Now Norma Knits

Savory-ing The Summer

Good morning! Happy Soon-To-Be-Summer Solstice! 

I'm in a bit of a slow-down where work is concerned, and I just came in from the garden, so I thought I'd take a few minutes to write you a note. 

So how are you all doing? 

Thank you all for your donations to my recent fundraising runs! They were a great success, and very much appreciated for all concerned. In the last few hours before the race for the Champlain Islands Parent Child Center a week ago Saturday, I made a Facebook challenge to my friends that if someone would donate, I'd wear my SL,UT t-shirt (You may remember when I got that.) to the race. Some people did, and so:

I haven't learned how much we raised for that little organization yet, but I know we did pretty well. So thank you again! I ran a respectable 30:39 5K. (Man, it was hot!) But there was a woman in my class (50-59 female) who beat me by quite a bit. David and I had to do a lot of explaining about the t-shirt all morning. But everyone agreed: Hey, if it brought in a few extra dollars, it was well worth it.

Then this past Saturday I did the Run For Empowerment in support of Women Helping Battered Women. I thought I was gonna smoke that thing, and I did shave 30 seconds off my 5K time from the week before:

 

But holy crap, we have some fast friggin' over-50 women around here! Look at the No. 1 female finisher! In all classes! 57! And she was ahead of me by the proverbial (nope, literal, now that I think about it) mile.

But anyway, we did a fabulous job with the fundraising for that; and they do such good work, they deserve it. So thank you again!

~~~

So by my count, that is 9 5K runs in the can toward my goal of 12 in 12 months. I fell a little behind in the spring, so I'm playing catchup. I'm thinking of signing up for another one this coming Saturday. I'm enjoying these things. (Did I just say that out loud?)

~~~

We got our first electric bill since installing our solar panels:

This reflects the first three WEEKS! So the way it works here is we have net metering. We don't get any actual cash. Credits are built up. And we are given credit by our utility for an extra 6 cents per kilowatt hour that we produce as well, because, you know: Vermont.

Our system was designed to meet our established prior usage (in our case, average $91/month). So in the summer we are cranking out that extra power (probably 130% or so of our actual simultaneous usage) and getting credit for it. Then, in the dreary winter months when we don't produce as much solar electricity up here, we draw down on the credits we built up in the happy sunny summer. So from now on, we should have a zero electric bill. Forever. Well, for the life of the panels anyway, which is about 20 years.

The credits have to be used up within one year of creating them, and if we have any left over at the end of the one-year period, we can donate them to another person on the same utility -- a family member or friend or neighbor -- or to a nonprofit or whatever.

