15 minutes to heaven...

People are always asking me how I do so much and I am always saying "Huh? What do you mean?" Because I really don't. It never feels like I get much done at all. And I certainly don't get near as much done as I would love to.

I seldom spend big chunks of time doing stuff. This is for lots of reasons--being busy with kids, short attention span, but mainly because of some funky health issues that mean I am kind of screwed in the long-term energy department. To adapt to how my life is (as in really is, rather than how I want it to be) I have developed this odd way of dividing tasks in little spurts of time. Five minutes here, ten minutes there, I seldom do big crazy long pushes anymore. But from looks of my pantry, I guess these efforts add up.

For example, one morning this week, I had a big pile of tomatoes sitting on my counter. I was thinking about grinding them up to stick them in the freezer for the beginnings of fresh tomato sauce but I only had a few minutes and I knew that would make a mess. I hate leaving a mess behind when I leave in the morning so I opted to salt-dry some tomatoes instead. They only take a minute to clean up afterwards.

This whole process took literally 7 minutes to slice and place the tomatoes on the dehydrator trays, salt them and put the trays in the dehydrator, start the machine and clean up. Then the machine ran all day while I was in and out. Later that night I checked on them and decided that they needed more time and let it run all night. In the morning, it took another 6-7 minutes to take them off the tray and stick them in a jar for the winter. All in all, I preserved about 15 pounds of tomatoes in as many minutes of work. Nice. And the best part is they will be delicious in any recipe I make that has tomato sauce in it.

I learned about salt dried tomatoes a couple of years ago when we went to visit our friends in Switzerland. Sean is Steve's and my old skiing/climbing buddy from back in the old days--you know, college, when doing something fun was way more important than anything on the "list". Anyway, Sean apparently was studying in addition to having fun because he went on to be this very prestigious professor of geology (even inventing some kind of famous theory about the birth of mountains). He's now the Geology department chair of the Swiss version of MIT or something grand like that and has a house in the alps and Italian sweetheart Guiditta.

Guiditta, who is also a geologist, grew up in a hotel in the Dolomite mountains of Northern Italy. Her mom was super busy running the hotel so her virtual nanny became the hotel cook. Seeings how the cook was supposed to be busy cooking, not watching Guiditta, Guiditta learned to cook early and from a master. On our visit, she taught me all kinds of things about making delicious pasta sauces.

One night she searched the hidden back corners of their food cupboard and took out this little teeny, tiny jar of salt dried tomatoes that a friend had brought to her from the southern tip of Italy. (I think she might have been hiding them from Sean. He LOVES salty things.) Anyway, she explained all about their particular properties and handed me one to eat (oh my gosh, it was divine!) and then she dropped a few in the sauce she was making. Did I say I almost died of heaven eating that sauce?

Anyway, when we came home I immediately set to work figuring out how to make them. And every year since I have been salt drying tomatoes to add to fine sauces. If there is one ingredient that takes a sauce from good to out of this world, it is these...and as you can see they are EASY. I love things that rock my cooking world and take 15 minutes to make. Thank you Guiditta.

So here's the scoop on what I have learned about making them. After three years of experimenting I still don't have an exact replica of Guiditta's little jar...probably because my tomatoes are not grown in the heat of southern Italy and I am drying my tomatoes in a machine. But I have learned to make a pretty good imitation.

My first trick is to be liberal with the salt. It looks like a lot but you are only going to be putting a few in a whole batch of sauce so the salt gets absorbed. It should look like this when you put it in the dehydrator.

Secondly, spend the money on good salt. You can make salted tomatoes with Morton's, but they are ever so much better with a delicious mineral salt on them. Yes, even salts are worth spending money on. Did you know that some research links good salts to longevity?? That is something to remember when you are paying $5.69 a pound for a little stash of salt.

So far, my two favorite salts on these tomatoes are a himalayan pink salt which I can buy in the store but some people might have to special order it from a place like Tropical Traditions and a course celtic sea salt that I grind with a mortar and pestle (and yes, this time is figured into the 15 minutes).

Thirdly, dry thoroughly but not over much. They can burn and then aren't as tasty. Here is what they look like before, during and after drying to get an idea. Sorry the picture isn't so great.

Lastly, use the very best tomatoes you can find. A good tomato makes the difference between a decent and fantastic dried tomatoes.

So what is the point of drying them? Drying makes the flavor rich and the salt does something magical. The tomatoes end up almost like dried tomato chips...sometimes I steal a couple to snack on when I feel like something salty. They have the same crispy salty deliciousness as a potato chip without the fats. Yum. Here's what a jar of tastiness looks like.

If you aren't into having salted tomatoes, I just learned another dried tomato trick. Slice tomatoes and dry them halfway (about 10 hours in a dehydrator) and then throw them in ziplock bags in the freezer. Either pre freeze them on cookie sheets or throw in recipe amounts into individual ziplock bags or they will clump together. Partial drying dramatically cuts the cooking time for fresh sauce by wicking away much of the moisture and gives the sauce some of that same rich dried tomato flavor. Yum!

Now bring on winter, I can't wait to make spaghetti!

All's quiet on the home front...NOT!

Last week might have been the busiest week of the year. We had a full house of Summer Wind Day campers (12 Woodland Elves to be specific) and their parents, grandparents and siblings wandering about. This doesn't affect me much, except for the parking issue and it is hard to snag an extra popsicle at the end of the day.

Becca, their fearless leader, kept the campers busy building forts and fairy houses, making magical lanterns and playing crazy games. And that's not to mention snacking on plums. (Thank you, Becca!) Many plums, "heavenly plums', so said the campers. One even wanted to plant a tree at her house. I warned her mother. A 600 pound plum crop can be a bit intimidating.

