Reno Italian Festival

This is a tourist area, so there are lots of events year-round designed to draw in the Californians. But this past weekend was an event that always seems more oriented towards the locals. Always held the weekend of the Columbus Day holiday, the Reno Italian Festival has long been a favorite of ours.

Virginia Street is closed to cars from the Reno Arch to Circus Circus - a big, free street fair. The crowd is an easy-going, family-centered one - lots of dogs and kids, no one smoking outside (all the smokers are inside the casinos, I guess), everyone enjoying our beautiful fall weather.

There are a couple of live-music stages, with acts ranging from accordion bands to Italian crooners; booths selling gelato, wine and Bellini's, artichoke hearts and cheesy garlic bread; street entertainers that range from stilt walkers to living statues, jugglers and balloon-twisters.

New this year was a Farmers Market and Crafts area in the park where the train tracks used to be, before the covered train trench made the downtown much more pedestrian- and traffic-friendly.

We just missed the semi-finals of the boccie ball tournament, and didn't feel like waiting around to see the final round. So we wandered back through the crowd to the other end of the fair, arriving just in time for another round of the grape-stomping contest.

The grape-stompers compete as eight teams of two - a bare-footed stomper plus a mucker that scrapes the juice towards the drain spigot and into a jug. After three-minute rounds, the team with the most juice by weight wins that round (it looks like Topsy the Clown has been stomping grapes too).

A woman came up and asked Aries if he'd like to be her mucker in the next round. He said no - a good thing, because I really like the shirt he was wearing, and grape juice can leave such a nasty stain.

But the best part of the Italian Fest is the Sauce Contest. After the judges are through tasting, anyone can buy a bowl of thick spaghetti noodles (with spoon-it-yourself cheese) for $1. You take your bowl around to each of the 25-30 sauce booths lining both sides of the street, and they'll ladle on a bit. Then you stand there in the middle of the street with your bowl and fork, slurping up one sauce after another. I'll usually eat just the sauce off the top of the noodles, and then go on to the next. Most places will also put their sauce on a small slice of Italian bread, so you can taste it apart from the strange soup that develops in the bottom of your bowl. Halfway through, I was overwhelmed by all the tomato sauces, so searched out only the booths that had white or pesto sauces. The Casale family pesto was my pick; Aries goes more for the tomato and hot Italian sausage ones.

20th Wedding Anniversary

Twenty years ago, we got married outside the Virginia City Courthouse. It was basically an elopement. I didn't really want a big wedding or lots of guests showing up - this was just for us. My sister and my roommate at the time stood up with us. Three friends from work showed up unexpectedly, making the Justice' Chambers a bit too crowded, so we took it outside - a little lawn area under the golden-leaved cottonwood trees, next to the building. That was really nice. I also liked the idea that our officiating Justice of the Peace was a woman (Aries was surprised, but I'd set it up so I knew).

Something old: I had an antique linen handkerchief with crocheted edging that belonged to my grandma in my pocket. Something new: I wore brand-new white tennis shoes - they hadn't even been scuffed up yet. Something borrowed: my sister loaned me a beautiful pair of earrings to wear. Something blue: blue jeans (after the ceremony we went down the street to one of those old-timey dress-up photo places for our "official" wedding photo, so Mom did get a wedding picture of me in a wedding dress). And a 1953 silver dime in the heel of my left shoe.

I keep my wedding night peignoir and negligee tucked away in a satin-lined pouch, getting it out again each year, to add to that sense of occasion (note to the ladies: if this is a tradition you'd like to try, I'd advise choosing either something diaphanous and floaty or one with some stretch and ribbon ties - you'll be glad you have that bit of leeway in the fit during all stages of your life together). Sweet husband gave me an anthurium. For him, I looked up the list of traditional gifts. China, it said, for a 20th anniversary. So I told Aries he'd need to get a passport - couldn't talk him into that though. Instead, we spent the afternoon at the Italian Fest in Reno (he liked that - he's half Italian-descent), tasting pasta sauces and wandering about in the crowd.

Oh No! Fermentation Overflow

Cider is said to ferment vigorously. There are stories about people finding the sticky stuff spattered across the walls, or bubbled over flooding the floor. But we're making five gallons in a fermenting bucket that holds more than six, so I didn't think we had anything to worry about. I was wrong.

The fermentation lock had been happily gurglely-burgleing since yesterday, just like it's supposed to. We make beer sometimes too - that sound is something you just get used to. I'd even stopped looking at it, sitting there on the kitchen counter.

But then, as I was heading out the kitchen door, it kinda snuffled instead of gurgled. That got my attention. The fermentation lock was completely filled with greenish bubbly apple goo, and there was a puddle growing across the lid. Thankfully, I saw it before it completely blocked the fermentation lock - that's when you could end up with fermenting goo on the ceiling. Aries wasn't home - I was going to have to fix this by myself.

I mopped up the lid before it overflowed, and put a big platter underneath the fermenter, just in case. I didn't want this stuff flowing all over my counter or kitchen floor if I could help it. I know keeping the brew from getting contaminated is important, so I didn't want to take off the lid, but knew I had to do something to allow it to continue outgassing and still contain the overflow. I did a quick online search. I needed to replace the overflowing fermentation lock with a tube running into a container half-full of water. The container would hold the overflow, gases could still escape, but nothing would get in.

The fermentation lock fits into a plug that fits into a hole in the lid of the fermenting bucket. We have plastic tubing for when we're filling beer bottles, but it was too big to fit into the hole in the plug, and too small to fit in the hole in the lid. I needed to figure out how to make an air-tight connection between the tubing and the hole in the fermenter lid.

