Gary just canned two more boxes of peaches we purchased from a local farmer. We got thirteen quarts out of it, plus some peaches that were just blanched, skinned and soaked in juice, for use on oatmeal. He canned about six more quarts than that, but five of the lids were too old and they failed to seal. We're still eating those peaches, which now live in the fridge until they're used up. As we love canned peaches, it's not too much of a hardship, though it would have been nice had the lids still been okay to use.
On the same night as the peaches, I canned another quart of pickles from mixed green and lemon cucumbers, and one quart of tomato juice. I've found that one quart of juice from our tomatoes will either make a great soup (with water added) or will cook down into a decent sauce for eggplant lasagna or vegetable spaghetti. It is stretching it a little to make one quart into enough sauce for a big lasagna--two quarts would probably be better--but in a pinch, it'll do. The good thing about the eggplant is that it has some of its own moisture, so the resulting juice makes up for the lack of extra sauce when cooking, especially if you bake it with the top on the pan. My younger daughter was wondering when we'd have pasta lasagna again, and I told her we'd do it during the winter months, when there are no eggplants to harvest. It's nice to be able to have a slice of Ciabatta bread with fresh butter with your lasagna and not feel bad about all the carbs. A person could actually eat eggplant lasagna, cheese and all, and still lose weight. A gluten-intolerant person could also eat eggplant lasagna. Granted, it's missing that pasta taste that most people are probably used to, but it's delicious anyway and not so drastically different from regular lasagna that it can't be recognized as one.
On a related note, the last eggplant we harvested from our garden was even larger than the one pictured earlier in this blog, and I've just pulled up a carrot worthy of the Findhorn project.
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