Can you have too many tomatoes?

The answer is NO. Absolutely not, you cannot have too many tomatoes.

Although, it may seem like you do when you order over 20lbs of them in bulk from your CSA for canning. I think it was just first-time-canning-tomatoes-jitters, but I was terribly worried I wouldn’t be able to get through all of them. Thankfully, peeling tomatoes (which I had never done before) is so amazingly, miraculously easy that prepping these tomatoes for processing only took about an hour out of my evening, and I still managed to make dinner! (If you don’t know – all you do is cut a little cross in the base of each tomato, dunk them in boiling water for 60 seconds and then immerse them immediately into cold/ice water. The skin comes right off!)

I decided to turn all 20lbs into canned crushed tomatoes, because I’ve found that’s what I buy most frequently at the store. I think this is a good way of choosing what you’re going to can. If you buy whole peeled – can whole peeled. If you buy crushed, then get crushing. This will, hopefully, prevent you from running out to buy the aluminum canned variety at the store mid-winter, when the only fresh tomatoes in sight are Florida, California or Chile. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware that cooking the tomatoes for more than 5 minutes would break down their natural pectin causing separation in the jars. Some of them don’t look perfect, but they’ll still be just fine to eat!

Vegan Carrot + Ginger Soup

My love affair with carrot ginger soup started in England, when I was around 13 or 14. Before tetra paks became a popular way to package premade soup, the British were packing soup in milk cartons and keeping them on the refrigerated shelves of the supermarket. For whatever reason, this is a distinct memory of mine from childhood – going to grandma and grandad’s house in England and eating soup out of a milk carton instead of a can. Anyway, my favorite flavor which I could never get in America was carrot ginger. Now, it seems, this flavor has gained popularity and is available everywhere, though none of the soups I’ve ever purchased have been as good as the vegan version I made for dinner last night.

Hungry Bruno had mentioned in her CSA Week Twelve post that our carrots from our Stone Soup Farm CSA were a bit woody this week. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to boil them up and obliterate them with an immersion blender along with some ginger to recreate one of my favorite childhood food memories. When I was browsing the internet for inspiration, I found that almost every recipe for this soup contained dairy. Not understanding this, or thinking it was necessary, I went ahead and made my own vegan version. I had about 1/4 of a can of coconut milk in my fridge so I decided to use that to make the soup creamier, and it really worked. The end product was silky and delicious. To make it a little bit more filling, I cubed up some firm tofu I had leftover from making fresh spring rolls for a party this weekend and mixed it in.  It works either hot or cold, so it’s a versatile summer or winter soup. Delicious!

From Up Above and Down Below

…Remember what I said last week about our eggplant not doing all that well?

We’ve got an eggplant! Though it looks more like a belly button at this point, it’s progress that we’re very excited about. The eggplant seems to attract a variety of little critters, as you can see in the photo. We’ve seen red ants crawling on the leaves, and some little green bugs congregating in the crevices which I’m 90% sure are aphids which we’re doing to have to do something about. So far they aren’t eating anything, but I’m sure they’re planning on it.

We’re away at Finn’s parents’ house in Belchertown for the holiday weekend, so when we get back we hope to have something to show off that looks a little more edible.

Good Morning, Tomatoes

One of my favorite things to do in the morning now is to go downstairs and check on the plants before I go to work. It’s so great to then come home in the evening and see how much they’ve grown! These little guys aren’t ready yet, but they’re getting there.

Impromptu Vegetable Garden: Days 1-3

Our vegetable garden!

In our pursuit to eat locally and sustainably, we shop at farmers markets and are members of a CSA with Stone Soup Farm , we buy locally produced and sourced goods at City Feed, Don Otto’s, and Savenor’s but something was missing. Wasn’t there anything else WE could do? Enter, impromptu vegetable garden.

I shouldn’t say that we’re doing this only for sustainability reasons, because much of it is our own curiosity. Can we REALLY grow vegetables in the alley behind the apartment?