Is that cool or WHAT?

~~~

The garden is going strong. Big parts of it are a bit unkempt at the moment, but that is just about par for the course, innit?

Yesterday when I was doing the heavy lifting of cleaning out and relayering the compost bins (my favorite garden thing!!!), I opened the door to one of them to be surprised by one of these guys chilling out (or warming up, more accurately) in there.

After my initial EEK! startled moment that I always have with snakes, I gently urged him to go find another place to hang out while I cleaned the bins and took care of the compost. I hope he didn't go too far, though, because according to Wikipedia, "Young milk snakes typically eat slugs, insects, crickets, and earthworms." I have had no slugs in my garden this year so far. Coincidence? I hope I did not push him too far away, though the environment in the bin is no longer the same since I cleaned it out. I hope he finds another suitable close-by home.

This morning's harvest included beet thinnings, spinach, parsley, thyme, and summer savory.

This is my first year growing summer savory, and I wondered this morning: What in the world is summer savory used for?

Everything, apparently. 

Hope you are savory-ing your summer, too!

 

Worm Farming

Well, greetings from the Winter Wasteland. As I'm writing this, it sounds like the house is going to fall down at any moment. The weather app on my phone says the winds are blowing at 16 miles per hour, but that just can't be right. Perhaps the app is dyslexic and it's really 61. The app also says it is 36F, and that's also whacked. My face nearly froze off when I stepped outside to let Mr. Jefferies do his business, which was rather a fruitless exercise. He plastered his ears back and looked at me like, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" then did one of the quickest about-faces I've ever seen, and bolted back in.

Spring is still a long way off for us. But even though the ground is frozen solid, I still managed, today, to get some dirt under my fingernails. That's just something like tonic for a housebound gardener. 

How did I do it? I did some maintenance of my worm farm. A local friend recently asked me to take some pictures of my worm farm for her. I decided that you all might like to see and hear about the worm farm, too.

It turns out it was a good thing I did, because when I investigated the situation, I found that a couple of the trays were too wet and compacted and needed to be aerated and have some dry material added. 

Avert your eyes if you are squeamish about worms or dirt. But wait, I bet you want to see what's in that bowl, right? Here it is.

Totally looks like a stir-fry; am I right?

That's a bunch of fruit and vegetable scraps, peelings, cuttings, pieces of houseplant trimmings, eggshells. It's all been previously frozen, because freezing or cooking the stuff helps it to break down faster and makes it easier for the worms to process. 

I tend to accumulate a LOT of these materials. It could take up a lot of freezer space, but around here (see paragraph one), it's not hard to freeze them. Just stick them in a dish and put them out on the front (or back) porch or whatever. Here's the next batch that I put out this afternoon.

I suppose if someone came to our front door and saw a pan of garbage sitting there, they might develop certain opinions about us. I solve that problem by not bothering to shovel the front walk. If they can make it to our front door, probably the vegetable shavings are the least of their concern.

So anyway, I feed my worms a dish of stuff like that about every two or three days. That is considered "green" food -- nitrogenous stuff -- for the little squigglers.

Little squigglers cannot live on "green" food alone. They also need "brown" food -- carbonaceous -- in about equal amounts. This can consist of shredded paper, coir (coconut fiber), shredded cardboard -- that sort of thing. I have bought some coir bricks, and they are fab, but we also tend to accumulate tons of paper and cardboard -- much more than my poor worms can process. I might have to get a second farm for next year. Heh. (Shhh.)

Here's what I did not know when I started this project: Worms have gizzards! Isn't that interesting? You probably already knew that, because you are smart. But I didn't know that.

So they need to have little bits of rock as a part of their environment. They also need enzymes and other little microorganism to help them with their digestion. So when I started this last fall, I put in some earth from outside into my trays. In my starter kit, which was one of these, there was a package of pumice for this purpose. I have run out of that, and can't for the life of me find the same kind of pumice anywhere. I've used it all up (directions say put in a half cup per tray), and I've tried to find pumice of the same coarseness, and so far just can't. I ordered some online, and it was supposed to be "coarse," but it is fine dust that is meant for sanding furniture. Ridic. So next summer I will make sure to collect some sand and tiny pebbles from outside, enough to take me (and more importantly, my worms) through the winter.

But on to the fun stuff! The worm poop!

Here are a bunch of pics of what I did with my Friday afternoon. When I open the top lid, this is what I see:

When I take off the top layer of damp newspaper, this is what I see:

See how happy the worms look?

Do not even say, like SOME people (well, ONE person) I live with, "How do you know the worms are HAPPY?" (delivered with an eye-roll)

