The Last Weekend

Wow, the month is coming to a close. It has been an interesting culinary journey.

After a tea, pear and melon breakfast a leisurely Saturday begins.
We are having a heat wave. 100+ yesterday, definitely today is headed there as well. We watered and did some harvesting earlier and are staying in the cooler house.

I checked the dehydrator and all but 1 tray's worth of the pears are done. We pack these in canning jars and vacuum pack them, using the seal a meal (FoodSaver) jar attachment. This is one of the neater gizmos we have ever bought. I use it to vacuum pack jars of dried fruit, dried tomatoes, almonds, tea, coffee, even bulk vegetable oil. We initially got the machine for packing meat to freeze, but make much more use of it for glass jars of dry goods.
At any rate, I core and slice the remaining pears to dry - leaving only 7 pears to eat. The end of the Bartlett pears! This makes me very happy. Our winter pears won't be ripe for a few more weeks.

Yesterday I baked bread for the first time this month. Ordinarily we bake most of our bread. We have a bread machine - as I am generally lazy to knead and do all the work for only one loaf of bread. Since there has only been the two of us at home we have gotten a bread machine which lets me control the ingredients without doing the work. But we did not go to town last week and what bread we did not eat became chicken food due to dehydration or mold.
At any rate, the bread allows us to have our favorite carnivorous sandwich - a mock Reuben. With Premiere Meats pastrami, Loleta Cheese Monterey Jack, home made mayonnaise, Fred's Horseradish mustard and our home canned sauerkraut (last year's, the new batch is not ready yet) a local delectable deli style lunch. This with the last of the now lightly alcoholic cider and last of the exploded melon.

We have our oldest daughter, 2 granddaughter's, and a friend coming for the weekend and will probably be breaking the Challenge temporarily for dinner. We are attending a spaghetti dinner benefit for the Two Rivers Community Care Group, a wonderful organization which got a write up in Thursdays Times Standard. The importance of supporting Lauri Rose and the other volunteers' efforts in our community trumps the Eat Local Challenge for this one meal.
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(As it turns out, several of the sauces and a side dish of mixed garden vegetables and bowl of cherry tomatoes are completely local.)
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Sunday is a family girl's day on the farm (Dennis stays in the background). We share local food all day, on the plate, in the canner and to take home.
Our daughter brought up another (cold!) gallon of Clendenen's cider, a couple loaves of Brio bread and Humboldt Creamery 1/2 & 1/2 (hooray!), some Loleta Cheddar as well as potatoes and cauliflower from a friend's farm in Ferndale. We packed it all away last night.

We start the day with a Sunday brunch of poached farm fresh eggs (the little girls LOVE getting the eggs) on our home baked bread with grated Loleta cheese. A poor man's Eggs Benedict. On the side we have the cider and the first of our intact melons. A Galia honeydew/muskmelon cross - yum!

Amber brings Lila over to spend the day with her cousins (and get a break) and we big girls can a vegetable medley of onions, garlic, summer squash, peppers, green beans, cabbage, herbs and tomatoes for soup. Vegetable medleys are a handy way to put away small amounts of several varieties of vegies at once. Requiring pressure canning, you process for  the longest time of the individual vegetables included. In this case, summer squash. I always throw in some of my herbed vinegar to bring up the acidity (and flavor) as well.

We snacked on pears, peaches, plums and peppers as well as the leftover rice pudding.
An early dinner so the gang can drive home to the coast - an all-American localvore burger on Brio bread with Loleta Cheese, homemade mayo and catsup, lettuce and tomato from the garden. With corn on the cob and potato salad made with homemade mayo, farm eggs, onion, parsley, homemade sweet pickles and vinegar and apple cider on the side it is the perfect end of the warm weather feast.
We send the girls back home with summer squash and tomatoes as well as jars of vegetables for the pantry.

And we mean end of the warm weather. Although in the 100's today, we hear a cold snap will be here in the next couple of days - time to put out the cold frame over the winter squash and batten down the hatches.

Ah well. So I end this day with a glass of Riverbend Cellars Cabernet downloading tomorrow's orders and updating this blog. And toast to the last few days of the challenge.