Processing the Harvest

Wotcha Colne

Thought the IRS had nicked your computer

 

Predictably I have glut of tomatoes at the moment:

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So Ive made 4l of tomato & chilli sauce (using some of last years chillies from the freezer to make some space for this years):

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and this year I gave them fifteen minutes boiling in the water bath so it (hopefully) wont all go off & blow the lids off... who sez I dont learn from my mistakes!

Ive also got one aubergine to do something with - it might be the only one so it has to be something special - any recommendations ?


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Welcome back Colne, you've obviously been doing some deep thinking and it doesn't matter that the garden has been on the back burner for a while. A change is as good as a rest!

 

Just made rhubarb jam this morning and then roasted pears (from a tree I planted 2 years ago) with homemade cinnamon and raisin ice cream for desert.

 

We continue really enjoying those round cakes - just excellent, take 2 pack from freezer, put 1 on each saucer, cover in fruit that has been steeping in sugar to pull out the juice, cover with whipped cream - amazing.

The tax man has yet to reply - the wheels of such a ponderous machine turn slowly. I know, I once was an IRS tax inspector during my young days, 30 years ago.

fantastic tomato sauce Nick, really cool project. I love that kind of home made stuff. Jane, yours takes the award though. Home made ice cream; and jam! I used to make it all the time and still have my frozen machine bowl in the freezer. I love ice cream....when we lived in Italy we would get the very best gelato wile walking the plaza in the evenings and have it as a small cone wile strolling, or a little paper tub wile sitting on some wall. I always had tuti-fruit with its candied fruit bits in a very white, plain base. And the local pizzeria cooked in a large oven heated with a burning oak fire one side - I have had pizza as good, but not often - such simple ones, bit of tomato thick sauce, olive oil, touch of cheese, olives or anchovies.

But my harvest is redfish. The redfish push the pogies up my bayou at night till the bait fish are just jammed in and then go amongst them with massive whooshes and the pogies leap into the air like silver rain. Last night I went out and caught 14 in an hour and a half, keeping 6 (18 inch length limit too - some were just legal and I let them go to get bigger ones, some were undersized.). The limit is 3 per day but my wife was with me so I got both limits. Today is a small farmers market and I have set two aside to give to some semi vegetarian friends who work it. If the redfish come back tonight I will get another 6. My father raised me with an ingrained sportsmanship way and still keep to limits when no one is watching.

Bad camera work as always because you cannot see the little screen in our sunlight, but showing two of last nights redfish, and some leopard frogs who are suddenly everywhere about the pond. Green and gray tree frogs, and toads and chorus frogs - even a yet unseen bull frog are a byproduct of the pond - so much wildlife uses the pond.

 

what a pretty little green frog Colne. Love that colour,
Jenny

 

It sounds like the fishing is going well at the moment Colne!

 

The dogs chased my chickens again - we all attacked them with little weasel getting in a good bite, and me a smack with a bamboo - but on big dogs like these Labrador retrievers it made little impression but running them off.

Shrimping is going mad here with throngs out netting smallish shrimp in large quantities, but I will not bother because in Alaska I had plenty of experience with combat fishing - where one stands shoulder to shoulder and are all in each others way and temperatures are hot. I am more into the aesthetics - because I can wait and get fewer, but by myself in an empty harbor as the sun comes up.

I have a redfish cooking and outside the night is falling. Over the surface of the bayou it looks like rain as the pogies touch the surface in their mass. Here and there they all leap as some fish frightens them. No huge whooshes of a striking red fish yet, but I expect they will show up, the bait is here thick as soup but fish are notoriously unreliable.

Maybe at 4 am I will go out with my net to see if the shrimp casting spots are vacant - I expect one of the more unknown ones will be. With shrimp running $3 a pound, and people apparently getting fifty pounds if at the best spot at the right time, well that is $150 worth. And shrimp is the national dish of the coast - it would be hard to explain how huge a part it is of the local cuisine.

The one obscure spot I tried 4 casts and I got a pint of small shrimp - not bad to have some for soups. Shrimp are mostly head and the amount of meat in that would be enough for a curry for one when the meat was all picked, but just spent 15 minutes. In a bit the huge shrimp arrive, but they are very evasive - mostly you know they were in by someone saying how they got a bunch the night before, then nothing for the week - and then the season over. I once got fifty pounds of the huge ones, jumbo prawn size, in two hours by being there when they were - and never have seen anything like that again.

 

No redfish - neap tides! I had forgotten (when sun and moon are at right angles to the earth so no tidal pull - and thus no tide) Our tides are just about 2 foot usually, but with the bayou about 3-4 foot deep that is a huge difference and the low tides are best fishing. The pogies began massing but then went up the bayou because the water stayed full with the winds onshore - no redfish.

