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Maybe you can only see it in Canada?

My tomatoes did awesome this year. Now I feel silly for buying a half bushel at the farmer's market! I have a lot of Roma's in my chest freezer now and a large bag of them in my fridge. Now I just have to make the effort to try something fancy like making ketchup.

Holly shit, snow?

And g_g, your tomatoes DID great this year? As in, they are done? Wow! I am expecting at least one more month of harvesting, before I would be forced to pick the green ones and bring them inside. Hopefully longer than that, but they definitely slow down ripening once the weather cools off.

I made 4 jars of not-quite-sauce and not-quite-just-diced tomatoes this weekend. Nothing special, it is meant to be tomatoes that you use for further cooking, like in chili or stew, so they are not seasoned with anything. Just peeled, diced and reduced by about 1/3 to 1/2. But still very good. Need to make some more, and probably will, since the tomatoes are ripening faster than we can eat them fresh, and since this is the most common way I use tomatoes in cooking in winter. We hardly ever eat pasta with red tomato sauce.

And my slow-going eggplants finally woke up and are cranking them out like mad the last couple weeks. I am picking 1-2 big ones and about 6-8 skinny long ones every 3 days or so.

Peppers are not hot at all this year. Not even the slightest bit. You can eat jalapenos and poblanos like sweet peppers. On one hand that's good, because these peppers did awesome, and I can throw them in salad, and kids won't object to the heat. But I was kinda looking forward to some hot peppers.

Already dreaming of garden expansion next year. (Don't tell Heffe I said so).
I am going to try a makeshift cold frame over one of the beds, see how that works. Nothing fancy, just a 1ft tall frame over the bed, and some bubble wrap stapled to it. Can't hurt, right?

And my slow-going eggplants finally woke up and are cranking them out like mad the last couple weeks. I am picking 1-2 big ones and about 6-8 skinny long ones every 3 days or so.

My mom was cranking out a couple quarts of Baba Ganoush a week when I was out in Yewtaw last month. Pretty simple, you basically make hummus, but use roasted eggplant instead of chick peas. Really good. You doing that?

And my pepper plant has FINALLY started producing fruit. We'll see how big they get; it's maybe a month and a half until the first freeze.

I'm not getting down there too much right now with Nathan leaving for Wyoming. I'll probably go down in two weeks and finishing picking everything then. I might leave the peppers as they seem to do okay with a light frost if it happens. Pulled my basil last weekend and took what I could from the plants to finish them off. They flowered and started going to seed so the plants were going downhill anyway.

Fuck I should probably massacre my basil as well. And parsley.

Do you freeze or dry your basil?

I had a pretty terrible crop this year. It's not such a huge issue though because I don't tend to eat much pasta anymore so my demands for Pesto are way down.

You can definitely dry the basil. Just hang it upside-down in bunches until dry, and then strip/crumble the leaves into a jar. I use dry basil a fair bit, and it is the easiest thing to dry it, when you are busy.

Alternatively, for freezing, try this: Chop the basil, put about as much as you would use in a typical dish into an ice cube, pour some water on top, freeze, then pop the basil ice cubes into a ziploc bag. For cooking, just take one ice cube and add to the dish you are making.

I'm going to make one batch of pesto, and dry the rest.

[climbing tawk] (remember that?)

Remind me when I am getting-back-into-it. Right now I am going na-na-na-na, can't hear you.

I just take the basil, make sure it's clean, then toss the full leaf into a ziplock and throw it into the freezer. The frozen stuff breaks into smalls pieces which is fine for cooking and pesto.

Mo told me that she had problems with freezing hers the one year though, said it ruined the basil. I've never had an issue in all the years I've been doing this, but take what I say with a grain of salt.

Do you freeze or dry your basil?

I had a pretty terrible crop this year. It's not such a huge issue though because I don't tend to eat much pasta anymore so my demands for Pesto are way down.

Derp deep winning derp derp

What the fuck. How did I read nose?

Did I mention I woke up 45min late this morning? It's been a rough start.

I'm always worried I'll stop paying attention and fall asleep if I don't have to pay attention to my speed. Would certainly save me gas if I used cruise, though.

Not gonna carbq it. It needs maybe $400 of werk to get it to pass inspection, but other than that the bluebook value is $2500, so I think I can get at least $1500 or so for it. For now, though, I cancelled the insurance (which required turning the tags back into the DMV), and it's just hanging out in the campground now. No big deal. If I need the money I'll sell it.

And there is a gnu Champion in the house. Since it is a prestigious World Cup event, I think we have to transfer the title of Teh Champ to FoPo.

I salute you madam!

And I will go on record saying i predicted it before it happened!

Mo, you rock!