I thought about cutting a wine cork and hollowing out a hole to make a thin little gasket. That sounded like a good way to cut off a finger. I thought maybe one of the gaskets from the bottle tops might work, but they were too flimsy and didn't fit tight enough. I mopped up more overflow from the lid and kept thinking.

I was going to have to use the plug from the fermentation lock; I just needed some way to join it to the larger-diameter tubing. I went through the bag of beer-making supplies again. Eureka! When filling a bottle of beer, we use a hard plastic tube that fits into the bottle. It has a spring-loaded valve on the bottom to press against the bottom of the bottle - when the bottle is full, you lift up on the tube and the beer stops flowing. It's designed to fit inside the tubing; it looked like the perfect size to fit into the plug too.

I pulled off the valve, and fit the tube into the tubing. I dunked the whole set-up into some weak bleach solution to sterilize it, running some through and out the end of the tubing. I pulled the fermentation lock out of the plug and stuck the hard plastic tube in instead. It fit perfectly. I didn't want the hard tube to fall over, possibly letting it leak, so I tied it up to the towel rack above. Then I stuck the tubing into a carafe partially filled with water, and it worked! Pretty good, don't ya think?

Brewing Hard Apple Cider

Many, many years ago, I took a trip to rural Iowa (where the pigs each had a patio) with a native farm boy. It was in the fall, cider pressing time, something I'd never seen before. I was surprised that they used all the apples - not just the perfect ones plucked right from the tree. They used the bruised windfalls, the bird-damaged, and the wormy ones. Dumped into a washtub for a quick rinse, then into the grinder, down into the big round slatted press, and the cider came pouring out the spout. It was absolutely the best stuff I'd ever tasted.

Now, I have my own apple trees. Every once in a while, we'll get enough apples to make the bother of pressing cider worthwhile. Just for the record, we're not just making a couple of glasses of juice - we're going for five gallons to ferment into hard cider, plus extra to drink now.

You don't use early summer apples to make cider - they don't have enough sugars. I make applesauce out of my excess early apples. Late apples, the ones that ripen late in the year, the ones otherwise known as storage apples, make the best cider. This year, my Macintosh and Liberty apples set a lot of small fruit, too small to bother peeling and coring, but perfect for cider. We let them set for a week to soften and sweeten a bit - even longer would have been better, but since it's partly an outside activity we watch the weather too. Yesterday, we decided it was cider time.

Aries starts outside, cleaning and setting up our press on the edge of the deck. Basically, it's an open rectangular frame, a small rock underneath the back edge to tip it forward a bit. The bottom plate has ridges that allow the juice to flow beneath. To lessen leaking, he lines the bottom plate with plastic wrap, taped to hold it in place. He sets the plate into place within the frame, a catch bucket underneath the spout with a lid to cover it (to keep the yellowjackets out - they'll be here as soon as the juice starts flowing).

The first step in pressing cider is to grind the apples into little bits. The same old neighbor that gave me my 1970's-era dehydrator also gave me an equally ancient juicer. It weighs a ton, but the metal grinding teeth do an excellent job on the apples. It also has solid plate to use instead of the juice screen across the juice spout, so it will just push all the apple mush out the end spout (or maybe you'd prefer the "bucket & sledge hammer" option, here).

Once I've got the juicer/grinder all put together, I set a bucket on a stool under the spout to catch the ground apples. We also make beer, so I line the catch bucket with a nylon mesh bag normally used for boiling the grain in beer-making (we have two bags, making the process a bit faster). The solid plate leaks a bit, so I put a small bowl underneath that too. The less leaks, the better - apple juice is so sticky, and my kitchen floor is going to be a disaster zone soon enough anyway.

Everything in place, we're ready for the apples. The apples are dumped into the sink full of water for a quick wash, piled into a tub, and then roughly chopped into pieces small enough to fit through the small hopper of the grinder. Aries chops, I feed handfuls at a time into the hopper. A friend, Micah, stops by, so we give him a knife too, and he starts chopping on the other side of the counter.

Once there's quite a bit of crushed apples in the bag, Aries takes the bucket outside. He twists the mesh bag closed and puts it on the press. He dumps any extra juice out of my bucket and gives it back to me. This is where the second bag comes in handy. I can take that bucket back inside, line it with the other bag, and get right back to grinding apples.

Meanwhile, Aries puts the smooth-faced top plate over the bag, topping that with a small jack. As he starts jacking up the jack, it presses against the top of the frame, squeezing the mush between the top and bottom plates. The juice flows through the spout into the catch bucket. When the spout stops flowing, he covers the catch bucket, loosens the jack, and removes the top plate. The bag of almost dry apple mush, now called pomace, is emptied into a waiting wheelbarrow (and later given to the chickens). Aries comes back inside to continue chopping.

Just like when making beer, sanitation while fermenting hard cider is very important. You want only the things you purposely put into the fermenting bucket in there, and everything else kept out. Wild yeasts present in the air can ruin a batch, giving it a bad flavor, as can the bacteria on a dishcloth. Bleach is a good sanitizer, so we previously rinsed the fermenting bucket and lid with a weak bleach solution, then kept it closed up until we're ready to fill it from the catch bucket of cider.

From about two bushels of small, otherwise unusable apples, we get almost six gallons of cider - a little over five in the fermenter, almost a gallon for the refrigerator. For the hard cider, we decide to add only extra sugar and a packet of champagne yeast. I heat up some of the cider and add four pounds dark brown sugar, stirring until it's all dissolved, and then put that back into the fermenter. Stirring with a sterilized spoon to aerate it a bit, Aries adds the yeast then snaps the lid on tight and puts a fermentation lock, filled with a bit of vodka, into the top. By this morning, the escaping gases caused by the yeast turning the sugars into alcohol have started burbling up through the lock. Fermentation has begun.

