To all my faithful readers, sorry that I’ve been out of touch. There are a couple of reasons for this. 1) The garden has been amazing this year. We seem to spend all of our free time trying to figure out what to do with tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peppers and soon to be squash, oh yeah, and the zucchini. That and my camera is dying a slow and painful death. I’m almost at the point of not being able to take photos.

Every time I turn around, I am hauling a wheelbarrow full of produce out of the garden. If I miss it for a few days, I’m almost nervous as to what I’ll find — tomatoes rotting on the ground, green beans over a foot long, squash growing in the herb garden. Sigh. But we keep plugging away and bring it into the kitchen. Many bags have made it to the food pantry and friends. But a lot of it ends up in jars or the freezer.

Every weekend, one entire day is dedicated to processing this bounty.

LOTS OF CHOPPING, SEEDING, CORING AND PEELING.

Always selecting the finest ingredients.

In the past two weekends, we made 32 pints of salsa. We’ve pickled 64 pints of pickles and have frozen about 30 lbs of beans. We have also frozen zucchini and corn and pickled beans.

We used a variety of recipes to test in our kitchen. We’ll let you know the results.

It was one of those magical hunting days where you actually find what you’re looking for.

We found an area on the forest floor that was filled with Chanterelles. Granted, the majority of them were covered with dreaded slugs, but there were still enough left behind for us to share.

Some of them were a really nice size. This one, without slugs, is about the size of Chuck’s palm.

They are a beautiful mushroom.

Our bounty was good and by the time we got home, we had a plateful.

The next step was sauteing them with garden garlic, mushrooms and onions. (Tina, we’re getting closer to that hunt/gathered meal.)

Fresh out of the garden for the event. The garlic has been drying for weeks.

They made a wonderful topping for a grilled pizza.

Add the mozzarella and voila — dinner. It was WONDERFUL!

One vegetable that has managed to fight off insects, slugs and fungus is our cucumbers. And boy are they happy this year. It seems I could pick a basket a day and still find more cucumbers. But what does one do with so many?

These cucumbers are from seedsavers and are a pickling cucumber.

The answer to my cucumber problem—pickle.

I have never made pickles before. I have watched my mother make them and it always seemed like a lot of work. I don’t have many little cucumbers, but I gathered what I could and thought I’d pickle these.

Then while reading lots of recipes online, I realized I could make pickles in a day or in two to eight weeks. I didn’t have the ingredients necessary for refrigerator pickles, so I made the kind that sit on the shelf for a few months and you hope for the best.

Several of the recipes called for a grape leaf in the jar to make crispy pickles. We have wild grapes, so some of my jars have grape leaves and some do not.

Wild grape vines.

Wild grape leaves are three-lobed with toothed edges. There are many things you can do with these leaves. Check out the wild foods website.

This is the basic recipe I followed:

• 12 cups water
• 4 cups vinegar
• 1.5 T canning salt
• Some pickling spice

In the jars I put:

• Fresh dill and dill heads
• Garlic from my garden
• Whole or sliced cucumbers
• More dill and garlic

I topped off the cucumbers with the liquid, put on the lids and boiled under water for 15 minutes.

Here’s a jar with a grape leaf.

And ta da …pickles. If these turn out, I know what everyone is getting for Christmas.

Time is not on my side. I can’t believe that July is almost over…seriously. Here are a few garden photos to let everyone know that my garden really is growing.

Tonight we had our first green bean feast. Actually they were not all green. We had some purple speckled beans as well. But it is nice to know that green beans are here for the eating.

We have more cilantro than I know what to do with. If anyone has ideas, please send them to me.

The pickling cucumbers are taking over a lot of territory. I need to keep an eye on these guys or my tomatoes will be in for a challenge.

Peppers gone wild. It has been about 10 days since I took this photo and my peppers have gone crazy. The plants are not that impressive, but they are loaded with different types of peppers.

So far the only tomatoes consumed have been cherry. But the plants look pretty good. I do have to take a lot of leaves away because of early blight. This Monday I will dedicate to blight eradication.

Here is my first canned harvest of the season—pickled beets. These are heirloom beets grown from seeds purchased at Seed Savers. They did not come out of a can, nor do that taste like blah. Chuck described the taste as a cross between potatoes and sweetcorn. Now there is an endorsement. However, I’m not sure what pickled potatoes and sweetcorn would taste like. Hopefully they will be as yummy as they are pretty. But seriously, I have grown up HATING beets. These I rather enjoy.

It is a magical moment when you look in the ground and find one of these popping through the leaves.

Because you know if there is one, there is going to be another.

And before you know it, you can fill your dinner plate with these delicacies. But finding morels isn’t always enough.

We found some fiddle heads to add to the meal.

And if that isn’t good enough, Chuck was outside cutting rhubarb to make another one of his famous pies.

