PRODUCE!

Mike and I joined what we affectionately call "The Hippie Farm Co-op" this year, which means we get big box of fresh locally grown veggies every Monday. This year, since September was so very warm, they had some extra canning shares of broccoli and tomatoes. At Mike's request, we bought one. I was thinking we'd have a few jars of each and we could eat them sometime in January...



WHOA. When the "canning shares" arrived, I finally figured out what I had committed to: a winter of Rabbit-dom. FIFTY POUNDS of broccoli awaited me on our doorstep...and then came a box of SIXTY POUNDS of tomatoes. !!! I had a hundred and ten pounds of rabbit food on porch...and two days to pack it away before we went on vacation. Ugh!



That night, I cleaned up my favorite cleaver (yes we have more than one) and spent five hours hacking away at the broccoli pile. I didn't know this, but broccoli wants to be steamed before you freeze it...which meant I was dumping steaming piles of green cruciferous vegetable matter on any flat surface I could find. With the added smell of the HUGE box of tomatoes on the floor, our kitchen smelled like a V8 factory.


HACK.

The next night, it was time to can tomatoes and spaghetti sauce. When it came time to do the work, Mike popped his head around the corner and said, "Dear, I will be back in two minutes to do the canning for you. I think the canning part is a little complicated for you. Just give me a sec to sew one corner on this mitten." (He was making grandma Mitzi a pair of mittens for her birthday...) So, slop, squish, squirt, smush...I peeled the little red suckers and gutted them for TWO HOURS before I saw my husband....apparently the mitten tried to get the better of him. Conquering the Tomatoes was supposed to be a team project, but the other half of my team copped out at game time. Oh well. I had a blast listening to Metallica and being a Domestic Diva. I learned that you don't have to use a spoon to neatly remove the seeds and juice from a tomato....after you peel it, just hold it over the sink and squeeze. Pretty soon, a little stream of tomato guts comes zooming out of the fruit and hopefully lands somewhere in the sink (or on the wall...or ceiling...etc) What fun! After awhile, I even learned to aim properly.

The sixty pounds became sixteen quarts of tomatoes, nine quarts of sauce, and a bunch of pint jars with various combinations of the above. Ahhh...success.

Before we could get to all the canning, Miss Mary came along to help. She loves tomatoes, and I do believe she ate ten or twelve of them. Since they spent two days sitting in a box on the kitchen floor, she had plenty of time to help herself to a bite when passing through. She would bite a hole in the tomato and then suck out all the insides. It was funny until I discovered that she was secretly hoarding them upstairs. I noticed that there were red splotches on the carpeting through the living room and up the stairs. After following the trail upstairs, I found a small heap of juiceless tomatoes under the crib. Queen Mary was sitting near her throne of tomatoes, with gobs of tomato guts on the front of her onesie. mmmmm... Thank God for Lysol Deodorizing CArpet Cleaner...