It is a bit after 5:00 am. I have been up early, straightening up the house. I still have sprinkles of flour on the floor from yesterday's baking. I will vacuum after Papa wakes up. I was too tired last night to clean up a lot. I was going to rest yesterday from having all my company, but my batch of bread kept growing. Papa had bought for me a nice big 10 pound bag of unbleached white flour... also whole wheat flour ... he thought it would last me a while, anyway. But I used at least 8 pounds of flour yesterday making bread. Now he has to buy me some more.
It's hard to gather and store stuff up with little babies. I mean, a lot of times to just get through the day is an accomplishment. I have read stories about mothers who worked in the garden with the baby wrapped in a basket under the shade of a nearby tree.
I had a little pallet that I laid down in my kitchen for the babies to lay on and watch me cook in my kitchen. My kitchen is very small ... not big enough for a table. (Our house is over 100 years old.) But the main thing is to make sure you watch the children that they don't get hurt. My kitchen is so private and away from the rest of the house, so when I was in there as a young mom, I wanted the baby close by, and yet out of harm's way. So I made a wee bed for them at the opposite side of the kitchen as the stove and sink are, under a window. I had a little plastic tray-like deal with a mattress on it. And often David would lay there, take a nap and watch me cook. David (now grown and 23) was always really quiet, and the little bed worked for us.
Even a little porta crib would work like a play pen in the kitchen. We got one for Baby Rose, lately, at a garage sale for 15 bucks, and it was brand new. But if the babies get used to being put in the kitchen with you when you cook, they will almost look forward to it. They can see you from their little beds and that makes them happy. And our Baby Rose loves to play with pots and pans, more than toys. She is a bit more active than David ever was. But I put her in the high chair when I make supper. I mean, you all know what you can do and still keep baby safe.
And if you can't can and freeze things for the winter this year, there is always next year. As my family grew up, then I, of course, had built in babysitters. But I know it's hard if you have a houseful of little ones and you are trying to store food for the winter. But I am writing this to encourage large families to glean and store things now if they can. Make hay while the sun shines, ya know?
So, anyway, right after Jim was saved and I planned on having 3 more children, at least, I prayed for a freezer and I got a huge one. It was an old model and it was great. Anyway, I froze a lot of food because I was too busy to can.
Now, for tomatoes, I would just take my tomatoes, wash off the dirt and cut them in quarters, cut out any bad spots and the core, and put them in a sack and freeze them. I didn't peel them. I use these tomatoes for soups and stews and chili. And when you put them in boiling soup, the peelings fall off and you can scoop them out with a ladle. Green peppers, you do the same way, but just slice them up and clean out the seeds. You don't have to cook these tomatoes or peppers. Just cut them up and put them in a plastic bag and freeze them. No big deal!! And ya know if ya have a freezer full of tomatoes you have a lot.
I used to freeze a lot of fruits. For grapes, just clean them and freeze them in a sack. If ya have the time, just take them off the stems. But if ya don't, just freeze them on the stems. But be sure to wash them good. Frozen, they are good in salads, still half frozen and cold. But once they thaw completely, they will be mushy. But we liked eating them as a snack.
Also, in the summer, I would freeze other fruits, too, as I was in a hurry. But then, as the winter went on, I would take the fruit out of the freezer and make jams out of it and put it in canning jars, when I had more time. But I rarely canned in the summer. I mostly froze stuff. I used to freeze a lot of rhubarb for winter desserts.
I did can pickles if I had the time. And if my cucumbers didn't do well, then someone was sure to give me some zuchinni, and I made pickles with the zuchinni ... ya can't barely tell the difference.
I have even mixed zuchinni in with apples for an apple pie, if a girl is low on apples. Just cut the zuchinni up to look like the apples slices. Zuchinni will work for anything, practically. I have even ground it up and made jam out of it if I was short on some fruit. JillR used to make pineapple out of zuchinni. She sliced it up in rings and cut out the center and made a syrup out of pineapple juice and sugar and boiled it. The zuchinni tasted like pineapple and she made some nice salads with it.
But, ya know, around here someone will give you a zuchinni out of their garden. Everyone has too much zuchinni. But use the little ones for pickles and the big ones, just cut them up and put them in the freezer. They are sure to come in handy for something this winter. Zuchinni bread is so popular. But if ya don't have time to grind it up in your blender, just put it in the freezer in chunks and grind it up just before you use it for the bread. Iit is so good in winter soups, too.
In the fall, I make a harvest vegetable soup. You can make your vegetable soup and serve it in a cut-in-half and cleaned out pumpkin. Bake the pumpkin half slightly and, while it is hot on the table, pour the soup in it. Then, when you serve the soup, gently scoop some of the pumpkin out and serve pieces in the soup. The pumpkin tastes about like zuchinni in a soup. My vegetable soup is just fried hamburger, drained, lots of vegetables, tomato soup and some water. Then herbs and spices ... very simple.
You can also cut up a pumpkin in cubes, raw, and freeze this in plastic bags for winter soups. And, actually, for corn on the cob, you can freeze it still in the husk. But when you go to use it, let it set for about an hour, so it will thaw out. Then take the husk off and boil it as usual. You have to have really good corn for this, as you don't want to freeze rotten corn.
Bananas can be frozen, too, in the skins, as is. I mean, if they are fresh. You could use these for banana bread for the winter baking.
At the end of the summer, I used to always make homemade ketchup in a roasting pan in the fall. I cooked it all day in the oven and oh, the house smelled so good. I just asked Papa if I should make some this year and he said, "Oh, I loved that!" Papa would put my ketchup on fried potatoes and on his scrambled eggs. Oh, its so good! It's good on hamburgers and hot dogs, too.
And ya know, the old time housewives, at the end of the summer, would make piccalilli. Just before a freeze in the fall, the housewife would go out to her garden and pick all the left over vegetables, grind and pickle. The old time Mothers never wasted anything. And she would study her Old Farmers Almanac, look at the sky and pray, and she knew when the hard freeze was coming. And she would go out to her garden with her wooden clothes basket and gather left over produce. Maybe she would come away with a handful of green beans, a few green tomatoes ... a cup of peas and and a few small ears of corn ... some garlic. Some cabbage leaves and a few small broccoli heads or a bit of cauliflowe , a few cucumbers or zuchinni and onions and peppers. Just odds and ends.
Well, she would bring all of her little treasures in the house, wash them up and make piccalilli. She would get out her meat grinder and grind up all of her bits and pieces of produce. Then she would put it all in a big pot and made a vinegar-sugar syrup, with pickling spices, and cooked it. And this was called piccalilli. She would can this up to set on her family table for cold winter days to eat with hot meals.
For our family, I would often have a lot of green tomatoes just before a frost. I would store them in a paper sack, wrapped individually in newspaper, and they will turn red. I could make some of my tomatoes last until Thanksgiving or Christimas. But ya gotta watch them close as you could get one to turn rotten before the others, and then this would ruin all of them. If ya have a lot of green tomatoes left in the garden, you could use a cardboard box to put them in. But make sure to watch them close and wrap each one in newspaper.
I mean, however the Lord leads ya, just get your cupboards ready for winter. Now is the time to do it, as the fresh produce is so available.