Do not even go there. I will snap your head off. Of COURSE they are happy. I can tell they are happy because they are happily doing worm things. Cripes. 

See what's in there? Some moistened, broken-up fiber egg boxes, some veggie cuttings, some paper, some coffee grounds. Still a lot of work to be done to make that into compost.

The next tier looks like this:

Looking pretty good. There are some more happy worms. That dark brown stuff is some wonderful worm poo that has dropped through the mesh of the top layer, onto the final layer of moistened newspaper that is left on the top of the tray before the next tray is put on top of it. This layer is more processed than the layer that is on top of it, but less processed than the layer beneath it. See how this is going now?

The next layer down, though, was not looking so good: 

This photo was taken AFTER I had used my hands, and then the plastic spaghetti tool, to loosen it up and aerate it a bit. I did a lot more loosening and aerating, because it was a cold, wet, compacted, mess. It wasn't as bad as it might have been, I reckon, because it did not smell bad. But it would be very difficult for my little critters to move around in and do their jobs. So I did the aeration and used my hands to break apart some of that solid wet newspaper. You are not getting all squeamish on me, are you? If so, I will be losing some respect for you; I'm sorry.

Anyway, I gave it a good stirring with my hands, and added a good amount of dry shredded paper.

I hope that does the trick.

The bottom layer looked pretty darn good. Almost soil. In fact, if it were anything like spring, I would have added this to one of my garden beds.

Beautiful.

Below that is the drain tray, where excess moisture goes, and can be collected. We call that worm tea. I added it to some water and watered my houseplants. 

Mmm, pretty. 

After I was all done stirring and aerating and adding food and bedding, I layered all the trays back the way they should be, replaced the top layer of newspaper, and gave it a spritz of water.


All in all, it was a healthy hive, so to speak. 

Wait, I bet I know what you're going to ask: Where do I keep this? I have an unheated room that is sort of a porch, or a mudroom, or an anteroom to the dining room. The worm farm has worked beautifully there. For most of the year, I did not have to heat it. It's unheated, but well insulated. But when we hit the very-deep-freezing temps, I had to put a space heater in there, set at low. The idea is just to keep the temperature above 40F or so.

We used to collect compost scraps in big bowls and trudge up the snowbound hill all winter -- when we could manage. It was a smelly, unsightly mess on our counter a lot of the time, and a big pain. Now my worms compost for me indoors. 

Makes me happy. And the worms too. 

Homemade

This year, rather than canning tomatoes, I've decided to make and freeze batches of marinara. I realized that for the most part, I use my canned tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce anyway. I love my home-canned, home-grown, delicious organic tomatoes, but the canning season itself always seems to come at a time when I don't have time to perform all that labor-intensive canning nonsense. I tried freezing tomatoes a few years back, at the recommendation of several helpful friends, but I learned that I really dislike working with frozen tomatoes. They seem so unappealing to me. I ended up throwing bags and bags and bags of tomatoes into the compost heap the following year.

On average, I go through at least one quart of purchased marinara weekly throughout the year. And making marinara to freeze is -- at least it seems it to me -- less work than canning tomatoes. The process seems less overwhelming, and maybe even more satisfying. It takes a few more raw materials, and after the skins and seeds are milled out, and the sauce cooked down to thicken, it results in a smaller volume of sauce per pound of tomatoes, but still, I've been ending up with three quarts each Saturday for the last three Saturdays. I still have a way to go to fulfill my annual needs for marinara, but the tomatoes are still producing and ripening in my garden, I've grown plenty of onions, and the basil is still growing (though there has been a cold snap recently, to which the basil takes umbrage. So that might be the end of that.) I didn't grow my own garlic this year (boo! hiss!) so I had to purchase my garlic at the farmer's market. 

So if you own stock in Bove's, I'm sorry. I will be purchasing less of their goodness this year. Because I have made my own, even more delicious, goodness. And I know exactly where all most of the ingredients have come from: My garden.  

 

An Ode To Misshapen Carrots

Oh, carrots.

Each year I plant you. 

And nurture you.

And love you.

And hope.

And each year you stab me in the chest.

I treat you nice, like all my other garden children. 

But you are my nasty child.

I wait and wait for your sprouts to emerge.

(Because you are hateful.)

(And selfish.)

(You sneaky little shit.)

And I water you and care for you. And your green tops look so pretty.

And then, when you are the right size, I thin you out so that you have ample room to grow. 

And your green tops look frondy and luscious,

and make soft, loving promises.

You fill up the bed and smell so sweet.

You whisper, "I love you, too, Sweetie. Don't worry. I'm right here, growing for you. You'll be so happy, I promise."

All the while, you are cavorting with the bad boys on motorcycles. 

 