Two of our favorite campers, Lucy and Alice, spent the night on Thursday. This was very fun except that they wake up at 5 something in the morning and well, we don't. I took them out to feed the cows. They like waking up early too.

But back to the week. So we had the one girl finishing up camp, cleaning up the barn and getting the hell out of dodge and back to her real life, the life where she is writing a novel and NOT living with her parents.

And we had one girl getting ready to go back to college where obviously life is better than a summer spent at home where the biggest excitement was breaking your arm skating (well, and maybe getting a new boyfriend). She spent the week making desserts (black bottomed cupcakes and lemon sponge cake--yum!) and abandoning her room. Oops, I mean packing. She and her friend from up the road barely, and I mean barely, fit their two bodies and their stuff into an Honda Element. An Element without the backseat. An Element that can seriously haul a LOT of stuff. Their rooms are on the third floor of the dorms, no elevator. I wonder if they rethought their position on stuff when they were unpacking. Did you know it is almost impossible to go to college without nine pairs of heels? I didn't know this. It's a good thing I already have my degree since I don't own a single pair.

The other girl spent the week swimming in her own vat of drama but that is a story for another time.

Lastly, Aidan, fondly known as "the boy" diligently cleaned his room in an effort to make room for high school. He also shopped for shoes for these enormously long, skinny things he calls feet and finished enduring a LOT of testing. That last little comment meant we parents spent much of the week enduring hours of meetings regarding the test results and then spent many more hours in serious contemplation about what to do with what we already knew--very smart boy who has some significant learning challenges. We went back to the brain lady (she's working on undoing the snowboarding accident when the said boy fell off a cliff and knocked his noggin a good one). We had more meetings with teachers and counselors and speech pathologists and neuro-psychologists.

And did I mention that the garden was coming in strong.

Like, I mean, really strong...Just this week we picked gallons of plums, blueberries, blackberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans. Smaller, yet still predigious amounts of kale, tomatillos, collards, carrots, potatoes, late strawberries, onions and leeks. We ate, dried, salt dried, canned, froze, pickled and sauced as much as we could every day. And sorry to say, it wasn't enough. there is still a BIG pile of produce on the counter.

Just yesterday Steve and I, with a little bit of help from Becca who was avoiding cleaning the barn, canned 49 (yes, count them-49) jars of spicy plum sauce, plum chutney and dilly beans.

We froze and dried two lugs of fruit. The day before it was 7 quarts of tomato sauce, and lots of blueberries picked and bagged for the freezer. Steve smartly rewarded himself for all his work with a delicious gluten free black and blue pie. I, on the other hand, had had enough of the kitchen and had some Ben and Jerry's. Did I say we were tired?

If just that was the week, I think we would have managed, but there was problem of the broody chicken who produced two beautiful chicks only to squish one when it was four days old. These things happen but unfortunately a very sensitive camper found the poor chick, who literally had turned her toes up. The chick had a lovely funeral complete with a procession, songs and a gravestone that reads " Here lies Sprinkels." I was asked by three different children to keep fresh flowers on her grave.

And then there is the cow who is now a full two weeks late having her baby. Is it time to induce? Do they do such things to cows? Do I need to call the vet or give her castor oil? Oh my. And the hay is giving Aidan hives, which makes it hard for him to do his chores. And squirrels beat us to most of the nuts--hazel nuts and the walnuts. I think we were too busy picking the plums.

The house is the dirtiest it has been in a long, long time and let's not even think about the weeds. The cat has been throwing up, the dog is in mourning because his girl abandoned him for college. And four campers of the small boy variety decided that jumping on the compost pile, the one with a dozen thoroughly rotten eggs hidden in it, would be a good idea. Days later, we are still recovering from the smell. Did I mention the flies?

All in all, it was one of those weeks that everyone is glad is over. Most of all, me.

Weird smells and slug slime....

A couple of minutes ago, Aidan walked in the house and said "It smells weird in here." Yea, I bet it does. Silently, I remembered what I had been doing for the last couple of hours...blending tomatoes for freezer sauce, drying hot peppers for use later in the year, making the syrup for plum fruit leather, drying cherries and crisping the sliced cukes in salt water for making bread and butter pickles later today. With all those projects, I guess it was bound to smell weird. Hopefully when the smells settle down, it will taste good.

As you can tell, the garden is coming on strong right now. Just about everything is ready to eat, can, pickle or dry. Keeps a girl busy when she might rather be at the river soaking up the rays. Luckily, today is cool and rainy so the kitchen sounds just fine.

Earlier when I went out to the garden to harvest all that said produce, I knew it had been rainy because I saw about 157 slugs and their mothers. When it is hot, the slugs vacation in the forest but when it is cool and wet, they lounge in the garden eating beans and cucumbers and tomatoes and looking more like pigs than slugs. Ever seen a snout on an overfed slug? Trust me, it isn't pretty.

I try to be charitable about the slugs, figuring they have to make a living too; but sometimes their over-zealous appetites get the better of my cheery disposition. Like a couple of days ago when I went out to pick that gorgeous red tomato I had been watching ripen all week. I reached my hand out to pick it and my fingers went right through to the slimy front. YUCK! Those buggers had secretly been eating their fill from the back. Such a disappointment. Luckily for the larder, there are more tomatoes out there or I might have to complain.

I wonder, do the slugs have some kind of hierarchy to lodge complaints with? I can just imagine the unsympathetic slug king munching on a throne of bean plants (surely one of their favorite foods). "Sorry, Mam. You are gonna have to get by. A slug is gonna do what a slug gotta do." Munch, munch. Guess I should be happy that I already harvested enough beans to make a couple of batches of dilly beans and some dinner. They really are sharing my garden with me.