OCTOBER HARVEST

We got home from a perfectly lovely morning and early afternoon at Tom's Cove Park on Assateague Island. It's migration season and we wanted to see the spectacle of thousands and snow geese, Canada geese and ducks, and cormorants making their way to their winter homes. Although we didn't happen to get there on a peak fly day, we did see some pretty spectacular displays of huge flocks of snow geese stark white against the green background of forest and the beautiful blue sky, hearing the geese honking all at one time as they rose and took to the skies. I love to take photographs and I got some wonderful shots of various birds. I'll use them for my note card collections.

When we got back, I had to deal with all the crops I picked yesterday afternoon. I had give or take, 7 pounds of green tomatoes, 1 -1/2 pounds of jalapenos, 3/4 of a pound of poblano peppers, 9 eggplants and hand full of fresh parsley from the herb garden. What to do, what to do????? Naturally the first thing I did was go on line to find recipes for green tomatoes. I already knew that I wanted to make a green tomato sauce, so I looked for those recipes. Couldn't really find anything that grabbed me, so I just used my intuition. It's really a very simple recipe, below.

Green tomatoes are very tart so it' s hard to decide what to do with them. I do like to dice them into a fresh salad. They are crispy and refreshing. And of course, there are Fried Green Tomatoes and I'll do some of those too. I once had Fried Green Tomatoes layered with Crab Remoulade at a local restaurant. It was delicious so I tried to make them at home. Not quite the same but they were yummy. The Sunset Grill in Ocean City still serves them as an appetizer, but they are quite filling enough for a meal for me.

GREEN TOMATO SAUCE

1 med/large Vidalia or other sweet onion
6 cloves garlic
3 - 4 pounds of green tomatoes, diced fairly small (aids in cooking a little faster)
1 Tbs. ground coriander (adds a little sweetness)
1/4 c. dried cilantro leaves
1 T salt (I like to use sea salt)
1/2 c packed parsley leaves

Dice the onions roughly, and saute over low/ medium heat until soft, but not browned. Add the garlic for 1 minute of cooking, and add the diced tomatoes and dried cilantro. Fresh cilantro would taste very different, so I can't say whether it would make a good substitute for the dried. Simmer the whole pot until most of the liquid is cooked away and the mixture is pretty thick. Add the ground coriander nearer to the end. Did you know that Coriander is the seed of the cilantro plant? They taste very different from each other, but both do add a certain sweetness to a dish.

Let the pot cool for a little while. Now add half the mixture to a blender with 1/2 of the parsley. Blend until smooth and transfer to a bowl. Blend the other half of the tomatoes and parsley. Mix both batches together. This is a LOT of green sauce. I put about 1 c. into freezer bags and froze it.

What on earth would you use this strange sauce for? It's very aromatic and tart. I let my huband taste it. He liked it a lot. I said "Do you know what this would taste really good on?" He said "Tuna". I could hardly believe it because that is exactly what I was going to say to him. A piece of sesame seared Tuna. It would be wonderful spooned on top of a burrito, a quesadilla or on a taco. This sauce may not be for everyone, but it's a good way to use up a lot of green tomatoes if you have them. This time of year, the green ones don't often get a chance to turn red before the frost gets them. They should sell green tomatoes in the grocery.

The eggplants were really pretty. I almost hate to cut them up but they got sliced into thick slices, heavily salted and left in a covered bowl to let out all their liquid. This process helps them to stay firm when they cook. Eggplant can get kind of mushy when you cook it, so doing this keeps the texture, well, chewy, for lack of a better word. I haven't had a chance to do anything else with them tonight. I just drained all the liquid from the bowl after letting them sit overnight, and put them into a large plastic bag for tomorrow night when I will bread and freeze half of them for Eggplant Parmesan, and the other half will marinate in herbs and spices to saute for vegetarian panini sandwiches with sauteed mushrooms and red peppers with provolone cheese on top. It occurs to me that I might use some of this green tomato sauce on the panini!!

We will likely give away most of the jalapenos. We can only eat so many fresh ones and I've already pickled a huge basket of them.

The poblano peppers are sweet and yummy so I'll use all of them for omelets, and fresh in salads.

So with all this late harvest, the next chore we did on Saturday was to plant more veggies. My husband started more peas, beans, spinach and swiss chard in the greenhouse. I planted 50 cabbage seeds in the bed along the fence in the back, and he planted mustard greens in one of the former potato beds, and something called upland cress in the other one. I'll let you know what it's like if any of it grows.

There are still eggplants in the garden. They'll keep growing until the frost. And there are still plenty of green tomatoes out there too that I'll try to get before the first frost sets in. Until then, I need to get creative!

IT STARTED OUT AS A SAUSAGE AND EGG SANDWICH THIS MORNING

One morning I fried up the three sweet Italian sausages that I had leftover from earlier in the week. I made a sausage and egg sandwich out of it. Just scrambled a couple of eggs and put ½ of one of the sausages and a spoonful of eggs on a small roll I had in the freezer and thawed in the microwave.

(I had rolls left over from a dinner, so I wrapped each one individually, put them all in a gallon Ziplock freezer bag, and threw them in the freezer. Now I have a single roll whenever I want one. We don’t eat too much bread most of the time, so I end up freezing bread and rolls almost every time I buy some.)

My little sandwich was yummy. I only had half of it though – I shared it with my husband.

Later in the afternoon, I had a hankering for pasta with tomato sauce for dinner.

I had a jar of sauce in the pantry, a bag of small bay scallops in the freezer, a small zucchini that I needed to use up, an open package of spaghetti noodles in the pantry, and, of course, two sausages from this mornings. I usually have my own homemade marinara sauce in the freezer outside, but the yard was so soggy from all the snow and rain, I didn’t’ want to go out there to get it. I keep a jar of my favorite sauce around for just such occasions, usually a marinara.

I call this dish:

Spaghetti with Sausage, Scallops and Zuchinni

(brilliant!)

2 T olive oil

1 c of small bay scallops (alternative, use shrimp), thawed, and drained very well

2 Italian sausages, cooked and sliced thinly

1 jar of sauce, or equivalent amount of your own home made

1 small zucchini, quartered lengthwise, and then sliced into ¾ inch chunks.

½ pound spaghetti

I put up water to get the pasta going and cooked the spaghetti a light al dente.

In a large saucepan, I added the olive oil and over high heat, sautéed the scallops quickly – maybe two minutes. I added the sliced sausage and the sauce. I let the sauce simmer slowly. I wanted to make sure the scallops wouldn’t be tough, so I simmered them for maybe 15 or 20 minutes to soften them. Then I tossed the zucchini chunks into the sauce, and cooked that for maybe 5 minutes. The zucchini doesn’t take very long. Drain the pasta.

That's it! I spooned some of this sauce over the drained spaghetti. Top with a little Parmesan if you like. It was a delicious meal that I would have been happy to get in a restaurant!

This recipe is very typical of meals I make at home. I don’t waste anything if I can help it. Everything in this dish was either a leftover or on hand. So I always scout the fridge, freezer and pantry for what I have. It's yet another example of how you can make something out of "nothing" !