Preservations Are In Full Swing

A reminder that I should be arriving home from our vacation tomorrow afternoon and will hopefully be back to normal blogging by Monday.

With the new freezer, I am better able to preserve our tomatoes. Before, I always planted more than I possibly needed so there was always a lot ready when I went to pressure can them. This year I have only four plants and I pick about a half bucket every two or three days. I cut up the ripest ones and put them in a ziplock bag in our freezer for a later date. The ones that need a day or two on the counter to fully ripen do so and then join their brothers in the ziplock bags in the freezer. Then as time allows, I gather all those plastic bags of cleaned and prepped tomatoes and simply dump them into a large stockpot where with some time, the use of a tomato mill, more time and a pressure canner, turn them into tomato products for our pantry shelf. The first batch above was turned into non spiced tomato sauce.

As we do most years, we like to try growing something new to us to increase our knowledge base of what works in our area. This year we planted a few fennel plants which were promptly eaten to the ground by marauding rabbits. With an electric fence in place and the rabbit situation sorted out, my wife replanted them again and they have done well. In fact, I think they have done superbly well though being the first time growing them, I can't say that as fact. But above is one of the ones I recently harvested sitting on a regulation sized dinner plate. 

I've only had much much smaller store bought versions in the past, most often cut up and cooked with some sort of seafood dish which it pairs with really well. However, my wife has also cut them up into small raw pieces and added them to our salads as a tasty treat. Although not a fan of the taste of black licorice, I do enjoy the black licorice smell it brings to our kitchen when it is freshly picked. 

We only planted six or so fennel plants and they are all this big. At this point, I'm not sure how to preserve them so we have been mostly making friends by giving away what we can't consume to friends and neighbors. I may try freezing one of the last ones which google tells me will preserve it for up to six months. I may also try pickling one just to see what it is like. When in doubt, I pickle just about any vegetable and I don't recall that I've ever been disappointed with how it tastes.