I went out just now, well at - at 2 pm to a small bayou where a small bridge crosses the water - the water being 10 foot wide and two foot deep - and caught about 20 pounds of small shrimp in an hour. (I am back and it is 3:30 pm now) using the pogies I canned last fall as bait. (canned a case of quarts in the pressure cooker, 10 pounds pressure, 90 minutes)

I forgot to take the camera. But will be going back and will take some shots. It is a pretty spot, just half a mile from my house down a small side road. I had to come back because the sun was right on me off the water, and if you know the tropical sun, it will fry you. I am brown, but not to the level of mid day sun off the water. I did put on some sun block but netting means you are soaked with salt water and sweat so it was no use. (the sun comes under your hat brim off the water and is extremely powerful, like a tanning bed)

When my wife gets back from driving her truck we may go back netting but she has Ti Chi on the beach and may have to go right back out.

I boiled 18 eggs - home laid eggs are terrible for peeling, but I kept these for a couple weeks in the back of the fridge which makes it just possible. And I cooked some beets, saving the water, so it is time to pickle eggs and beets - salads are not the same without the sliced pickled egg and beet on the side.

 

This is Southern fried redfish, just rolled in seasoned corn meal and cooked in a small amount of oil (olive and marg here) I cut the thick parts of fillet to make two thinner ones - that is a huge pan and is one redfish, we have this all the time.

I popped out for another hour and picked up some more shrimp - my earlier claim to 20 pounds was way high, but about 30 pounds total now I have packed some for refrigerating. Fresh shrimp cannot be peeled. One must keep them a couple hours before cooking. Here is a one gallon tub (US) with some eggs to get the size - these shrimp are small although they may not look it. Shrimp are mostly head and shell with a small meat inside. Lots of work ahead - one has to know when to stop or will be overwhelmed.



Here is where I was just netting - about a quarter mile from here on another bayou. Tons of wildlife. I pretty much filled that cooler with shrimp and about 8 pounds of ice. That is my 8 foot net - 8 foot when one holds it by the center and the led weights lay on the ground.



My bayou is all pogies and few shrimp - but you could not net them anyway because one cast of the 8 foot net would catch 10 to 50 pounds of pogies. We have a lot of processing to do - but will have tons of shrimp. One is not allowed to sell or barter any seafood caught in any of these bays and bayous and rivers - and even in the gulf would have to have a commercial license to do so. But I will offer a bag of shrimp to several people - I just like fishing and would like an excuse for going out again and you can give it away. The big shrimp will come in before too long so best to not overdo it now - although I very often miss the big shrimp season because they come and go so erratically and quickly.

 

Sorry to belabor the shrimp - but............

This was taken about two hours ago - you can see both sides of the little bridge I am casting off, open bayou on one side, small marshy bayou on the other - pelicans were really working the mullet on the open side.



Edit - we are off to jump in the pond with the salty clothes.

 

Today planted out some very sickly kale, lettuce, and cauliflower seedlings I had started a wile ago but left in a tray with no drainage and almost drowned the lot. These are on the upper pond bed where I grew tomatoes that all got eaten by creatures. I also added a couple onions. Then I put in some beans at the chicken house, and some more beets.

And pickled some eggs and beets - our favorite. I used 4 average sized beets and 18 eggs of all sizes from banti to big chicken. The dark parts of the jars is beet pieces - cut into 1/8ths.



I am just in at 12;50 at night where I have spent a bit over an hour standing on my shell point under the light you see - it is a bright light, 375 watts, so lights up the water a bit. Flora and I were fishing and just enjoying the beauty of it all - the water is full of silver fish leaping in waves, a very rare swoosh of a predator though; most likely mullet frightening the pogies. The night is very warm, not a single mosquito, this time of year is biting bug free, stars and dark clouds out, bats, night herons, and the bayou itself is wonderful in the dark. I caught 1 undersized redfish, the fish had been feeding a couple hours earlier but I was watching a movie from the library. (Traffic)

A good salad needs things; I like a couple good olives (you are lucky for the great ones you get - ours are very poor in comparison) a small slice of pepperoni or hard salami, maybe some feta, the usual veg, and a pickled egg quartered with a piece of pickled beetroot.

So this was 1 1/2 cup (12 oz) beet cooking water, 1 cup white vinegar, T pickling spices, T sugar, t salt - the eggs and beets packed into jars tightly - the rest boiled a minute and then poured over the eggs and beet. leave in fridge a couple days and as long as weeks. The white showing will be purple by tomorrow, and purple all the way through in a week. Fantastic.

 

Before I go to bed I will post a gratuitous picture of Jack and shrimp on the porch



and beets



and our chicken eggs



(the egg carton is not because we bought them, but because we sell them)

 

What a wonderful bounteous harvest Colne. I enjoyed viewing all that.
And I wish you bon appetite.
We are both so lucky , in our own different ways, to live in a land where eating isn't a maybe or maybe not occurrence,
Jenny