Green Tomatoes: Yes, I Can!

I had to leave them behind. My babies, my jewels, my tomatoes.

Having booked an 8-day, out-of-state vacation back in August, I never dreamed I'd still be waiting for most of my tomatoes to ripen two days before I left in mid-October. Unwilling to leave them to the rapidly cooling Fall temperatures, I cut the tomatoes off of the plants leaving a little bit of the vine attached. The ones that had begun to blush were deposited in a brown paper bag in hopes that they would ripen while I was away. But what to do with the rest--the green "rocks" that were the considerable balance of the crop?

To call them rocks is a bit insulting. They did their best with what we were given, after all. But what to do ....fried green tomatoes? Chutney? No, pickles; firm, crunchy and slightly sweet ice box pickles!

The basic recipe (see below) is hot brine poured over cut up vegetables. I decided to toss in the handful of yellow wax and Jalapeno peppers I'd manage to grow in another Topsy Turvy planter along with some garlic. Mission accomplished, I slid nearly two quarts of green tomato pickles into the refrigerator and finished packing my bags.

Nine days later I returned to find pickles so vinegary that they were practically inedible. But I wasn't yet defeated: I strained out the pickles reserving the liquid, put them back in the jar and diluted the pickling liquid with 1/3 water. They were much better after only a day. Lesson learned: taste the pickling liquid BEFORE you pour it in. It needs to be able to stand alone.

Incidentally, the tomatoes in the brown bag were red and ready to eat by the time I returned from vacation. Though they were not a flavorful as the ones that had time to ripen on the plant, they still tasted considerably better than grocery store tomatoes. And trust me, they didn't last long. Well worth the effort.

So in conclusion, yes, it seems I can can.

BASIC ICE BOX PICKLE RECIPE

2 C white vinegar
2 C water
1/4 C kosher salt
Sugar to taste
2 T pickling spice (Schilling brand, or your choice of whole spices)
4-5 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed slightly with the flat of a knife to release the flavor
Vegetables, cubed, sliced, speared, or whole

Combine vinegar, water, salt, sugar and pickling spice in saucepan, adjusting flavors to your taste. As you bring the liquid to a boil, prepare garlic and vegetables, filling jar(s) nearly to top. Pour boiling pickling liquid over vegetables to top of jar and allow to cool before covering and placing in refrigerator.

Pickles are ready to eat after a few hours refrigeration. They will not keep indefinitely, so plan to eat them within 6 weeks.

Garden Tomatoes: The Jewels in the Crown

When people say that the only way to get good fresh tomatoes is to grow them yourself, believe them. Since I am a notorious houseplant slayer (I actually killed a cactus once), I have shied away from growing any food more complicated than snap peas for years. But having some time on my hands this year, I decided to give in to the tomato hunger and try growing my own Roma and Burpee Big Boy tomatoes from nursery starts.

I may have possibly picked the worst growing season in years to become a novice tomato farmer. After an unseasonably warm February, Seattle settled back into a cold Spring and tardy Summer. So I decided to try out those crazy Topsy Turvy Tomato planters you see on t.v. They're supposed to be foolproof BTW, but that is not actually true: you can over water tomatoes by following the product directions, causing black spots and rot to form on the plants. I learned that it's a far, far better thing to refresh a slightly parched plant than to have to amputate branches to contain the spread of fungus.

The garden, located behind the palace, is semi-shady. Nevertheless, the planters produced their advertised greenhouse effect with the limited sunlight and this helped to compensate for the otherwise cool Summer temperatures. The large "starts" were planted in early June, and flowers and then fruit formed by late August.

I did finally get some true, flavorful Roma tomatoes out of the deal by OCTOBER. (The Big Boy variety just didn't get the time/heat they needed to produce much of a crop though I found a use for the shiny green rocks later.*) The true vine ripe Roma's may have looked like their grocery store relatives and probably cost me about four times more per pound to grow, but they sure tasted different. The good kind of different. Needless to say, I hoarded them like the treasures they were!

*Next time: Green Tomatoes: Yes, I Can!

How long am I supposed to keep these tax records?

Good question, to which there seems to be no one answer or opinion, but always a disclaimer. It's understandable; the IRS will do what the IRS is going to do, and what you hang onto is all to do with your comfort level with that. So please consult your personal tax advisor with any doubts you may have as to what I'm about to share. I can say that, having used a professional tax preparation service for years, it's worth every penny. They keep me out of trouble, and their modest fees are almost always offset by what they keep me from overpaying.

The first thing you need to know is that your personal Federal income tax returns can be randomly audited only up to three years after the date you filed the return. So writes Consumer Reports.org in their February 2010 article entitled “Conquer the paper piles: What documents to keep, what you can toss—and when.” The article goes on to explain that if you are found to have under-reported more than 25 percent of your gross income, the government has six years to collect the tax or start legal proceedings. Therefore, the article advises keeping personal tax records for 7 years. The entire article is well worth reading and may be found at:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/money/personal-investing/conquer-the-paper-piles/overview/index.htm

A great deal more besides tax records are covered, including the efficacy of personal electronic document storage. Identity theft and crime in general are on the rise, making your personal documents a target like never before. Scanners don't cost much these days and neither do personal shredders. Having had my personal documents pawed over during a residential burglary last year, I wish I'd de-crapped it all long ago. It's not as if the scanner and shredder were taking up much space either. The unnecessary paper was taking up more.

