Strawberries

Because I have no self-control, and because I shop like I am feeding a family of 14, I bought a flat of strawberries at the farmer's market. So, a month or two ago, after dragging home said flat of strawberries, I was left to decide between letting them rot in the refrigerator and writing my thesis, or doing something much more fun and finding something interesting to do with the strawberries. The strawberries won.

After finding a recipe for sugar-free strawberry preserves in the Ball Book (I think), I went to work. I hulled and washed the strawberries, then boiled them half to death while mashing them a bit. It did feel the littlest bit tragic going from thisto this

Next I dissolved a bit of sweetener and gelatin (resuspended in lemon juice; have to do something if you're not using sugar...) in the hot strawberries, boiled that a bit longer, and spooned the mix into small 2 oz. or 4 oz. jelly jars. They cooled overnight at room temp., then went into the fridge. The book said they can be stored in the fridge for about a month, but so far they are still fine and taste mighty delicious. The gelatin does give the preserves a very bizarre texture, but it tastes very fresh (even with all the boiling), so it's hard to care too much.

Garlic

E and I mostly ignored our garlic this year. Apart from adding a top-layer of compost earlier this year, we really haven't done anything (even failing to water through the drought). We were thrilled, then, to find that despite our total neglect, our plants produced scapes in mid-May. We promptly snapped them off and brought them home, where they languished in the fridge for a few weeks.

The garlic scapes eventually made their way to garlic scape pesto. After a quick glance here for the recipe I found a reminder to myself to make roasted scape pesto, so tried that with a small portion of the scapes. I was worried it would taste like dried grass, but instead it's almost chocolatey. I think I still prefer the sharper taste of the raw pesto, but the roasted stuff (on the left below) is very good.


As instructed by various instructions written by garlic farmers, we continued to ignore our plants for the next month or so. We expected to harvest the garlic in August, but our plants started to die around May; the hardnecks were mostly dry by mid-June, and the softnecks gave up the ghost by early July. In accordance with the growers' directions, we pulled up the plants when they were mostly dead - still with a few green leaves left - and lo and behold, we had garlic bulbs! Really, this shouldn't be so amazing, but I am constantly impressed when things "work". Admittedly our garlic is very shrimpy, and we could have done much more with watering and weeding, but for next to no effort, we're definitely happy with what we got.

The garlic is curing away under our back porch. In another week (after about 3-4 weeks of drying total), we'll bring it in, clean it up, and store it in our makeshift root cellar.


I'm afraid I have mostly confused which bunch of garlic is which cultivar (I'm so embarrassed by this fact I can't begin to explain why I am revealing it), but I might be able to figure it out.... This is what I remember (so far):
- I harvested three rows on one day, then two rows on another.
- The first three rows harvested were two hardneck (Music and Fireball!) and one softneck (Inchelium Red!).
- The second two rows harvested were all softneck (German Red and Italian Purple!)
- The second row of hardneck had more purple in the bulb than the first (Fireball!).
- There are two bunches or more of each of the three cultivars harvested the first day.
- There is one bunch each of the two cultivars harvested the second day.
- The second batch of harvested garlic is hung under the porch farthest from the house.
Now to draw my little logic chart...

Clearly we need to repeat this experiment in order to clearly compare the different types of garlic. Unfortunately, like potatoes, garlic has to be on a three year rotation. Mumsy and Paw, we are coming for your space!

Next in this bed: bush beans.