On Thursday morning I was up early and getting ready for a long day of cooking and food processing with my general helper. It was supposed to be a rainy day so I had planned to work inside. The rain didn’t start until noontime though. The color has really popped in the last couple days.
My son had grated up all the zucchini the day before. We guesstimated we had 5 batches of zucchini bread from it. So we got the first set of 2 into the oven.
When it came out we sat and had some warm with a cup of tea. We kept putting sets of 2 into the oven all morning. We ended up with 6 loaves. The recipe is here.
I’d had to send my helper out for more millet flour and while she was gone I sat on the phone and got appointments for gutter cleaning the end of November, for a covid test for the first of November, and tried to reach the window guy about the grills.
This was some of the harvest we needed to process: kale, Swiss chard, and leeks. I also had a big bowl of salad greens in the fridge, marigolds on the back porch, and zucchini.
When she got back, my helper started washing greens and I was packaging them. We got 6 of these big bags. Then we moved onto the bucket of kale. She was washing and tearing the big leaves into smaller pieces and I was packaging them to freeze in single servings. We got 11 bags of kale in the freezer.
Next up was the bucket of Swiss chard. I planned to use 12 packed cups of torn leaves in Bacon and Swiss Chard Pasta.
I hadn’t made this in a couple years. It was one of the few “greens” recipes my husband would eat.
My helper washed and tore leaves and packed the jar. I’d laid out the ingredients but by the time we got to make it, it was noon already. She got the bird bath from the New Herb garden and I washed it up and put it away. I thought she would be going then.
But she said she would stay and make the pasta off the clock because she liked cooking in other peoples’ kitchens. So I sat down for a bit while she started the bacon cooking.
Then I remembered the marigolds on the back porch. They had wilted overnight which would make processing them harder. So I decided to get it over with and sat at the table processing them while she cooked. I got 3 trays for the dehydrator going.
We sat and had the pasta for lunch and then she left, taking the extra loaf of zucchini bread for Tom’s family, where she was heading next. She had also taken a whole measure of grated zucchini and was going to make another loaf for herself.
We hadn’t used up but half of the Swiss chard in the bucket and hadn’t gotten to the leeks.
I was exhausted and spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch and was in bed by 7PM.
Friday my window lady comes at 8AM as does my helper friend. I have to prep for doing windows, do the milk order, and set up my helper friend to process the leeks before he goes out to the Big garden to resume cleaning it out. Another Chaos Friday...