Oh, and the fresh stuff for drinking now? Aries likes to pour his off the top without disturbing what's settled, but I like to shake it up before I pour a glass. There's so much fiber in unfiltered apple juice I almost feel like I should chew it. And it's so filling - four ounces is almost more than I can drink at one time. It's sooooo good.

Of Cabbages and Kings

Yesterday, I got seven and a half pounds of cabbage, from ones that split and heads too little to store, shredded, salted, and packed into a crock for sauerkraut (how-to here). My cabbages grow in the same bed as my root crops. I stop watering for a week or so before digging the carrots, beets, and potatoes. But I've had problems getting enough moisture out of the cabbage, and don't like feeling like I'm bruising it instead of just packing it down.

So this year I tried soaking the heads overnight first, and then letting them drain/drip dry in the dish drainer this morning. That worked great - the cabbage shreds were crisp and crunchy, and once tossed with the salt started to sweat right away. When I packed it into the crock there was plenty of brine. I put the crock into the cellar, where it will slowly ferment over the next couple of months. I've still have 4½ nice big cabbages for fresh eating this winter too.

While I was in the kitchen, Aries picked the apples from our MacIntosh and Liberty trees (those are my potted fig trees in the wagon - not normally grown in Nevada. Right now, they're being moved in and out of the garage until they go dormant, and then they'll spend the winter in the cellar). We got a lot of apples, but they were all so small, some bird-pecked, and some of these late apples had worms in them (the earlier Freedom apples were much better; and the birds got all the Gravensteins, our earliest apple, this year). We also gleaned three baskets of heirloom apples from an old tree on a lawyers' office lawn in the old section of town before the snow. They're beautiful, big apples, but three-quarters of those were wormy too. I picked through them, and put the good ones in the cellar. We're going to make a batch of hard cider from all the rest. I'll write about it when we do. After he finished with the apples, Aries started cleaning up the garden - pulling out all the plants that froze, shredding them, getting them into the compost bin.


I can't believe he did it again!
Black kale, Tuscan, dinosaur, Lacinato - whatever you call it, it's supposed to be the king of kales for taste and texture. Last year, I had one plant, that I stuck in with the peppers and tomatoes after a pepper plant died. I was really looking forward to having a wonderful winter green for fresh eating. But after the first freeze, and Aries had cleaned up the garden, my beautiful kale plant was gone! He'd pulled it up along with the dead plants. "Couldn't [he] see it was a thriving plant, not dead?" He said he was sorry - he didn't realize it was something I wanted. What else could I do but forgive him?

This summer, I set out three black kale plants, this time, in with the rest of the greens and hardy plants. They grew great. The aphids didn't bother them, neither did the recent snow - all three were strong healthy plants almost two feet tall. And today, all three were gone! Again! His defense: "they didn't look like food."

Aaarrgggh! It's thriving, in a vegetable garden - what else would it be! I still can't believe it - especially since he left a puny little chard plant growing right next to them, and some weedy bitter overgrown mustard plants down the way a bit (he also pulled up all my lettuce plants I had purposely let go to seed so I could harvest the seeds - ok, they did look pretty weedy; and the last head of cauliflower - now that had to look like food). Sometimes I just don't understand how that man thinks!

Ok, I have to get over it. What's done is done. On another note: Two nights ago, the full moon rose over the middle of Prison Hill. Our house is pretty much square with the compass points, and the moon was due east, straight out from the deck and our big window. Then tonight, when I went out to close up the chicken coop, the moon was coming up waaaaay over to the northeast, clear over above the north end of Prison Hill. I couldn't even see it from our big window. Even though I've noticed the same thing before (was it this time of year? maybe), it's hard to believe the moon's orbit wobbled that much in only two days (they haven't bombed it yet, have they?). Or is the Earth wobbling on its axis? Maybe that's why we're having earthquakes and tsunamis? Can the ancient Mayans be right after all?

First Snow

I spent yesterday morning at the Muscle Powered bicycle valet for our last Farmers' Market of the year. The Market organizers would like to see us do it again next year. For the most part, we all enjoyed our Saturdays we volunteered and thought it made for a good presence in our community. After talking it over, we decided to try and do it again next summer.

It was a bit blustery in the morning, and there was a definite autumnal feel to the day. By noon, the wind really started to pick up. We were glad we'd decided against putting up the shade structure as we watched some vendors trying to hold onto theirs, before finally giving up and just taking them down.

That afternoon, I had wanted to go to a walk-n-talk about the reconstruction efforts after the Waterfall Fire, but when I went out to the meeting place at the College the cold wind was blowing so hard I decided I'd rather just come on home.

So I did, and got another 5 pints of tomatoes into the canner. With a late Spring, a cool Summer, and now an early snow, this hasn't been the best year for the vegetable garden, but we did get quite a bit of fruit for a change. I bundled up and headed outside to start getting ready for the snow - rearranging the shed a bit, putting away the umbrella and outside cushions, moving some of the outdoor furniture. I took the eggs away from Junior - she'd been too fast for our little rooster and none of the eggs were fertile, so it's time for her to go back in the coop with the rest of the flock. When Aries got home from work, he cleaned out the woodbox, and then filled both it and the kindling box. The first sleety pellets started to fall at nightfall.

