her able hands

I woke up Saturday morning to the cold and thought to myself, I think we’ll go out to the farm and pick peppers, tomatoes and beans. Then I’ll have to go buy a small freezer. Roasted red peppers, oh my.

I lay in bed with the sun streaming past the window (the bedroom window faces southwest) and relished the idea of being out in the fields in the warm sun and the cool air, but had to invent the warm part because goodness was it cold on Saturday. The kind of cold that’s the harbinger of what’s to come, where the husband bolts out of bed at four in the morning to dig the down comforter from the stack under the desk—and tosses it on top of the resentful, perimenopausal wife who was in the middle of a great dream and just fine under the flannel quilt, thankyew—he shivering and mumbling something about how f*cking cold it is, and holy crap what happened to summer. We woke up to 38*, but the forecast promised a high in the mid 60s. Perfect picking weather. And fortunately, no frost here because I totally forgot to pick the rest of my tomatoes the night before.

It was 90* just last week, wasn’t it?

After breakfast, the kids and I packed up a few snacks, some water and my camera (which I forgot to use but for a couple of shots of the future*) and made the half-hour ride out to Hilgert’s. We started with tomatoes, but the woman running the buckets and cash looked at me ruefully and intoned, “Plum tomatoes are hard to come by right now.” as she waved her hand at the rows of plants all flat on the ground with thousands of semi-ripe and overripe, rotting tomatoes just lying on the black plastic in a vinegary, fermented haze. Yuck. We picked half a bucket and decided to pay the extra $4 a bushel for picked tomatoes at another farm stand.

When we paid up, I saw a bucket with some lovely globe-shaped eggplants and asked if they were for sale. I could have as many as I like for 50 cents a piece, but she had to cut them for me because people tend to rip the plants right up out of the ground. Goodness, who knew people could be so brutal?

Harvesting is not just a skill, it’s an art. One must know exactly how a ripe fruit or vegetable looks and feels before attempting to separate it from its parent plant. Force it before its time and you could lose both. Eggplant is definitely better harvested by sharp knife blade than by yanking it from the vine. And tomatoes will tell you when they’re ready if you just gently tug on the plump fruit. The flesh will give ever so slightly under your fingers and you’ll feel the breaking point in the stem before it even snaps. As if the tomato wants to go to the kitchen now, thanks. Maybe a little salt and pepper?

So I thanked her as she trudged off into the eggplant rows, then thanked her again for her help as I imagined several more containers of my roasted ratatouille (yes, I know, I make it sans zucchini) stacked neatly in my freezer (yes, I know, I’ll need to clean out the freezer if I want to see any neat stacks of anything) and drove off to the pepper fields with a dozen dark purple globes of love.

I really wish I’d taken some pictures of the pepper fields, because here I’ve been all these four years in northeast Ohio, convinced that a local red pepper was a figment of my imagination. But no! Row upon row of sweet, ripe, firm red peppers stretched out before me and it only took about 15 minutes for us to fill two five gallon buckets.

This evening I got home and fired up the grill and filled the sink to wash off the clay spots.

This was the contents of one bag, an overflowing bucket’s worth, all had for $8. A little jar of roasted red peppers in oil at the grocery? Anywhere from $2-$5, depending on how gourmet the marketing shtick. I still have one more big bag of sweets and one big bag of medium hots. I’m intending to dry some hot peppers for chili powder, and will likely just chop, blanch and freeze some of the remaining sweets.

The knuckles on my right hand are all singed because my grill tongs, while quite long and unruly, and nearly impossible to use without getting a cramp in my hand, are about 6″ too short for this kind of grilling. I have to keep the peppers all along the back half of the grill where the heat’s intense enough to blacken the skin quickly and not turn the flesh to mush. After about 45 minutes, I had this:

Boy, howdy that makes me happy. I was feeling so bereft about the lack of food put back for winter, and dreading having to shop for every blasted ingredient in the frigid months to come. But now with this little project almost under my ample belt (I do still need to peel, seed and de-vein the little bastids, then get them into the freezer, separated by strips of wax paper and nestled together in ziploc bags.) That’s a job for tomorrow morning, because I want them to cool completely and it’s just about bedtime on the ranch.

Have I mentioned how much this full-time work thing is cramping my urban homesteading style?

Jeesh.

So anyway, we ran out of steam after the peppers. I probably could have kept on, but only if in the company of happy adults who were equally obsessed with the idea of stocking up, rather than a Very Hungry Teenager Who Wanted a Hamburger and a Preschooler who Really Had to Poop, and in her Own Potty, Please. So maybe next weekend we’ll run out for beans if they haven’t lost them to frost. And I do still have to buy the tomatoes from the other market—I want to can some roasted tomato soup and some tomato sauce.

On the way home I kept hearing forced air leakage coming from Tyler’s seat. After about ten minutes of that, I asked him if he had a problem. He sat up straight and got all blushy and assured me, “No! I’m just blowing my hair out of my eyes! I had a great time. I’m really glad I came. Seriously.”

Well, naturally I stopped for ice cream on the way home. Not that he could get any sweeter.

*Then! Then comes October, people. Look what I get to go pick in October!

Yes! That’s a whole field of gorgeous collard greens. Isn’t it a stunner? And look at this!

You got it! A whole field of curly kale.

People, I’m swooning.

And running out of room in the freezer.

Technorati Tags: Roasted Red Pepeprs, freezing, canning, preserving, preserving the harvest, u-pick, cooking greens

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