Fall harvest thread

Makes me think people knew their bible a little better back in 1883. Funny, when I think of "Lyle's Golden Syrup" I always picture the MGM lion on the front of the can.

My father's comfort food, Michelle, included fried bananas, and (not in concert) peanut butter and spanish onion sandwiches.

Yes, I had those in Cuba for the first and last time about 40 years ago. Good stuff!

Maple syrup costs about the same as whisky these days, at least around these parts.

I think I'll stick to pouring Wiser's Deluxe on my pancakes... [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

M. Spector: [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

[ 19 September 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

I paid an arm and a leg for a can of maple syrup in the market downtown Ottawa this summer. Quebec syrup so it was good enough for moi. They really know how to do pancake breakfasts in Trois Rivieres. Only they don't resemble pancakes i knew as a boy in Ontario du Nord.

Ayup, I remember Lyle's on porridge in the morning. And butter tarts. MMmm, the best.

I go to me grand's in Maltby Yorkshire when I was a kid, and sure enough, there's a can of iron tit on the table and Cadbury's cakes for 4 o'clock tea. Oh aye
[img]http://www.carnationmilk.ca/images/product_evaporated.jpg[/img]

[ 19 September 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

I gotta make more beer for the slugs, I have plums in the fridge ready for processing, figs ripening so slowly that I do not think they will make it. Can I take them off and let them ripen indoors?
The black grapes are being attacked by starlings and possibly racoons even though they are not yet fully ripe.
Beans are nearly done too. I am going to try for rhubarb again. (To harvest it) I will be a guinea pig for oxalic acid.
O yeah, runner beans. Great when they are green and seeds are small. BUT be careful when the seeds are fully ripe, they have to be cooked.
The ripe runner seeds contain an alkaloid that can make you sick.
I had a bad gardening year cos I was so lazy. But I have lots of jam and canned beans and hopefully I can keep the slugs down over the winter. Victoria is suitable for winter gardening.
Brian

This year our first day of fall (today...) equals our first day of frost. Going down to -2C here overnight, so I've been pulling all the lettuce out of the garden, and the last of the tomatoes. Gave away 20+ heads of baby leaf and Meslun lettuce, along with lots of tomatoes, carrots, and rutabaga, to friends and neighbours - many of them have done things for me and refuse payment for their services, so giving away some veggies is okay with me.

I have a table set up for tomatoes in my living room facing the sun. Fortunately they're not all ripening at once. I can't decide whether I will try tomatoes again next year or not - our growing season is only from mid-July to mid-September, and September is slow because of the cold.

Root veggies, on the other hand, do great here. I have been enjoying the best carrots of my life this year - from my garden!

Lettuce does really well here, as does cabbage. My neighbours grow ridiculously large heads of cabbage, then salt the leaves and sell them for extra income. I haven't tried cabbage yet because they take far more space than I want to give them.

I'm not sure what I will do with the (small) greenhouse next year. Maybe spinach and cucumbers.

A while back I saw a feature on the Tabasco company, and they allowed the film crew to document the process, if not all the ingredients. It was interesting.

This reminded me that I always wanted to find a recipe for home made "HP" sauce. I just googled it, and it doesn't look too difficult. Most of the recipes don't include all the stuff in the Wikipedia description, but they do have proportions I can use as a start.

[ 25 September 2008: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

Our tastes change over time. For years and years, I used to crave acidic foods. Anything with vinegar, for example. Now, not so much.

For about a decade or more, I couldn't even think of eating an egg-- unless it was a pickled egg. Eating an egg would make me nauseous to the point of vomiting.

For the past couple of years I was unable to digest peanut butter, after eating it with no problem all my life. Recently, a few test sandwiches were processed okay, so it seems I can go on enjoying it.

I have a half baked hypothesis that when our body needs certain nutrients-- or has too many of them-- we crave certain foods, or become inexplicably adverse to others.

I think that is more in evidence when we are younger, but I think it continues through our lives.

quote:

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Originally posted by Blairza:
It's hard sometimes living in Paradise.

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Ha! [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

I'd be deeply envious, except I can't stand the heat.

Ah, Ontario plonk. Used to buy it by the gallon - it made a nice mouthwash. [img]tongue.gif" border="0[/img]

Boom Boom, you are decades out of date. There are excellent Ontario wines now - yes, especially the whites (reds will take a bit more global warming), some quite pricey, some decent accessible ones. I always pick up a bottle or two when I'm in Ottawa.

