Winter Provisions

All of the flurry of the summer harvest and into the autumn canning is paying off now. The picking, washing, cleaning, cutting, chopping, canning, preserving, rinsing, drying and finally labeling chaos has settled down!


Now the shelves are waiting with the labors from early spring to autumn to be chosen for a meal, a side dish, a tangy treat, or a sweet fix! The tallest cabinet has on the top shelf everything pickled: corn relish, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, and pickled beets. The next shelf down has tomatoes: canned tomatoes, tomato soup, garden sauce for spaghetti or soup starter, and salsa. The third shelf is straight forward and simple: corn and green beans. Then the shelf full of sweet treats like jams, jellies, applesauce, peach butter, apple butter and pear butter. On the last shelf are some of the squashes that will be used for a hearty roasted dish. The short shelves have a great deal of dried foods: beans,nuts, tomatoes, zucchini, figs, peaches, pears, apples, and parsnips. There is also an overflow of jams including fig jam. The dried foods are added to oatmeal in the morning or a dollop of jam for sweetening yogurt. The nuts on the shelves are used short term and the rest are either waiting to be shelled or in the freezer.


The challenge now is to see how little we need to buy at the grocery store! What's for dinner tonight? It looks like some hot tomato soup and grilled cheese for dipping!