Dirty little secrets

I have a confession to make. I am tired of gardening. Or more correctly, I am tired of weeding. I am tired of preserving food. I'm ready for a break.

I still love to plant seeds and watch them grow. I still love playing in the greenhouse and still love transplanting plants. I just can't keep up.

This afternoon I went out into the garden to pick tomatoes. The plants were loaded down. I picked a  half a bushel. Red, meaty, juicy, really nice-looking tomatoes. There are plenty more still on the vine. The green beans also needed to be picked and the broccoli has bolted. Sigh. I did pick green peppers, pulled a few onions, added a few hot peppers and herbs to my basked and headed into the house. It was hot and sticky outside. The rain of the past few days has brought out the mosquitoes in droves.

By 2 p.m. I was cleaning and sorting tomatoes. I sliced those that are going to be dried in the dehydrator (that's easy) and scalded the rest to loosen their skins. Then they were dumped into cold water and the skins were removed. The canner was pulled out and the jars, lids and rings were placed in boiling water to sterilize them. In the meantime, green peppers, hot peppers, cilantro, onions, a little vinegar, garlic, some lime juice and whatever dried herbs I had on hand from last summer were added to the tomato mixture.

Viola! I had sorta salsa.  Sounds easy, right? All this took until 6 p.m. and then stray tomato juice and skins had to be washed off the kitchen floor. I am a messy cook. What can I say?

Seven pints (yes, seven pints for a half bushel of tomatoes and four hours work) of Sorta Salsa. Mostly it tastes like tomatoes with herbs. If one wants salsa that tastes like salsa, Newman's Own is pretty good. I use my home canned stuff to add to chili or other tomato based food. Chips and Salsa? Not so much.

Sometimes I make tomato juice as well. It takes even more tomatoes to make a quart of tomato juice. Sigh.

Confession time. I'm not certain it's all worth it.

Now I still enjoy making jams and jellies. King likes them too. Who would not like something with a bazillion cups of sugar? I've made low sugar stuff. It's gross as far as I'm concerned and its grossness is one of the few things King and I actually agree upon. He likes my dill pickles and one of our sons likes my bread and butter pickles. I rather like bread and butter pickles as well and why not? They too have a lot of sugar.

So in a few months we will hit the road. Gardening will be a distant memory. We have agreed to come back to work on the farm as caretakers one last summer.

I'm thinking of turning my garden into a soccer field for the grandchildren.

Sorta Salsa