Not to be out done, I went and picked a basket of heirloom spinach and lettuce from our hoop hut.

As Lori mentioned, I have been experimenting with pie making. Rhubarb is my major inspiration since we have a large patch right outside and it is delicious.

I have lots of fond memories of rhubarb. My grandmother was culinary genius when it came to that plant. I can still taste the rhubarb sauce that she used to make. At the time, I did not realize how special it was. That and her dill pickles!

As the summer progresses, I am looking forward to gooseberry pies and raspberry pies as well as savory pies; perhaps with morels??? I made a beef pie a few weeks back - it was not bad.

The real challenge in pie making is the crust; which basically comes down to managing water and fat which manages gluten formation. Gluten forms rubbery sheets.  In a pie crust, those sheets are shortened and held apart by a solid fat such as butter,  shortening or lard. The dough must be kept cold while it is being made to keep the fats solid. When the dough is cooked, the fat melts and layers of flaky pie crust are formed.

At one time lard was the perfect pie making fat. But the war on saturated fats pretty much destroyed quality lard production in this country. Although lard is available, it usually has off-tastes. The holy grail of lard is “leaf lard” . Regular lard is made from waste fat on a pig. Leaf-lard is made exclusively from the internal fat that surrounds the kidneys. How could that not be better? If you know of a source, near Madison, let me know.

Managing the amount of water in the crust is critical. Too much water creates too much gluten which makes the crust tough. Too little water and the crust is difficult to work with and it falls apart. This partly why the fat in the dough is not just butter; butter contains water.

My secret “fool proof” method for making pie dough comes from Cook’s Illustrated. The secret ingredient is vodka. Vodka provides a liquid that helps hold the dough together and it all evaporates during cooking. The final cooked pie crust has no lingering taste of vodka.

I am not going to give the details to the dough recipe. Cook’s Illustrated does an impressive amount of research to come up with these methods. A one year subscription to their web site is about $30. Please support them. Also their bi-monthly magazine is wonderful. No ads - just pure cooking joy.

Of course the vodka is what gets the chickens drunk. When I combine the top layer of the dough with the bottom layer, I trim the edges, which produces leftover dough. I know I could sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar and make a little treat. But usually at this point I am ready to leave the kitchen. So the ladies get the scraps.

The ladies love to eat. And they especially love raw pie dough. Its got butter and sugar and flour and booze. It’s soft and gooey. It’s way better than chicken feed (I know, I have tried their feed, but that’s another story). It’s even better than worms.

So if you like pie and tipsy ladies, you know where to go.

Chuck has been perfecting the pie, or more importantly, the pie crust. If he wants, he will add his ingredients and techniques to this post. But here is the the before picture of this pretty pie.

Look at the golden brown crust. Yes Tina, you recognize the pie pan. Thank you for letting us borrow it.

Yum….here is a beautiful strawberry-rhubarb pie. Another great reason to love spring, we have a rhubarb patch right outside.

When the neighbor’s offered Chuck their older hens for slaughter, he didn’t hesitate. The big question was: what do you do with old chickens? His plan—sausage.

Michael Ruhlman, the author of “RATIO, the simple codes behind the craft of everyday cooking” says this in his chapter on sausage:

“The Noble Sausage

Sausage is one of the culinary glories when it’s made and cooked right—a package of inexpensive trim, some fat, some seasoning that can be unparalleled in its deliciousness, in its ability to satisfy. A technique born of economy that results in the sublime. Truly, my respect for sausage knows no bounds.”

Who would have thought?

We are rediscovering many techniques born out of today’s economy. Our great grandparents would smile as we yearn for their knowledge. We buy local. We pickle, can and freeze.

As I flip through the seed catalog to plan my garden, Chuck heads up the hill to gather more of the neighbor’s chickens. This time—chicken soup. After listening to Lynne Rossetto Kasper on Splendid Table talk about mature chickens, she said, “You have got the chicken that will make a soup, the likes of which, you will be on your knees weeping with joy.” Sounds like it will be good for our souls.

Oh what fun we’ve had creating a product line. A lot of people bake, can and bottle all sorts of things, but I’m not sure they all develop a brand. This is a problem when your household is full of marketing and design people. We brand our own goods. Ah, but what fun we’ve had. Now that we’ve had a taste with this, wait until next year.

Our most popular products are the wines. We’ve only  opened a bottle of the Black Raspberry and were extremely surprised. It is a dry red wine with berry overtones. The wine is outstanding and exceeded our expectations. Suddenly those hours of fighting thorns and mosquitoes were worth it. Next summer I believe we will pick berries with more enthusiasm. The Rhubarb wine is sweet and will be used as a desert wine. The Gooseberry wine will not be ready until this summer, but our sneak preview tests suggest it will be superb. It has many layers of intense flavor. I will report more as time goes on.

Until then, we will enjoy all of our other products.