rebeccmeister | Weekend: The Tomato Plants Explodeth Forth (Reply)

gfrancie will be pleased to hear that last weekend's peaches did indeed get turned into sorbet, and the sorbet was, indeed, AMAZING. I actually made a combination mango-peach sorbet because I'd frozen a bunch of lusciously good, ripe mango cubes, and thought sorbet would be the perfect use for them. On top of that, when I told J about the sorbet plans, he declared that they would require something with coconut, so he cooked up some delicious coconut rice pudding, and he was absolutely correct. The peach-mango sorbet was creamy and fruity, and paired beautifully with the warm coconut rice pudding.

So, if you have access to these things, I would suggest that you follow suit as well, should you come across some deserving peaches. I couldn't tell you everything that J put into the rice pudding, but I know it involved coconut milk, cinnamon sticks and cardamom.

The sorbet and rice pudding all happened at a housewarming party on Saturday night, where we all stuffed ourselves silly on a number of other incredible nibbling things. Good times.

Sunday was devoted to other cooking projects. First, waffles for breakfast, with more peaches and some of the frozen strawberries and a dab of whipping cream. Then I used up all of the corn flour in making mediocre corn tortillas (ah well).

scrottie went out and picked the week's tomatoes - two enormous grocery bags full - and then cooked up a loaf of bread (in parallel with a loaf I made), a half-gallon of marinara, an enormous pot of black beans, a huge bowl of fruit salad, and a big batch of enchiladas plus enchilada sauce (with the tortillas). The marinara and enchilada sauce barely put a dent in the tomatoes. After he wrapped up his 7-hour cooking bender, I dove back in and made a luscious half-gallon batch of ratatouille.

Between the two of us, we've managed to cook up ALL of the squashes, and we have enough food for dinners for the week. The tomato pile, however, is still wonderfully big, and we'll be getting more CSA veggies today.

I'm glad to have had this much success with the tomatoes this year, although I feel like the success has much to do with the vagaries of the weather - a good winter freeze to kill a lot of insects, plus frequent spring rain, plus relatively cool summer temperatures. On the other hand, it's also very much a product of having invested a couple of years in learning how growing conditions work here, and how to manage the challenges particular to this place. As my friend T put it, you just have to plant and grow things while remembering that you'll be sharing a substantial fraction of your crop with other animals, no matter what you do. If you plant with that in mind, you CAN finagle things to ensure you get a meaningful harvest for yourself while the birds and squirrels and snails also have their fun. On top of that, it really does take YEARS to build up good soil fertility, but in some ways that just makes it even more rewarding to finally reach that point.