Twerking in that soil, you grotesque little hussy.

WHY you gotta be spiteful that way?!

You distorted beast!

That is ... I can't even.

Twisted.

And distorted.

And sick beyond belief.

--------

Each year I believe you.

And each year you say:

"SUCKAHHHHHH!"

..........

So....

maybe...

next year,

then?

 

The New King Arthur Flour Store/Cafe/Baking School -- Yeah, WOW, Man!

I'm long overdue for a Pee Place Post; am I right?  

So how fortunate for you! An early release from my work in Central Vermont today gave me all the excuse I needed to go and visit the new (still under construction, really) King Arthur Flour store.

I took some photos of the gorgeous place, of course starting in the most important room:  The pee place!

And, my friends, it is stunning!

Anyone who knows me well knows that this was the first and last place I went on my visit there. 

Next, I went to the cafe to get a sticky bun and cafe au lait, which I enjoyed at one of their lovely tables. You can see I wasn't kidding when I said it's still under construction. That yellow tape is not to indicate that it's a crime scene, but a construction site. 

Highly decadent, and worth every calorie, even if I gained a pound.

And then I went to the store. Baker's mecca! Even though I really held myself back on account of the fact that I just can't and don't bake that much anymore, I still managed to fill these two bags and spent enough to qualify for a free bag of self-rising flour.

I took the bags' photo there because I wanted to show you the beautiful stone wall along the outdoor table space.

The post-and-beam buildings are stately and strong, and reminiscent of Vermont maple sugar houses.

Lots of fabulous (local, I'm presuming) stone and wood throughout.

And look here: 

Copper downspouts.

Definitely worth a visit, even if you aren't a baker.

 

Terrier Tuesday -- The Sashimi Edition

Dear Readers,

Alpha apologizes that the photo of me and my minion (which, by the way, look at how it is still holding up after all this time!) is out of focus. 

She was really just intent on making sure to get a good photo of the gigantic bowl of spinach she had just brought in from the garden:

She was pretty damned excited, because though she said she got pretty crappy germination of her spinach seeds, all the rainy weather has turned out a fabulous spinach crop. 

I guess we know what's important to her and what's not.

*pout*

But that's all right. Two can play this game. I've been eating pretty high off the hog, myself. You know how she's been trying to teach me to do the "roll over" trick, and how I have been refusing because it's just downright demeaning? (The nerve of her to even ask me!)

Well, last week she gave me raw salmon every time I rolled over like she asked. 

I guess I gave her what she wanted right quick. 

I have told her in no uncertain terms, I will not do it, even for steak tartare. Not top-shelf enough. But I do love me some sashimi. 

Love,

 

Mr. Jefferies

P.S. So yeah, roll over. Whatever. Just show me the money. 

P.P.S. Alpha says she saw a big fat rabbit over by the rose bushes at dusk last night. I didn't see it, or if I did, it would have been DINNER. I'm not kidding. But she's been moaning and groaning a little bit about that for a couple of reasons: Well, DUH, her garden, and also because she thinks it's rabbits and their leavings that have made me get coccidiosis every summer. She is not a happy camper about that rabbit hanging around. Personally, I think I oughta do something about that.

 

Spri-ing-tiiiiiiiiime, and the Eatin' is Easy......

Oh, how I love to cook and eat this time of year. The garden makes it so easy to be creative and healthful.

Yesterday morning there were scallions, and lots of them, ready. 

When I pulled them and brought them into the house, I really didn't have a plan for what I would do with them. But when lunchtime came around, the plan just went ahead and formulated itself. 

I brought out the George Foreman grill and a package of grass-fed local ground beef. I made a small patty and cooked it on the grill, making for a lean and tasty little burger.

Meanwhile, I sliced up the scallions (there are red and white ones in there, for extra color and goodness) and put them in a small bowl. I added a splash of balsamic vinegar, a splash of olive oil, and a sprinkle of both sea salt and crushed dried cayenne pepper. I stirred it up and let it marinate for the few minutes it took to finish cooking the burger, and savored the burger smothered in spring-oniony goodness. It was almost a salad, sort of a relish -- beautiful in its simplicity, and dead-on delicious.

Excuse me -- I must go out now and plant another row of onion sets. Rolling harvests are one of the keys to a good kitchen garden, after all.

Today the star of the fresh-pick show will be asparagus.

 

Monday Musings

1.  I finished the back of G'Day yesterday. I told you it was a fast knit! I am quite charmed by this pattern by Nora Gaughan.

Because this yarn has a halo, photos of it look a bit washed out. The colors are actually a touch more vibrant in real life. My knitting time is set to take quite a nose dive soon, so who knows when, even though it's a fast knit, I will finish this thing. Work has picked up exponentially, so I also have to keep in mind taking care of my forearms, wrists and elbows. 

