Peaches

I ended up composting so much good stuff last week.  Pretty depressing.  I had the most dreadful lunch-- Swiss chard, just sauteed, then a bit of salt, but it was almost gone, and for three weeks now, I haven't eaten the chard.  I don't mind it.  I kind of like it.  But, cooking greens never really occurs to me.  However, as a meal, all by itself like that, it's somewhat lacking.

I did use most of the tomatoes, but some of those were lost as well-- probably about two pounds of seven.  The rest, I roasted, and filled a large mouth Ball jar with.  And, I think I just may try to seal it. Fruits seal just fine with the canner I've got-- mom's. Tomorrow I positively must make peach jam-- and the canner will be out anyway.  I need to hone in on whatever it was that made the universe send me exactly what I asked for, but after ten weeks of the supplementary fruit share I purchase along with our share in the farm working out to be only trucked in organic fruit (Washington state, Mexico... huge mileage!), rather than focusing on local orhards, as they originally said they would  when I first signed us into the farm last year, today, they gave us 19 peaches-- or seven pounds!    I was seriously planning on signing out of the fruit share-- especially given that the fruit has been little other than lemons, plums, and apples.  And, apples in summer are just about the worst things, given that they've been kept around since last year.  Plums are not a favorite of mine either, and they make dreadful baby food, going spectacularly sour when cooked.  The apples have had that redeeming grace, at least.  In a crock pot, ignored for several hours, peeled apples, with a little help from a blender, turns into a gallon-sized bag full of little baby food cubes that then get thawed a cube or a few at a time.  Easy.  And, apples make all sorts of more objectionable foods edible to my daughter, even turnips.

But, this week was particularly bad.  A cucumber, two heads of lettuce, a head of escarole, a bag of arugula, and a bunch of plums went to the compost, simply because I got too busy to deal with eating them. 

Tomorrow is one of the only days I've got left of my summer break, and tomorrow I make the jam I've been thinking I might have been too late to be able.  The peaches have come to me, and they shall be sealed, golden gems will be set in crystal, little bits of sun to set on the shelf and keep, and maybe to wonder over when I'm  baking some Brie deep into winter.... the stuff is so wonderful with Brie, too.  I'm honestly half making it only for that delicious fact.

I also need to make sure that green beans from last Tuesday, as well as daikon, some squash and eggplant, aren't lost either.