Curing this year's pitiful squash harvest - less than a third of normal

We woke to a drippy, gloomy day. I was thinking it would be a good day to make a pot of chili. Aries walked down to the store to get some milk and the San Francisco Sunday newspaper for me. He always likes to check the meat department for sales, and today came back with chicken, so I decided to make white chili. This afternoon, while I got some great Northern beans cooking, Aries sat down in front of the TV and started de-stemming grapes. As he'd get a bowlful done, I'd wash them, give them a 10-second dunk in simmering water (just long enough to crack the skins), and filled the dehydrator trays. I started cutting up a bowlful of bird-pecked Asian pears, and managed to get two cups of chopped fruit - using them instead of apples to make these muffins. Then I started on the chili. So tonight, we're all snuggled in with full, warm tummies, in front of a warm fire. Let it snow!

Ghosts in the Garden

Years ago, a new neighbor called to me over the fence in mid-October. "You gave us a bit of a start last night," she said. "We came home late, and thought there were ghosts in your garden."

We laughed. Standing there in the sunlight, she could see that I'd wrapped up my tomato plants in old draperies to protect them from an expected freeze. But I'm sure things looked different in the moonlight, especially with Halloween on the way.

I covered the tomatoes and peppers a couple of nights ago, and everything made it through the night's low of 31º. Night before last was predicted even colder, and I didn't want to take a chance on losing anything, so I picked all the mature green tomatoes, peppers and squash. I covered the tomato plants again, just in case I could get them through a few more weeks, but a low of 25º was too much even with the covers. And now snow is expected tomorrow night. I dug up the beets, carrots, and potatoes this afternoon, and have only one taller cherry tomato plant, the tomatillo, and the cole crops still out there.

A Change in the Weather

When I got up this morning, the barometer had dropped, big-time. By mid-morning the wind had come up so badly I could hardly see across the valley for all the blowing dust. Yesterday, knowing this was in the forecast, I picked tomatoes and peppers, then drafted Aries to help me get the grapes and pears. So this is what my kitchen counter looked like this morning.

And it still looks like that tonight. I had a dentist appointment this morning, and then Pilates. The chair of our fundraising golf tournament committee brought over all the money from the day of the tournament plus all the sponsors' checks she'd been holding in case we had to cancel the tournament. So this afternoon it took me more than an hour to get a deposit slip made out, everything totaled up, and the books brought up to date.

We also have to be out of the building donated to us for the Rummage Sale by the end of the month. Other members have taken care of cleaning out everything that didn't sell, but the sign guy that said he'd take my sign off the windows never did. Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot colder, so if I'm gonna be slopping around with a bucket and sponge, this afternoon was going to be the best time to do it. So after getting the deposit to the bank, I swung by the storefront and washed the paint off the windows.

I'd already gotten the last of the Burbank Red Ace plums picked a couple of days ago. That's a wonderful plum - if I only had one plum tree, it would be that one (but it needs a pollinator - Starking Delicious is almost as good, and although that tree was almost killed by rabbits walking on deep snowpack one year, girdling it two feet above the ground, it spouted back from lower on the trunk and blooms enough to keep me in plenty of plums about every third year or so). The Burbank has a weeping form, so needs more space than an upright tree, but sets lovely big red firm juicy plums that ripen incrementally over almost a month's time.

I eat them right from the tree whenever I'm out in the yard starting in late August, and then dry whatever the birds leave me by late September. Cut in half around the equator (easier to tip and twist the pit out) they're better than any prunes you'd buy in the store. I packed away two gallon bags full of dried plums, leaving a little bowl of those not-quite-dry enough out to snack on now. Next into the dehydrator will be the grapes in that big grey tub. The tomatoes I'll can as whole tomatoes, and most of the bell peppers I'll freeze cut into 1" pieces - that's on my schedule for tomorrow.

Junior was still setting her nest out in front, but she was right under the eave of the shed, and if the rain comes it would be dripping right on her. So after getting all the grapes off the grapevine that grows on the side of the dog run/brood pen, I got the pen all set up with food, water, and a nice little protected nest. Last night, in the dark, we scooped up Junior and all her eggs and put her on the nest I'd made up. She settled in ok, and this morning was still there. We'll give her a few more days setting time - at least now she's a bit more out of the weather, just in case anybody hatches.

Temperatures are dropping, but it's not supposed to freeze tonight. But I decided to cover the tomatoes and some of the pepper plants, just in case. So just before dark I got out my bin of old draperies. If I can protect the plants during the September cold snaps, we'll often get a spate of Indian Summer weather in October - long enough to ripen a few more vegetables before everything has to be inside or perish. The really cold weather is supposed to be Wednesday and Thursday nights, so I'll see what it does tonight before deciding to cover everything tomorrow, or just pick it all.

As long as I'm blathering on about my harvest, I have something really bizarre out there this year. In June, when I was thinning the apples, I cut back one of my apple trees that had long whippy branches, hoping to shape it into more fruiting spurs and a stronger branch structure in the future. Some of those headed-back branches are blossoming now, in September. Of course, those blossoms will get frozen any day now, but I think it's so strange that even though this tree set a nice crop of apples that we just picked a few weeks ago, it's trying to make another crop without having gone through any chilling period or dormancy. The only thing I can think is that the daylight hours are now the same as they'd be during the Spring Equinox, normal blooming time. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?

Another Big Weekend in N Nevada

After the Labor Day weekend, lots of our summer tourists head back home to get the kids back in school, not to be seen again until Christmas break skiing. This area really tries to lure them back in the meantime, with lots of big September events. It makes sense, really, September is usually a beautiful time of year around here, and this is an area that runs on tourist money.