2.  While I was blithely knitting along and/or when I was at the gym yesterday, someone had somehow stolen my credit card number and was buying things. Chase VISA did not fool around, though, and within a very short time, they called me to ask if those charges were mine. It was really only one charge, because the subsequent charges, for tiny amounts, were denied and the card was put on hold. The online charge was for $420, though. It must have been the teeny charges ($2.95 at a child care center and $1.00 at a drugstore) that were the red flags. Then again, without the actual physical card in hand, I don't know how those charges could be made. ... Hm... the mysteries and annoyances of modern living. But thank goodness for alert fraud detection divisions.

3.  I defrosted a gigantic turkey over the weekend and roasted it yesterday, because it had been in my freezer for a while and I didn't want to see it go to waste due to freezer burn. But then once I roasted it, David and I looked at the monster in our roasting pan with some degree of mirth. That is one hell of a lot of meat for two people to eat. I offloaded some to my mother, and cut up and froze more of the cooked meat, and made turkey stock with the carcass. Perhaps I will not buy any more gigantic organic turkeys at local farms, and will keep it to smaller birds instead. Except at Thanksgiving, that is. It was very delicious, though.

4.  I'm making a concerted effort to eat up all the vegetables and berries that I froze from last year's garden, before this year's gardening season begins. I've still got TONS of them (or so it seems). While not quite as desirable as fresh and raw, I'm going to start using many more of the frozen veggies in my green drinks. I'm so glad I discovered unblanched freezing last year. The unblanched frozen veggies are much better to handle, taste much closer to fresh, and look one hell of a lot better. All except zucchini and summer squash. They are rubbery and unpleasant either way. In the future, I will only freeze SHREDDED (unblanched) zucchini, which I have done successfully in the past. That is really good for baked goods such as zucchini bread, muffins, and cake, but I almost never bake anymore. However, I can envision it being good in many other things like meatloaf, quiche, chili, omelets and spaghetti sauce, too. 

5.  On the reintroduction phase following the elimination diet/cleanse, I have learned that dairy foods are a big no-no for me. I MISS MY HOMEMADE GREEK YOGURTTTTTTTTTT *whine*!!!!  

Peanuts and soy, too. The peanuts I had a suspicion about, but this confirms the suspicion. I had absolutely no idea about the soy previously, but it is bad. WAHHHHH to both.

Red meat, pork, white potatoes, green peppers are no problem in terms of allergies or intolerances (yay!). Eggs and tomatoes also have a green light.

Wheat is problematic, as I already knew, but I can tolerate some. I'll try to restrict it to once or twice a week, and whole grain as often as possible.

And here is the next thing I had absolutely no idea about before: Alcohol. I have a pretty serious intolerance to alcohol that I was heretofore unaware of. Crap. Not that I'm a big drinker, but this explains a lot.  

We often eat or drink so many things at once that we don't know what is actually causing us problems, or even that/if foods are causing us problems. Many of us just think we feel crappy, or we're bloated for no explainable reason, or we get headaches for no explainable reason. The beauty of the elimination diet, and methodically adding in one thing at a time, is that you can almost immediately identify what the exact things are that are problems for you. 

I am so glad I've done (and continue to do) this. It helps to be aware, and I feel so much better. 

6.  Happy Valentine's Day to all my loves.  

Another Step in the Direction of Less Plastic

I stopped in at Grand Isle Artworks again yesterday, because I saw it announced in Facebook that Thursdays are Sylvie's days to be there. I recently met Sylvie at a farmer's market where she was selling her wares and bought several bars of soap. Sylvie is a delightful woman with a French accent -- she is originally from Montreal, she told me yesterday -- who makes beautiful soaps and lotions and body washes.

One exciting thing about her soaps is that she uses sunflower seed oil from the Roger and Claire Rainville farm in Alburgh that I mentioned a while back. There is a little post about their farm here. Talk about local! Her business is mere yards (only a very slight exaggeration) from the farm that produces the sunflower oil, and a half hour from me.

The reason I wanted to go in yesterday is because I wanted to try something I had seen on her website, her goat's milk face cream. In recent years I have gotten off track on my former adherence to as-natural-as-possible, with-as-few-ingredients-as-possible cosmetics. After having read Clean recently, I was reminded that the skin is the biggest organ of the body. My resolve to try to put nothing on my skin that I wouldn't eat [within reason, within REASON!] has returned. I've still been quite happily using Philosophy products, but they are way expensive, and my last two jars of Hope In A Jar turned rancid or something when they were only half gone, and sadly these products do contain parabens, which have been found in high concentrations in breast cancer tumors, so I'd really rather not put those things on my body, thankyouverymuch.

