08/26/12

I realize that I left something out of yesterday's daily update. I was so focused on our trip to Lexington that I forgot that we accomplished something in the evening after we got home. We spent the evening working up the 40 pounds of bananas that we had purchased. Andrea peeled the bananas, cut them up and layered on cookie sheets to be placed in the freezer. Meanwhile, I cut up the banana peels into approximately 1" pieces so they could be more easily composted.

This morning I added the peels to the compost. since there was so much material, I first removed some of the leaves from the top of the pile, then dumped the peels into the bin. I then use a spading fork to mix them with the other materials. Finally, I covered them back over with the leaves that I had previously removed.

I also shucked the corn we purchased yesterday, so that Andrea could put in the freezer. I only had a dozen ears, so it didn't take very long. I backed the RTV up the front porch, so I could throw the shucks right into the bed. I was a bit disappointed with the quality of the corn. The seller had checked the ears and cut off any bad ends. In some cases, they had to cut off quite a bit, but left the shucks intact, making it appear that the ear was actually a full ear. Granted, if they had not checked the ears themselves, I would have likely cut off just as much, so in the end the amount of corn available is the same. I'm just not sure that I approve of what appears to be a purposeful deception. They did throw in an extra ear, so I can't complain too much. We ended up with six 1 cup servings of corn for the freezer. I had one of the servings for dinner, as a test to see how I like it. It tasted fine to me, so if we run across someone else selling this variety we may just end up buying another two to three dozen ears to freeze.

After Andrea had finished cutting the corn off of the cob I cut the cobs into small pieces, so, like with the banana peels, they would compost more quickly. Last year we had six to seven dozen cobs that were done the same way, and when I turned the compost recently I didn't see a single recognizable corn cob.

Andrea has also been working on making tomato sauce from the tomatoes we purchased yesterday. My involvement in this project was limited to adding the waste to the compost pile. She has the first part of the process completed, and is letting the sauce rest in the refrigerator overnight. Tomorrow she'll cook it down and strain it again.

Right now she is working on canning the peaches that we bought yesterday. She waited until late to work on that, because the process requires the use of the stove for long periods of time. Rather than heat the house up during the day, she waited until it was cool enough to open the windows to allow the excess heat to escape and be replaced with cooler air from outside. Its not clear yet how many jars she will have, but she has seven 8oz jelly jars in the canner right now and is working on filling up more jars at the moment.