Incidentally, cross-cut shreddings are not recyclable; it's something to do with the shortness of the fibers. Consider composting them as an alternative.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep. And a lot of yard waste to pick up before I sleep.

I don't know if you know this, but I control the weather. Yes, I can make the wind blow. All I have to do is make a concerted weekend effort to clean up my wooded queendom and, inevitably, there will be a windstorm within 2 days, 3 tops. Down come tree branches, leaves, and assorted messiness from the trees (and sometimes the trees come down too). The Palace grounds never look cared for for more than a day or so.

The royal closets can wait, but the yard can't. That greenwaste bin gets picked up every two weeks whether there's anything in it or not, and the lawn grows so long as the rains do fall. I find that I resent the time yard work takes away from battling the household crap pileup, and have been working for several years to reduce the amount of it.

The storm wrack is the price I pay for living in the woods, and I accept that. The woods were here first. The lawn is another story. Who was it that first thought that lawn in the forest was a good idea? Was it a golfer? Was it the moss killer manufacturers? (It seems to just to amuse the moss, makes the lawn ugly and leaves a considerable hole in the royal treasury.)

I've researched and identified three ideas that I hope will permanently reduce time spent on lawn maintenance:

1. Electric mulching mower

2. Environmentally friendly Eco Lawn (front yard)

3. Replace backyard lawn (2/3rds of total lawn area) with eco-friendly rain garden and planter beds

I've had the mower for two and a half seasons, and it's working out pretty well. It's a little wimpy when the grass is damp. But it works, is quiet, and unlike a pull mower, can be started easily.

The Eco Lawn was planted last fall. It needs some weeding and overseeding to fill in a few thin spots, but is otherwise thriving. The seed mixes, developed at OSU specifically for the Pacific Northwest, are low maintenance, low growing, and drought tolerant. With properly amended soil, they are also supposed to crowd out moss due to their suitability for this climate over that of conventional lawn seed. I planted the shade tolerant Rough & Ready mix that requires little supplemental irrigation or fertilizer once established, and is better suited to acidic tree-hung soil. For more information, see http://www.protimelawnseed.com/ .

The back yard rain garden and planter beds are just my dream of Camelot at this point, but I have hopes. Stewardship Partners is offering free rain garden workshops in the Seattle Metro area throughout the months of April and May. For more information, check out the events calendar on their web site (link provided under this blog's “Resources” list).

It's Saturday morning, it's April, and the sun is shining brightly. Time to get outside, top up the yard waste bin, and charge up the lawn mower. Greenwaste crap, say your prayers.

Do Styrofoam peanuts breed?

They breed like Tribbles, at least at my house.

My housemate (a.k.a. the Prince Consort) is a dedicated packrat with a penchant for ordering from eBay. Hardly a day goes by that one or more parcels, small to bulky, are not delivered to the Palace. I'm pretty certain the mail carrier hates us.

Since TPC is an Uber Slob whose ample designated closet and drawer space is destined to remain unused forever, this situation has resulted in a lot of used packing material freely scattered among his considerable crap collection. Styrofoam peanuts, foam preforms, bubble wrap ….that stuff takes up an unbelievable amount of cubic space and it's not something you can in good conscience just throw away.

Thank God for the Craig's List “Free Stuff” classifieds.

When I finally started insisting we store the peanuts, foam, etc. in 50-gallon trash bags and recycle the cardboard cartons, a light went on. It was Christmas break and since I had some free time, I placed an ad on Craigslist.org. Within 2 hours, someone claimed the free packing material—a nice retired couple with a small china and glassware collectibles business. They showed up with a minivan that same day. And just so you don't think I'm exaggerating about the packrat clutter problem, that van was stuffed full when they left my house with the loot. The cardboard cartons were flattened and placed alongside the recycle bin, and that was pretty large stack too.

These days, TPC is limited to no more than two 50-gallon bags of packing material at one time, which is plenty for any shipping or returning he needs to do. And yes, the peanuts are still breeding in the dark corners of my basement. I periodically shine a light on them and place a Craig's List ad. “They're on the front porch. Don't even knock: just take them,” I say.

First post

Like any modern working woman, I tend to accumulate more stuff than I will ever use again. I've gotten better about purging over the years, but it still manages to pile up until critical mass is reached. With a period of unemployment looming, I listed out some goals for myself so as not to be wasting this precious Me time:

1. Exercise daily
2. Learn daily
3. Seek opportunities daily
4. Decrap daily
5. Sell $#!+ weekly
6. Reduce paper backlog weekly
7. Add value to home monthly
8. Cook real food a lot

At 2 weeks post-employed and counting, I realize that #4 should have been ranked first (and isn't it all exercise, really?). Funny how all of the other goals somehow came to fall under the umbrella of the De-Crap Mission too. Hmm. That sounds like an excuse for not exercising again. C'mon cellulite and love handles; time to go walkies (sigh).

These posts are to share what I've learned and continue to learn about responsible de-crapping in the Seattle Metro area. We are fortunate in having local government and organizations that sponsor and actively promote green waste disposal programs at the homeowner level. Now how to keep it from piling up in the first place.

Next time: Do Styrofoam peanuts breed?