The Countdown...

The last days before the election are ticking away. Are you registered? Have you read the voter pamphlets, figured out enough about the candidates and issues to make some kind of decision? Do you know where your polling place is?
If you haven't done those things yet, this weekend is the time to get it done. here are some resources that can help:
Find your polling place at: Vote 411
The League of Women Voters has information on the Presidential candidates as well as all state contests and measures for California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania. Local elections are covered in the most populous counties in California and in Hamilton County, Ohio, the St. Louis, Missouri area (several counties), and Westchester County, New York.
Check your local TV Station, news and State government websites for local issues and candidates.
I never get tired of saying VOTE!!! Vote as if your future depended on it.

Lastly, on another topic, remember at 2 a.m. on November 2, 2008, Daylight Savings Time ends. Turn your clocks back one hour (Fall back... Spring forward, as the saying goes) when you go to bed and enjoy that extra hour of sleep!

Frost on the Pumpkin...

We saw the first migrating geese fly over last week. I start to become anxious waiting to see them this time of year. It's easy to miss them if I'm in the house or shop - you cannot hear them then. But outside their presence is heralded by such a commotion of honking you hear them long before they are in sight, even when they fly so high you can barely see them. I don't think they can flap their wings without commenting on it! This annual migration is one of the great hallmarks of the turning of the seasons for me. More than anything else it signals the coming of long nights and cold weather.

And now we have had the first hard frost. It dipped into the 20's last night, putting an end to all the watering and much of the work in the garden. Also an end to the basil and tomatoes and such – after we eat all the ones that are now ripening in the house! We are still trying to finish all the pre-winter list. Cleaning gutters, coiling hoses and removing filters that keep the drip irrigation from clogging. There is still firewood to split and stack, projects to wrap up, hammocks, folding chairs, and such to put away until next year.

The business prepares for what we call the "Holi-Daze", when we work hard to ship gifts on time for our customers while we ponder when we will get to do our own. All the soap for Christmas has to be made long before Thanksgiving to be cured and ready in time. Woolie soaps must be felted and gift assortments figured out, baskets ordered, flowers dried, all well ahead of November. The economy is bad in many ways, but we must prepare as if everything is the same. We cannot afford not to be there for our customers.

We love putting together the gift assortments. We try to anticipate what might be most fun, most useful, most attractive to each of you when you see the gift in a store display. For the gifts that are sold via the internet store we try to give each a personal touch to compliment what you have chosen to put in the basket. The dried flowers we add are from our, or a friend's, garden. A few are wild everlasting flowers that we gather locally. Our feeling is we try to make each gift as if it is for our own best friend.

We hope our soaps and other products are the personal gift that pleases all who receive them. See our offerings on Simmons Natural Bodycare's gift pages.

To Every Thing There is a Season... Abundance - Part 2

We are just having the first rains of the fall season. Days in the garden are now limited and the plants know it - things are ripening at an alarming rate. Getting things harvested and in the house before they are overripe is a job that leaves no slack. Do it now or lose your food. The same goes for getting the food processed before it rots or the fruit flies get to it. It is harvest season and that's all there is to it - no matter what else is on the schedule. It makes for late nights and/or early mornings.

While we preserve a lot of food every year, we wanted to really fill the pantry in this year of economic uncertanties. On top of that, to compensate for a possible early hard freeze, we planted three small greenhouses with extra vegetables... just in case. The surprise dip in temperature we had last year in September killed all our basil, squash (summer, winter, melons, cucumbers - all of it), and most of the tomatoes. Well, the early freeze did not happen this time and we are swimming in vegetables. Currently it is tomatoes.

Thankfully we love tomatoes, and they are possibly the most versatile vegetable for storage. They can be made into a vast variety of sauces and condiments, can be dried, frozen, or canned and, picked end of season green, will ripen slowly in a cool dark, place giving you fresh eating tomatoes into the winter months. We prefer drying and canning over freezing as neither requires energy for storage.

We do not dry many tomatoes, usually only cherry tomatoes and, this year, a variety called Principe Borghese. I learned about these reading Barbara Kingsolver's fine book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle". These tiny, paste-type tomatoes dry readily when sliced. I look forward to trying them out this winter. The cherry tomatoes we halve and dry, cut side up. We call them "tomato raisins" as they are sweet eaten out of hand. A treat in salads, especially grain based salads, we like to toss them in casseroles and cooked vegetable dishes. No pre-soaking required.

But the bulk of the crop goes into jars. I originally canned only plain peeled tomatoes and plain tomato sauce that could be seasoned any way I liked and otherwise added tomatoes into the vegetable medleys we use for soup. Over time it dawned on me it was actually easier to have my own "fast food" by seasoning the sauce when I made it. This was even more versatile as I could add other ingredients which may not be available to me mid-winter. So we make onion-herb tomato sauce that is good for spaghetti or other Italian-style dishes. To this we occasionally add the end of a bottle of red wine for a ragu-style. I make a smooth enchilada sauce with Mexican seasonings and a chunky style Mexican sauce to add to chili. The main difference is whether I run it through a food mill or blender or a plain old meat grinder. We add peppers. onions, garlic to all of these. Herbs and spices as desired. The Italian style sauce may get the addition of everything from eggplant to zuchinni, the Mexican variation - chili peppers to tomatillos. Anything available seems to find its way into a jar. Then there is thicker sauce for pizza, catsup (when we really have more tomatoes than we know what to do with!), tomato juice and soup.

Then we do the condiments. There are many salsa variations we play with, but we always make a basic red hot sauce and a green hot sauce (which uses green tomatoes and tomatillos). Temperatures vary depending on which chili peppers did well that year. We also make sure to have a chunky style salsa to be used to dip chips or added to layered dip. A large part of our pantry is devoted to tomatoes - that's for sure!

As I write this there is a stock pot of red hot sauce simmering in the kitchen. Not just for Mexican style food, this is a favorite on rice dishes, casseroles and eggs around our house.
Here is the recipe for those of you who may enjoy this savory to spicy condiment. This is a sweet/hot sauce, almost chutney-like in flavor.

Red Hot Sauce
8 cups chopped, cored, tomatoes
1 - 1/2 cups seeded chopped red peppers, varying degrees of hotness!
(Use hot peppers as desired for your preferred degree of heat in the finished sauce.)
1 quart cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons mixed pickling spices
---
Combine tomatoes, peppers and 2 cups vinegar in a large saucepan until soft. Let cool, then blend in blender until pureed and return to pot (I generally use a second pot).
Add sugar and salt. Tie spices in cheesecloth or place in clean, small, muslin bag and secure top and add to sauce. Simmer until thick. Stir as needed to prevent sticking or scorching on bottom of pot. Add remaining 2 cups of vinegar. Simmer to desired thickness.
Ladle hot sauce into hot, clean jars leaving 1/4 inch head space. Adjust lids and process 15 minutes in boiling water bath.

Note: Remember that rubber/latex gloves are good when cutting and seeding hot peppers. At the very least, wash hands immediately afterwards with (Simmons) soap and water.
---
I end now to go put my red hot sauce into the bail clamp beer bottles that we use to keep it. It will process, as any normal jar, in the canning kettle. Here's to a future spicy winter meal!