The Fallon Air Show was back this year, at the Fallon Naval Air Station (ever see the movie Top Gun? that's what they do there. It's a real ear buster window rattler WTF was that thrill driving out on Hwy 50 East across a deserted valley, and being buzzed by a trio of fighter jets). Then, there were the Reno Air Races, and the following weekend the Balloon Races in Reno and the Camel Races in Virginia City.

This weekend, I'm living with the almost constant roar of motorcycles on the highway two blocks below us, all day long and way into the night. It's Street Vibrations time in Reno - "a celebration of motorcycles, metal, and music." Of course, a celebration of motorcycles means they're on the move, up to Virginia City, around the lake, with events spilling over to every bike shop and dealership in the area. Our roads are clogged with long dual strings of motorcycles.

While the men are out on the roads, the women are heading to Genoa. The Candy Dance Arts & Crafts Faire this weekend draws thousands to check out the hundreds of craft booths. Normally, that's where I'd have spent my Saturday. It's been an annual tradition for some of my Lake Tahoe girlfriends to meet up there for lunch and browsing.

But noooo, not this year for me. My Soroptimist Club puts together a big fundraising golf tournament each year. Since most of the funds raised go to pay for mammograms (over $17,000 last year), we schedule the tournament for early October, Breast Cancer Awareness month. But by October, our weather can be iffy - very nice Indian Summer sometimes, or like last year, 40 mph winds blowing snow. So this year, we changed it to late September.

I took this photo the first year we held the tournament, nine years ago. And while it makes a very eye-catching photo, I was lobbying against the balloon release right from the start. Pretty flying balloons eventually pop, and become non-degradable, wildlife-threatening litter. I'm happy to say that, finally, this year there was no balloon release. We had the balloons tied to the carts and they stayed there while the golfers played, then were properly disposed of by the cart crew when the tournament was over.

I like being outside, so I usually volunteer to be a witness on one of the special par-3 holes where we have a prize (a car, a vacation cruise) for a hole-in-one. So this Saturday, from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m, I was sitting in a golf cart on Eagle Valley Golf's East Course hole #8. No hole-in-ones, although one group had a very nicely-played birdie. And instead of sitting wrapped up in a sleeping bag, I was glad I'd brought a blanket and clothespins to turn my cart into a little shade tent. It was downright HOT!! with temperatures in the upper-80's by the time I got to come in. And now, that's one more thing I get to cross off my crowded September list of things to do.

Peach Salsa

I had a day to myself with no outside commitments today. A couple of weeks ago, I'd changed my decor over to fall colors (my favorites), and have been slowly getting the summer stuff cleaned and stored away. The table linens and kitchen items I can wash at home, but the summer bed quilts are too big for my washing machine. It was going to be a beautiful warm day with little wind, so the first thing I did was gather up the quilts and blankets (and our sleeping bags too - after camping for a week at Tahoe I might as well) and headed to the other end of town to a laundromat that has big 50-pound front-loading washers.

The sleeping bags I dried there for a while - they fluff up better when tumble-dried. The attendant even offered me six tennis balls to put in with them - soaking up a bit more moisture, and pummeling the bag fillings to fluff them up even more. The blankets and quilts are all cotton, so I brought them home damp to dry out on the clothesline. I love the smell of sun-dried cotton bedding, and I'd rather not beat up my quilts any more than necessary.

So, once home and with everything hung outside to dry, it was time to finish up processing peaches and chiles. A few days ago, I'd had time to peel and chop the peaches. I've measured 2-pint increments in my enameled pot, and notched an old wooden spoon handle - fifteen pounds of peaches ended up being a little over 11 pints. I'd sprinkled the top layer with lime juice and put the whole thing into the refrigerator until I had time to make a batch of salsa. I'm probably not going to have enough tomatoes to make a tomato salsa this year - all I have will be canned as whole tomatoes and tomato sauce. So this peach salsa will be my only salsa.

I put the peaches on to start cooking them down a bit (using a flame-tamer over my gas burner), and 9 pint jars into a canner-ful of water to start heating up to sterilize. I checked the freezer - might as well clean out all peppers left from last year. I had a few chiles left, plus a couple of roasted and peeled bell peppers and some sliced jalapenos. Thawed and minced up, they made up almost a cup, so I'd only need another cup for the salsa. The rest of the chiles from this year's harvest could go into the freezer.

The chiles I'd roasted a couple of days ago had been stored in the bag in the refrigerator, so I put on some (latex surgical) gloves and started on them. The big straight chiles are easiest to clean. Each one I folded into a little "packet" and put on a cookie sheet to freeze. Afterwards, dumped into a freezer bag, it's easy to grab however much I want at a time. The littler chiles, and the curved ones that got mashed and broken while roasting, I added to the measuring cup to use right away.

Peach (or Nectarine) Salsa (makes 8-9 pints)
12 - 15 pounds peaches (or nectarines), peeled and chopped
2 cups onions, finely diced (I used red onions, for the color)
2 cups chiles or peppers, roasted, peeled and chopped, or seeded and minced if fresh
2 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
2 bunches cilantro, minced (makes about 1 cup)
2 tablespoons non-iodized salt
2 tablespoons sugar (optional, to taste)
up to 1 tablespoon hot pepper powder (optional, to taste)

lime juice

Simmer peaches, cooking down to about 9 pints. Add rest of ingredients, except for lime juice. Cook down to about 9 pints.

Put 1 tablespoon lime juice in each sterilized pint jar. Fill jars, to 1/4" headspace, seal. Process in boiling water bath 30 minutes (that's for my Carson City altitude, at 5,000 feet; process for 20 minutes if you're below 3,000, or add 5 more minutes for each 2,000 feet above 6,000).

