Long day in the kitchen...

Our 19 degree night last week was the end of our garden. Even under the tarps & sheets, everything was black, dead & slimy. Sigh.

The next morning the kids picked all of the green tomatoes & almost ripe pumpkins. The pumpkins are hardening off in the barn and the tomatoes ~~ all 2 bushels of them ~~ were piled in the kitchen. The biggest, nicest of them are nestled in newspaper to ripen. The 50,000 little ones (okay, okay, I'm exagerating, there can't be more than 45,000) I chopped & chopped & chopped all day today, to make into relish. The last jars are in the canner as we speak and our grand total for the day is 20 pints. Whew! That's a lot of relish. Did I mention, I don't even like relish? Oh well. Other people do & I couldn't just waste all those green tomatoes. Consider yourself forwarned: You will be getting relish for Christmas.

I also got 7 quarts of tomato sauce put up. I hope to do another batch tomorrow & as often as I have enough ripe ones to make a canner load. And then...it's on to the apples! Oh boy!

I see many many long days in the kitchen in my future as we can applesauce, apple pie filling, apple butter, & don't forget dried apples in the dehydrator . You gotta love fall...

Blessings.