Market Recap and Weekend Preservation

Kevin and Carson joined me on my weekly outing to the Swartz Creek Farmer's Market yesterday. Unfortunately, due to the weather there weren't many vendors, so Kevin wasn't impressed. I was disappointed that the organic garlic lady wasn't there. I was planning to buy a bunch of her garlic since it was so fantastic when I tried it last week. I had plans to dry some to make my own garlic powder, as well as do some more serious cooking with it. I only have three cloves left from the three bulbs I bought last week, it was just so good. I did get some peppers - banana peppers mostly and a few more jalapenos to supplement my plant from our garden. I'm going to make pickled hot peppers either tonight or tomorrow night. Probably prep tonight and then cook and can tomorrow. Kevin also wanted some sweet corn, so we picked up a farmer's dozen of sweet corn, too. We'll see how it tastes. It was a little cheaper than the trusty favorite Eichelberg's, so if its good, then I'll probably get more of that next week to can some creamed corn for Kevin (he loves it, I think its disgusting). My roma tomatoes are starting to come in, so depending on how many we get this week, I'll possibly be canning a batch of salsa.

So if all goes as planned this week, I'm hoping to can the following:
- hot pickled peppers
- blueberry pie filling
- peach butter
- peaches in syrup
- salsa (if enough tomatoes come in)
- creamed corn (not until next Sunday though)

I didn't get much preserving accomplished this weekend, we just had too much going on. I dried some more cherry tomatoes. I'll have to wait till next week to get them in the olive oil, though, since the garlic lady wasn't there yesterday. But they'll keep just fine being dried already. I also dried another tray each of oregano, sage and thyme. I'll probably put a few trays of parsley in the dehydrator tonight. I did make up two batches of basil-pine nut pesto to freeze and I'm hoping to do another batch or two sometime this week. I grated some zucchini to freeze in 2-cup portions for zucchini bread this winter. I also got the remainder of my 10-pound box of blueberries frozen, though I'll be using up some of them this week to do the blueberry pie filling.

Lets hope I can get everything accomplished that I'm hoping to this week. I'm planning to go check out the farmer's market in Durand on Wendesday evening on my way home from work. I'm hoping to find peaches there so I can do the peach butter and peaches in syrup. Otherwise, I'll go check out the Fenton farmer's market on Thursday evening. Its going to be a busy week!