Priorities

My university "sister", travel companion, bridesmaid, and confidante of many years was killed in a car accident last week. She was driving to the Yukon on a spur of the moment roadtrip, that's the kind of girl she was. She was 35 years old.

It is only in retrospect that I realize how many opportunities I missed to spend time with her, to send her a long email, or to find an hour for a real phone conversation. These are regrets I will carry with me. Rosie lived up to her name, she was always generous with her time and her affection. She was open, honest, and totally without guile. There are many lessons that I can draw from her examples, and I will try my best to live up to the honour of being her friend by working on these qualities.

Rosie's tragedy has made me ask myself (among other more common questions you ask in these times) why I have found time to peel and seed 53 pounds of tomatoes when I haven't had time to pick up the phone. It makes me question some of my priorities. Does good food trump good friends? Would I be a better mother if I was playing Snakes and Ladders with my kids instead of making them natural ice cream?

I guess the best compromise is to combine the two. Involve the kids in making ice cream, and invite friends to eat tomato sauce together.

The Elusive Organic Peach

All the markets and grocery stores are brimming with fresh, local peaches, so why not take a trip to an orchard and make a day of it? I got online to look for an organic peach orchard in the Toronto area. No such luck. I could find organic berry farms, organic spinach, broccoli and the like. But few tree fruits. My organics delivery box was even bringing me peaches from British Columbia. My grocery store's organic peaches came from the USA. Why?
I learned the answer at the East York Farmers' Market. For the first time, I saw a few baskets of relatively small organic peaches. Curiosity piqued, I asked the farmer. He said he's been experimenting with growing 5 acres of organic peaches because the demand is high. However, he explained that Southern Ontario's humidity makes the peaches very susceptible to disease. That's why almost nobody grows organic peaches. He said in the end, he's not sure if growing organic peaches is sustainable. Organic peaches are still sprayed, just with different stuff. And they require significantly more applications of the "different stuff" because of the climate. It was some food for thought. When asked which ones he'd choose to eat, he said he's perfectly happy with his conventional peaches. So, which to buy? I couldn't decide, so I bought some baskets of both and cut them up to freeze for those dreary winter days when summer fruit is a big treat. I'll let myself ponder the question of local conventional food vs. distant organic some other day.

How to freeze peaches: Peel, slice and lay out on a tray lined with parchment paper. Put them in the freeze until they are solid. Transfer to a freezer bag. If you just throw them in a bag without the tray step, you'll end up with one giant mass of peaches that you can't break apart!

Green Tomato Salsa Verde

Bad news: Most of my tomato plants got some weird blight and are dying fast.
Good news: I found a great recipe for Salsa Verde to use up my giant bucket of green tomatoes. I didn't even have to peel them. Usually salsa verde is made with tomatillos, but this one is good enough for me.

My Bernardin Home Preserving Guide redeemed itself with this one. It uses lime juice instead of vinegar. Maybe canning is getting a bit more popular with the under 80 crowd after all.

Salsa Verde:
7 C chopped green tomatoes
5-10 chopped jalepeno peppers
2 C chopped red onion
1 head of garlic
1/2 C lime juice
1/2 C chopped cilantro
3 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano, salt, pepper

Wash and seed and chop tomatoes. Drain excess liquid. Put tomatoes in a pot, add all ingredients. Bring to a boil, simmer for 5 mins. Eat, or can. It makes about 6 250ml jars.

**(March 2011 update: Okay, so many months later, I can admit that this salsa is gross. Might as well soak your corn chips in lime juice and sprinkle with cumim. The hot-ness of the peppers disappeared over the months and it got bland and just plain ick.)**
argh.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

My piles of tomatoes have been accumulating, and I've decided that the best, laziest, way to reduce the pile is to slow roast them. So easy.
Cut them in half, toss them in olive oil, salt, pepper. Sprinkle with chopped garlic if you want to (I do). Lay on parchment paper and roast at around 300F for 2 -3 hrs. Stick with 1.5 hours for cherry or grape tomatoes. They taste like sun-dried tomatoes, but jucier! Throw them in freezer bags or use them to make a sauce. No peeling, seeding, boiling required.
The only problem is that my husband had a bad episode of food poisoning years ago that he equates with sun-dried tomatoes (funny how he doesn't feel that way about the beer that was the more likely culprit) and won't eat them. More for me.

Old Lady Salsa

Okay, have you ever noticed that at every Farmer's Market, bazaar, fair etc, there is always at least one woman (usually old or old-ish), selling preserves? I've been suckered in before, partly because they are so nice, and their products have deceptively yummy sounding names. However, it seems that, with the exception of jam, regardless of what I choose (salsa, chili sauce, chutney, etc.) it all tastes the same. Part of my quest this summer was to find a recipe that tasted like my grocery store salsa. I looked up "Salsa" in my Bernardin Home Preserving Guide, and found recipes for things like "Summer Salsa" and "Pepper Pear Salsa". I spent hours peeling pears, chopping peppers and jalepenos. Duh! What was I thinking? I should have known it would taste like...sorry...Old Lady Salsa. That's because it's got vinegar and sugar instead of lime and cilantro. Unless you're over 70 (80?), don't do it. You'll be sorry.

I was relieved to read a post on the blog Seasonal Ontario Food where the author mentions her preference for salsas without vinegar. Ah hah! That was the problem. The salsa recipe I tried is incredibly tasty, very much like what I buy at the grocery store, and pretty easy. I won't say it's quick, but if I can do it, anyone can. I'll call it Chili Lime Salsa, and you can find step by step instructions here.

Two Toonies

I just got two lovely surprises this week in the form of my 5 year old's latest birthday party invitations. Two separate invitations to "two-toonie gift" parties. As discussed in previous post on this topic, the idea is that guests are requested to bring two toonies in lieu of a traditional gift. The birthday kid keeps half and donates half of the money.
It makes me optimistic. Partly because I won't have to feel like I'm making my kids social outcasts by not giving regular birthday gifts at "normal" parties, and partly because maybe it means alot of people are sick of the birthday scene and looking for a way out. And if so, maybe it also means that alot of people are sick of accumulating so much unnecessary stuff. And maybe they too are disillusioned with our culture of entitlement. And if little kids are willing to give up presents without any fuss at all, maybe there is some real hope.

That said, today I bought some gratuitous stuff.

Like a 1950s housewife enthralled with appliances, I somehow convinced myself that I needed both an ice cream maker and a food processor. My intentions were good. I'm doing a hell of a lot of chopping these days to preserve all my organic, local, and home-grown food. And for goodness sakes, all natural ice cream can't possibly be a bad thing, right? But you know what they say about good intentions. In this case, as usual, it's the path to hypocrisy. Two scoops.

Tomatoes!

We went away for a few days, when we came back...taa-daaa!