The summer bounty

Since I was a child I remember the late summer trend of "putting up food for the year". My mom was a SAHM at the time and she did jams, pickles and I have mentioned previously, she was a fantastic baker. My husband, being the true Alaskan that he is, comes by this tradition honestly. For him though, he grew up catching the family limit of sockeye salmon, sealing it and freezing it for the year. By the end of the year and just in time for the new fishing season they were sufficiently stuffed and sick of salmon... I feel so bad for them.

"Putting food up" is a tradition that we have carried forth. I frequently do jams, this year it was nectarine jam with the bounty off our tree. (Sarah, I WILL get jam in the mail to you... I waited anticipating plum jam as well, but didn't end up with the yield to even justify a batch of jam... plus the fact that Leif has been eating the plums like they are going out of style.)

Additionally this year Hans did a huge batch of spaghetti sauce last weekend. This weekend I tackled the aging zucchini with a double batch of zucchini bread, and some nasty zucchini cornmeal chili muffin things. Umm yeah... that doesn't even deserve discussion there, but the zucchini bread, yumm. Hans this weekend tackled one of my favorites... green chili. He is the green chili master.

So since my garden doesn't yield enough Anaheim's we have to go to the Farmer's Market. Darn. One of our favorite stands this year is a farmer, with the worst teeth ever seen, in fact they are so bad he has a hard time talking. But he talks, and he has this strange voice too. He speaks regularly to Hans and everytime I get images of that flying shop owner from Star Wars... ok this one, Watto. This farmer has got to have been the inspiration for this character.

So Hans gets his Anaheims and roasts them, peels them and tosses in a few poblanos for good measure. A roasted/smoked pork tenderloin, some onions and garlic, chicken broth and a few cayennes and a few jalapenos (some roasted), simmer it all together and you have a mean green chili. Hans is master of "seasoning" it perfectly so that the first few bites make you sweat and your not sure you can eat a bowl. But after a few bites (and tortilla between), your mouth adjusts and you can't get enough. Wow.

So in our freezer and garage we now have... nectarine jam, 11 mini loaves of zucchini bread, 13 containers of spaghetti sauce, and 11 containers of green chili. We better just hope there is *not* a power outage. Hans might keel over then and there. Oh yes, and we can't forget the 4 or 5 jars of Back Russian cherries in the fridge (pitted cherries soaked in Vodka and Kahlua, let sit for at least 2 weeks - thank you Vanessa!).

We will eat well this winter!