Lima Beans

I'm one of those odd people who loves lima beans. They were one of my favorite foods when I was a kid. This year I decided to try growing them. I chose two varieties; a bush one named Fordhook that I picked up at my local farm supply, Griff's, and a vining one called Violet's Multicolored Butterbean that I procured from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. 

I harvested the remnants in my garden this past weekend: limas, peanuts, a few stray tomatoes and peppers, and lots of basil. As I set about shelling the limas, I decided to look for a new recipe. I found several that looked delicious here, and decided to try this one- Baked Large Limas with Spinach and Feta- until I discovered I didn't have enough spinach. Oh well, maybe next time. So I went with the old standby- salt and a little butter. Your really can't beat them that way- especially when they're fresh!  If the pods are still green, you can cook the beans as fresh (much faster cook time, fresher taste). Or you can leave the pods on the plant to dry naturally. Then you have ready to store dried beans. The bush limas weren't as productive as the climbing ones. The green ones are the bush variety, the remainder are the climbing variety. Aren't they beautiful?

The bowl of shelled limas

This took me an hour

closeup of the beautiful beans

 

The dried pods. Those that were solid tan had good beans. They were the
climbing variety. The black spotted ones were rotten- the bush variety.
Lesson here? Grow climbing limas.

My finished jar of dried beans. Aren't they pretty?

Tomato juice and sauce

The Roma type tomatoes are coming in right now! I picked half of a 5 gallon bucket full this morning. Hmm. What to do? Tomato sauce for dinner! I knew this was risky, since both my attempts at tomato sauce last summer bombed. But I had an idea of what I did wrong, and I really wanted to try again. Here's a photo showing what these tomatoes look like.

We have some friends that have been saving seeds from this variety for years. Every spring they start a bunch and give us some seedlings.

Last years' sauce was too watery and needed to cook a long time to thicken. By the time it thickened, it was very dark in color and almost caramelized. It didn't taste good. At all.

So here was my bright idea: after the tomatoes had cooked long enough to soften, pour the whole mess into my food mill. The liquid would pour though the mesh screen, leaving the solids up top to make the sauce with. It worked! And now I have tomato juice for my V8 loving Max!

The juice is sitting on one of my recycled wool potholders.

Okay, so then we (Max and I took turns) ran all the solid, pulpy stuff through the food mill to remove the skins and seeds. Here's what it looked like when we were done:

Then we went out to the garden to collect some basil and oregano and added those to the sauce.

Max chopped up some bell peppers (also picked this morning) with a special kids' knife he got for Christmas from uncle Peter and aunt Maire. He loves it and uses it all the time. In fact, he and Claire often fight about who is going to use it :)

When he was finished, we sauteed the peppers with some garlic until they were nice and soft and browned.

We added the peppers and garlic to the tomato sauce and then used the pan to brown some ground venison. You don't really brown ground venison as it doesn't have any fat to speak of. You just cook it until it is no longer pink.

Then we added the venison to the rest of the sauce, added some sugar, salt and pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste, and let the whole thing simmer for a while until it looked like this:

We enjoyed it over whole wheat spaghetti. The kids picked out the peppers, but that was to be expected :)

Food Preservation, August 1st.

Today I turned these figs into...6 jars of jam for next winter!

And I turned these four buckets of corn into...

126 ears of frozen corn for next winter!