A few additional notes: To make a milder or hotter salsa, do not change the amount of chile peppers, change the type. You can use all roasted and peeled bell peppers for a really mild salsa, or add some minced habaneros if you really want to to get crazy. I added a tablespoon of chipotle powder to this batch - it added a nice smoky complexity to the sweet and hot, but also darkened the color quite a bit. I also seeded and minced up some fresh jalapenos I'd just picked - just to add a bit more texture and color - enough to bring the amount up to two cups. One of these years, I'm thinking I'll just grind up the peaches without peeling them - might make it even more colorful.

Roasting Chiles

I got a good peach crop this year, and set aside 15 pounds to make a batch of salsa. I'm just about out of roasted and peeled chiles from last year, so before I can make salsa I needed more chiles.

So I headed out to the garden with a basket and clippers, and found plenty of green California chiles on my six plants. Next comes one of my favorite fall food prep activities - roasting the chiles (I've written a how-to for the whole process: roasting to char the skins, leaving the chiles to sweat in a bag, removing the skins and seeds (gloves on!), and then freezing or canning them for use throughout the year here).

Roasting chiles just says fall to me. I guess because I always pick a nice September evening to spend out on the deck. Even though the nights have started getting cooler, the days are still warm, and the shadow of the house on our east-facing deck feels good. The chickens scratch in the yard below; the sun still shines on part of the valley floor and Prison Hill to the east. I lift a chilled glass of a crisp Sauvignon Blanc in my annual silent toast/prayer of thanks for another harvest, and fire up the propane grill. The wonderful smell of roasting chiles soon fills the air, as I use my tongs to flip and turn the chiles.

This year, my sweet husband fetched home a Take-n-Bake pizza from the little shop down the street. He dressed it up with more veggies, fresh from the garden, before putting in the oven, and soon brings a plate out to me. Wine and pizza and a peaceful evening out on the deck - this truly is one of my favorite fall rituals.

By the time I've gone through all the chiles in the basket, the shadows have fallen across the valley floor. The last light of the setting sun makes a pinkish glow on the Pine Nut mountains. I have a lot to be thankful for.

Junior Chicken

Two weeks ago, while shutting the poultry in for the night, I realized two hens were missing. Neither Penny Redstar nor Junior were in the coop. Two nights later, I finally found where Penny was roosting, up on top of a storage rack in the tool shed. After two nights of moving her back into the coop after dark, she's now been back inside every night.

But I couldn't find Junior. I didn't see her out and about during the day either, now that I was looking for her. I was hoping that coyotes hadn't gotten her (always a possibility when a chicken, or cat, won't stay inside the fences), and that she'd just hidden a nest somewhere.

Junior is so named because, of all Missy's babies, she's the one that ended up looking just like Missy (read more about our adventures with Missy here). Even though Junior looks just like a little Brown Leghorn, she's also part Amerucana and lays nice big green eggs (one sister, Baldy, also looks like Missy but with no feathers or comb atop her head - due to an unfortunate mishap when she was just a pullet. She almost died, but with some liquid spray bandage and a couple days in a box in the house, she pulled through. Baldy, however, lays little white eggs).

Anyway, thinking Junior was quite a bit like Missy, I figured I'd give her until early October before thinking we'd lost her. This morning, while working out in the yard I heard a chicken murmuring over by the lilacs, looking for a bite to eat. It was Junior! I gave her some feed, and then sat back to watch for a bit. She was hungry and thirsty - gobbling down the food, getting some water, back to the food, back to the water.

Finally sated, she did a bit of preening and feather-ruffling, occasionally turning a beady little chicken eye in my direction. But after dealing with Missy and the guineas, I'm an experienced poultry stalker. I pretended to be very interested in something off to my right, meanwhile keeping an eye on her in my peripheral vision. She eventually headed around the corner of the house to my left, and I followed. She stopped, so I kept walking towards the garage. I snuck back in time to catch her going through the cat's hole under the fence, but once through it she was nowhere in sight.

That meant she had to be close, so I started checking under the Oregon Grape, right outside the gate, in front of the little shed. There she was, and she let me know she wasn't very happy at being found.

And just like her mother, here's why. I don't know if Coach, our bantam rooster, ever managed to catch Junior, but if he did and she's anything like Missy she'll be a really good mother. So, for now, I'll let her stay out there until the first of October (or the weather turns really nasty), and get the brood pen ready, just in case.

Peachy-keen, Jellybean

I love tree-ripened peaches. My dad planted a couple of peach trees when I was a kid, and I was thereafter spoiled for supermarket peaches. I'll see them in the store and they look pretty, but there's no aroma. You can take them home and they'll soften, but they never will taste like peaches. I want my peaches still warm from the sun, eaten right there next to the tree, bending over to keep the juice from dripping down my shirt.

I have a couple of peach trees, but because of our typical tricky Spring weather, here they're an every-third or -fourth year type of crop. My mature nectarine tree set a crop this year, but then succumbed to borers (I'm just heartsick - they're in my pie cherry tree too). Aries cut it down today, but left a sprout that came up from the roots so I'll have to see what comes from that before digging it out completely. I have a pitiful twisted little July Elberta peach tree trying to hang in there. I got about 1/2 bushel of peaches from it three weeks ago. I managed to get a few trays of slices into the dehydrator, and have been stuffing myself on fresh peaches daily since then.

And then, there's what I call the Seedling peach tree. I don't know what kind it is. It just sprouted one summer under the edge of our woodpile. I figure a squirrel buried a seed it stole from somewhere - I don't think it's an Elberta, because its fruit ripens almost a month later. I transplanted the little seedling to the edge of the garden, and then out in the orchard. It's since grown into a nice tree. It lost a couple of branches to borers this year, but is still doing pretty good. I've been testing and tasting, patiently waiting for those peaches to get ripe and hoping the birds will leave me some (I hung a bunch of junk CD's in the branches - hoping the sun glinting as they turn in the wind will frighten them off).