When I got to the shop, I told Sylvie that this was my quest (to put nothing on my skin that I wouldn't eat). She proceeded to explain to me in detail the ingredients in the face cream, their derivation, their function, and why each one was desirable and necessary to make a nice face cream that isn't too greasy, that soaks in, that contains humectants. She spoke with convincing knowledge and authority, and said that yes, I could eat this (though I probably wouldn't want to). The price of the face cream is really reasonable, and so I bought some -- after I tried it first, of course. 

One thing I loved about her explanation is that she was so honest and forthright: She told me that yes, there are some preservatives in there, but they are weak ones. This is a new batch, and there is an expiration date of one year hence, but that this product will be best used up within about six months or so -- and not to let it sit in a cupboard somewhere for a long time before I use it, or it will go "off".

But before I left, somehow we got on the topic of another product she makes that, as it turns out, I am even more excited about:

Solid shampoo. It comes in a bar or cake like soap, it is covered in biodegradable plastic shrink wrap (realizing that is an oxymoron, but this is a little bit gentler to the earth and landfills, I suppose) -- no other wrapping, and best of all, no plastic bottle or cap. Most shampoos, she explained, come in plastic bottles that are mostly filled with water. There is very little real product in the shampoo bottle -- the first ingredient is water. This makes it heavy to ship, and you have one more plastic bottle to throw away.

(You know I don't really buy the whole "we are recycling it" thing, right? I've talked at length about this before, that I really doubt that most of the plastic stuff that we, with all best intentions, hope and think that we are recycling, actually gets recycled.) 

Once again, Sylvie explained each and every ingredient in the shampoo (which can also be used as a regular body bar) and why it's there. 

This is great for traveling, and it's also better for the environment and for the less-plastic lifestyle. I'm excited to try it and I'm really looking forward to my shower tomorrow morning!

And that's not all. There is also the solid conditioner:

While I was there, I bought some raffle tickets for Grand Isle Art Works' grand opening and fundraiser for additional lighting and other things that the new gallery needs, such as chairs for knit night (hint-hint) that is taking place this Saturday. You can buy raffle tickets, too, here.

THE REVIEW IS IN:  (added at 9:43 a.m. ET)  I just finished my first shower with the solid shampoo and conditioner. I'm very happy. A nice feel, easy to use (I was a bit concerned about that), and though the lather is not as "moussey" as a shampoo from a bottle -- or maybe it could be if you used more, but I was on minimalist mode this morning -- it is wonderful! I used the shampoo bar as a body bar, too, because I loved the smell so much. It's just the smell of milk and almonds, practically nonexistent, but just a hint. Lovely and purifying-feeling.  And the conditioner is brilliant! As Sylvie told me, you can feel it going on, and you can control how much you put on by how silky your hair starts to feel.  I'm a happy showerer, and I'm sold on all three products.  I used the face cream last night (it is really a night cream), and used it after my shower today on my arms.  Nice.  

Putting Food By.... The Lazy Way

Little by little, my freezer is getting FULL. I have not done any canning this year, and I know I will miss my canned tomatoes next winter, but I just don't have the time or the energy -- or the right frame of mind, or something. I still have time to make the pickled beets, and I shall -- I shall. I MUST! My extended family can't live without them, so it is my duty to oblige. I don't really have that many beets this year, though, so I may have to buy some at a farmer's market. 

It is such a great feeling to open the doors to my freezers (the little one on the top of the fridge, and the freestanding one in the garage) and see gallons of frozen berries picked from my garden earlier this summer, gallons of green and yellow zucchini, gallons of green beans, gallons of frozen tomatoes, jars of rose petal jam and quarts of broccoli and sliced cabbage and eggplant and green peppers. And in the kitchen, I see baskets and bowls of onions and garlic and shallots and long red chili peppers and habaneros. I still have many potatoes to dig, and there is still much more broccoli and chard and cabbage and beans and beets and tomatoes and peppers and kale and cucumbers to come.  

Looking at this bounty, I realize that this may indeed be the first year -- or at least one of the first -- that I really DID save money by gardening -- and lots of it. AND I know where my food is coming from and how it was grown. 

I am a major convert to the no-blanch freezing method. Everything that I have frozen this year has been without blanching. It could not be easier, and my stuff looks marvelous. I have eaten one bag of frozen zucchini to test it out, and it was wonderful. The stuff is not all frozen in a big ice hunk as it used to be when I blanched. It is individual frozen chunks or slices, so that I can use larger bags and pull out what I need as I need it. This makes it much more economical, both of money and plastic.

This summer I have repeatedly visited local farms and the farmer's market and have purchased pounds and pounds of organic pork, beef, chicken & a 25-pound turkey for Thanksgiving. I did not grow any winter squash or pumpkins this year, and I regret that. But the freezer is just about fully packed, and...

I'm a happy, fulfilled gardener.