoes.

Ingredients:

8 lbs. of ripe tomatoes

(1 pound is 3-5 medium sized tomatoes)

1 yellow onion

1 red bell pepper

1 green bell pepper

3 cups cider vinegar

3 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 tbl. sea salt

cheese cloth spice bag:

1 tsp. dry mustard

2 tsp. cayenne pepper

2 tsp. whole allspice

2 tsp. whole cloves

2 tsp. ground or 1 whole cinnamon stick

2 tsp. whole peppercorn

Step 2: Wash tomatoes and dip in boiling water for 30 seconds or until skins split.

Drop in ice water, slips skins, core, quarter and remove seeds. Remove seeds from peppers and slice into strips. Peel and quarter onions. (Reminder - all skins & seeds can go in your compost pile.) Blend tomatoes, peppers and onions at high speed until liquified. Pour puree into a large pot. Boil gently for 1 hr, stirring frequently. You may need to do multiple trips with the blender.

Step 3: Add vinegar, sugar, salt and spice bag into pot. Continue boiling and stirring until volume is reduced one-half with no separation of liquid and solids. This took me about 2-3 hours. If it does not quite resemble ketchup after a few hours you can put the mixture back in the blender and liquify more. This should bring you the consistency we're used to. Taste it - if too sweet, add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.

Step 4: Remove spice bag and fill jars, leaving 1/8-inch headspace. Process jars for water bath or pressure canner. Process pint jars for 15 minutes at an elevation of sea level to 1,000 ft., 20 minutes from 1,000 to 6,000 feet and 25 minutes above 6,000 feet. So I've read it is recommended to use home canned products within one year.

Local Q&A: Canning et plus

Q: So my girl and I wanna figure out the best, cheapest setup to can some vegetables over the summer. Mostly tomatoes, if that makes a difference. We don't have too big a garden. 10 tomato plants, 4 pepper plants, some beets and onions. We're not preparing for a zombie apocalypse. Just wanna avoid tossing what we don't eat fresh. Also, how are you?

A: Canning is a lot of fun if you make a day or evening of it. Open a bottle of wine and crank some good tunes...it is time consuming, and has to be done all at once. There are two main methods to canning. One is the "water bath" method. This can be done in a large pot (sometimes I use my biggest soup pot.) This method can be used for jams, pickles and other food items with lots of preservatives (salt, sugar, vinegar) Basically you put the goods in the clean jars, submerge them in water and let them boil. Tomatoes are high in acid and are not usually prepared in those preservatives and therefore need to be prepared with the pressure cooker method. I bought a canning pressure cooker at OSH for 40 or 50 bucks. This method increases the temps. Pressure cookers can be a little nerve wrecking since they can explode at any minute. But todays pressure cookers are pretty safe, as long as you use them wisely. I wouldn't trust the one my grandma used to use. The other really important thing to know is that EVERYTHING must be sterilized. Jars, lids, and canning tools should be clean and sterilized. I use a couple of other pots of boiling water. I also use clean towels so I don't have to touch the jars. There is plenty of info online about cooking times for various items. It really depends on the recipe. I recommend "Preserving the Harvest" by Costenbader and "Pickles and Relishes" (if you are into that sort of thing) by Chesman for good recipes. Both books also have chapters on methods and cooking times. Good luck man. That is awesome that you are growing some food.

I'm not sure when the last time we spoke, but we moved into a new house in Highland Park. We're renting, but the landlord is a friend and let's us do whatever we want to the yard. We've removed most of the grass in the back yard and are working on turning it into a large garden. We also just got 3 chickens. Should be sweet once [they] start laying eggs. Their names are Edith (black) Mildred (brown) and Prudence (blonde). We wanted to name them good Depression Era names. Here are a few pics. (see above) You can see how fast they have grown in only three and a half weeks. Hope all is well with you.