Finally, it was peach-picking day today. The bird-pecked ones I cut into chunks and put into the dehydrator (no room in my freezer). I gave my neighbor a bagful, and made a batch of jam this afternoon. I've set aside 15 pounds for a batch of salsa, and have enough to gorge myself on for a couple more weeks. Eating seasonally from my own labors means I've got to get my fresh peach fix when I can. Oh, but they're soooooo good while they last!

Soroptimist Fundraising

I've been soooo busy. With the days getting shorter and the nights chillier, the garden and orchard are crying out for attention. Even though I didn't get to harvest some things I usually do, I am getting plenty of others (isn't that the way it always is?). At least we've been lucky to have some nice mellow weather, so I'm not to the panic stage of harvesting yet.

But my Soroptimist Club has been keeping me hopping. Money in this economy is getting tighter and tighter, and the need keeps growing, so service organizations like mine have to work even harder to raise funds. We're lucky to have a couple of endowments we've invested, but with interest rates so low we're now starting to use up the principle. We've got our big golf tournament to raise funds for mammograms next weekend, but sign-up numbers are down from what they've been in the past so we're trying to keep coming up with new ideas (and of course, every other non-profit and service organization in the area is in the same straits).

So we threw together another rummage sale, held today. There are lots of businesses going under right now, and lots of empty storefronts in town. We managed to get the use of an empty store donated to us for the past month. We're a tax-exempt organization so the owners get a tax write-off by letting us use what would have been empty anyway, and we had a nice place to gather, organize, price items, and hold our sale. I have a steady hand with a paintbrush and good spatial awareness, so I dug out my old tempera paints and a little ladder, and spent an afternoon painting a window sign (and got quite a step-workout in the process). With the advent of computer graphics, no one does painting by hand any more, so someone hand-lettering is always a good attention-getter. One of the guys from the sign shop next shop down even volunteered to wash the window for me afterwards. We made some money, and will be donating items that didn't sell to other charities. I'm just so glad it's over.

Labor Day Holiday

After camping last week, it's nice spending a quiet holiday weekend close to home. I put my Nevada and American flags out on the deck railing this morning. I like flying our flags on the holidays. I've been catching up on the laundry - only one wash load per day to lessen the impact on the septic system, putting up food for the winter (blanched and froze cauliflower and some corn today), and starting on my fall cleaning. Aries has been on vacation for the past two weeks, so he's been getting a lot of fall chores done around the house too.

While out and about around town today, we saw quite a few "Burner" cars passing through on their way back home to California - instantly recognizable by the thick white coating of playa dust (PLY-ya: Spanish for beach or shore, here it refers to our alkaline dry lake beds out in the desert). Burners, around here this time of year, means people that have been spending their holiday weekend at Black Rock City, temporary encampment for the week to the 50,000 people that gather each year in the Black Rock Desert east of here for the Burning Man, "art community event". I hear it's quite the experience, but I've never really seen the appeal in paying more than $350 to hang out in the heat and blowing dust. I much prefer my camping time be spent up at Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, or in the Redwoods.

Unplugged

Miss me? I've been camping - no electricity, no computer, no television. We spent the past week on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, only 40 miles drive from the house. It was such a wonderful respite from everything.

So now I've come home to a garden and orchard begging to be harvested and processed, a cellar that needs to be scrubbed down and readied to start filling, and my turn to post on the SGF Co-op blog (I wrote about cold soup, with my favorite recipes for gazpacho and borscht). I'll be back to posting again here shortly.

Decor to Dye For

I don't like bathroom rugs with the rubberized non-slip stuff on the bottom. My bathroom isn't big enough to get up to slipping speed, and our heavy tile floor is uneven enough to provide a non-slip surface as it is. I like heavy reversible cotton rugs, easy to shake out and easy to wash.

But for some reason, those are hard to find, even more difficult because I'm looking for matching rugs in three different sizes. I like a big one in front of the sink cabinet, only have room for a smaller one to step out of the bathtub/shower onto, and then also like a U-shaped one in front of the toilet (tile on a cement-slab with only a woodstove for heat = very cold floors). I found what I was looking for in white, but didn't like how stark they looked. A bottle of dye and a go-round in the washing machine took care of that!

I love the way the rugs look now! The tan color just seems more serene. Since I'm posting a photo of my bathtub, I might as well point out another part of my decor I really like. We live in a small house, with only one bathroom (that also doubles as the laundry room). The bathtub is also a shower, and that's how we usually use it. So to have all the bathing-type accessories easily accessible to a standing user, it makes sense to hang them up. But the plastic shower caddies that hang over the shower head really wouldn't fit my decor, and besides, then you've got water running over your soap. Instead, I have a copper 3-tiered basket hanging from a chain on a ceiling hook above the other end of the tub. An old luffa, cut to fit, lines the top basket, with just enough room for a couple of tilted soap racks, the middle basket holds razors and brushes, the bottom one for bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Clothespins on the top edge hold luffas, a pouf, and shower cap where they can dry. Everything just drips back into the bottom of the tub. And everything is also up out of the way when using the bathtub for baths (or washing the dog, or cleaning blinds or the dehydrator racks). Best of all, it looks uncluttered and there's nothing around the edge of the tub to move when scrubbing the tub either.

Root-Pruning Cabbage

Dang! Usually I don't have to worry about my cabbages splitting until mid-September. They do just fine on their every-third-day soaker hose watering. But we had a very-rare-in-August rainy morning yesterday, and today this is what I found.

Split cabbages will continue growing, but the leaf-edges die where the split is, and any layers down inside that are cut off from the stem also die. So using a split cabbage gets more difficult the longer you leave it. I'd just cut a fresh head a couple of days ago, but this one will now be used first.

I have another one just starting to split, and three more heads still intact. I don't have much room in my refrigerator. It's too early to be making sauerkraut - I haven't ever started the cellar to cooling down. The warmer the temperature, the faster kraut ferments. I prefer letting my kraut ferment slowly, over eight to twelve weeks, in Fall's cooler cellar temperatures (I don't can my sauerkraut either - I just store it in the crock over the Winter in the cellar, and move what's left into the refrigerator in the Spring). So I want to keep my cabbages "on the hoof" out there in the garden as long as possible.

Splitting happens when cabbages take up too much water too quickly. Yesterday's rain was enough to cause it here. They're also prone to splitting as they get closer to harvest size. In our short season, early cabbages usually grow just fine until early fall, and then root-pruning will hold them until harvest time, just before the nights drop below freezing.

Today, I cut the top right split cabbage, and root-pruned the rest. I just sunk the shovel blade all the way in between each cabbage stem and the soaker hose. This cuts a good portion of the roots and slows the growth. Old-timers say to give a good quarter-twist to each plant to break off some of the roots, but I'm afraid of breaking the stem and/or not breaking enough of the roots so will just stick with my shovel method. I'll keep an eye on the top left one. If that split starts to go deeper, I'll have to get it into the refrigerator too. This year, I'm also growing some late cabbage for the first time, just to see how it does. It hasn't even started to head yet, so I'm hoping for a long, mellow Fall - cabbage to store, and a slowly-fermenting crock-o-kraut in the cellar.

Do You Suffer From OCD?

Do you find yourself stalking every laden fruit tree in your entire neighborhood? Do you need a flatbed truck to get your Farmers Market purchases home? Is everyone on your gift list (and even those that don't know they're on your list) getting a jar of jelly this year? You might be suffering from OCD (Obsessive Canning Disorder - I totally stole that from Throwback at Trapper Creek). If so, you might benefit from reading my most recent post over at the SGF Co-op blog. Check it out!

Start the Water Boiling - It's Applesauce Time

So, my canning season has started. I don't get fruit crops every year, depending on how our late Spring frosts hit, but this year have various apples, pears, Asian pears, plums, peaches, and red grapes. I dry a lot of my fruits, make bumper crops into hard cider, freeze some things, and can a bit. Canning a batch or two of applesauce is on my must-do list every year.

The birds and ground squirrels got all my Gravenstein apples (and most of the Italian prune plums). But the Freedom apples weren't far behind in the ripening schedule and for some reason haven't been as badly attacked (yet). I've hung junk CD's in the branches of most of my fruit trees, hoping the sunlight flashing off the shiny sides twisting in the breeze will startle the birds away, and Aries put up a pole for a whirly-gig too.

I pruned the tree quite a bit earlier this year to open up its shape, and thinned the fruit set while I was at it. So I have some nicely-sized fruit, easy to reach, and very little insect damage. The apples have a nice flavor and crunch for just eating out of hand, but are also supposed to be good for juice and sauce.

I had two half-pints of applesauce left in my pantry. Two days ago, I picked a couple big bowlfuls of the Freedom apples, and sat down in front of a movie on TV to quarter, core, and peel them all. I got them all prepped, soaking in a lemon juice solution, and then had to get ready to go work a tourist outing up at Lake Tahoe. So I put the whole pot into the refrigerator for the night. Yesterday, I drained the apples, put an inch or so of apple juice into the pan, covered it, and started them simmer/steaming. I'd already checked - I had plenty of lids on hand, so I got out a bunch of empty half-pints (the best applesauce size for the two of us), and got lots of jars and rings into my big canner full of water, and started that to heating.

When the apples were soft, I mashed them with a potato masher right in the pot (no sugar, no spices, just apples cooked in a bit of juice - I can always dress it up when I open up individual jars). I've cut notches in 2-pint increments into the handle of a wooden spoon. By standing that up in a pot of sauce I know how many jars it will fill. Even so, I don't put the lids into the hot water until after I have all my jars filled - no use prepping ones I won't need. I had enough for 16 half-pints. Hot jars are filled with hot applesauce to 1/4" headspace, rims wiped clean, hot lids and rings applied.

Our well water is a bit hard, so I always put a splash of vinegar in the water bath water. I process the jars, in the covered canner with water an inch over the top of the top layer of jars, for 10 minutes after the water comes back to a simmer. Set out on my cutting board, I leave them overnight to cool, listening for the lovely "plunk" (they used to "ping" - I think they've changed the thickness or center-shape of the lids in the past few years) as each jar seals.

This morning, all had sealed (yay!). The rings aren't necessary for storing sealed jars - I remove them and, once washed, keep them in a box under the counter. When I empty and then clean a jar, I put an old lid upside-down (to keep the old sealing compound from sticking to the rim) topped with a ring for storage - protecting the rim and keeping the empty jar clean (just hate dealing with boxes of dusty jars, with dead spiders in them). I give the sealed jars a quick rinse under cool running water, dry them off, and stick a little label with item and date on the lid (Mom just writes the date on the lid with a grease pencil). I don't have a big central canned goods storage area - each item has its own particular place. Nineteen jars of applesauce fit into the bottom of an old bread box in my little pantry - just about what the two of us will use in a year.