And not all parts of Northern California are particularly hot. Some mountainous areas, or hilly ones by the sea, are always springlike. If they weren't in the US, and if they hadn't paved over most of paradise with car-centred development, it would be a wonderful place to be.

I harvested grapes last week - the first time they were both bigger than blueberries and NOT eaten by deer. Currently harvesting apples. Garlic planting in a few weeks. Still have tomatoes ripening in the greenhouse. We are having a relatively sunny and mild fall. Wild mushrooms are bumper this year. [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

quote:

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Originally posted by lagatta:
[b]Boom Boom, you are decades out of date. There are excellent Ontario wines now - yes, especially the whites (reds will take a bit more global warming), some quite pricey, some decent accessible ones. I always pick up a bottle or two when I'm in Ottawa. [/b]

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We're partial to a Pele Island Gamay Noir, (zwiegelt) that has a flying squirel on the label. I think the current vintage on the market is 2006, and it's good. There was a bad year, I'm guessing 2004, where we bought a bottle with the usual anticipation and thought "what the hell is this?". And here, I thought all this talk about "such and such was a good year" was just wine snob talk. But yes, good and bad years can be detected by an uneducated, working class pallet. [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

quote:

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
[b]I have about ten clusters of grapes on my Valiant vine. I pick a few every couple of days, and am always surprised that they taste just like Welch's grape juice, even if the grapes are barely bigger than Saskatoons.

The kiwis are not much bigger, and haven't ripened very much at all. They aren't any bigger than they were two months ago.

I've had to cover the garden for the third night in a row. It got down to -2 last night.[/b]

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I forgot, I do have tons of grapes in my back yard. Wild grapes. They aren't sour, but tend to be sweet. But, they are small, and all seed and skin. I have them for privacy, aesthetics and for the birds who enjoy them well into the winter. We have the phone and cable lines running in the back yards here, and the wild grape has climbed the polls and are now running down the wires. It creates a wall of green as a backdrop.

One does have to watch how they grow though, to keep them off bushes and trees you like. I have to use a ladder twice a season to make sure my lilac bushes don't get smothered by them.

They are also embracing an accidental Chinese (more likely Siberian) Elm that grows behind my garage. I hope the grape vine kills it. What a pain in the ass it is to get rid of one of those trees when they sprout in a place you don't want them!

Hmm. Maybe Chinese Elm would be another good candidate for coppicing? Not sure how it burns.

Anywho. I am astounded, al-Qa'bong to hear you are growing Kiwi. I thought Kiwi demanded very specific growing conditions, like morning fog and stuff.

Are you doing anything special? Or am I completely wrong thinking that they couldn't grow outside a greenhouse here?

I'd love to have a tree or two of those.

Oh, I almost never make spelling flames, but this one I could not resist, because I have "Pallet" in my birth name. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]

good one! [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
I don't do much that's special, other than see that the plants are covered by lots of snow during the winter.

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I'm curious - what growing zone are you in? Here, I'm in 3A. Yours must be 6 or higher, I presume.

Not one ripe tomato.
Zero. zilch. nada.
I planted 4 San Marzano paste tomato plants in my front garden (among my roses). They're an organic heirloom variety, a bit slow to ripen, and really slow this year.
But I have seen them turn orange... and then *poof* they're gone.
Could be critters. But I would expect a few broken leaves and stems if it were critters.
I have some green tomatoes that have obviously been chewed by squirrels or raccoons: it's obvious that they've tasted them, and not liked the taste too much.

I suspect it's two-legged critters.

So much for front-yard veggie growing in Toronto. I think I'm going to harvest green (if I can do that -- they should be a fair size before harvested).

Time to dig out some of those recipes I linked to for Boom Boom...

We have very cool summers here, I wish they were just a tad warmer, say 28C. I think our warmest day this year was 22C, but my memory ain't what it used to be.

Hey Tommy and Boom Boom, I thought the Working class Pallet line was a pun. I've been in the hospitality industry in the wine country for about a decade and I've become quite a wine snob, and the biggest wine snobs I know are all working mooks like me who sell the stuff. The good year bad year is the truth however some vintages are awefull upon release and then age gracefully like the '98 Sonoma and Napa Cabs that were so despised in 2000 but sharply re-valued in 2003. Pinot alas does not age like bordeux. I've tasted some fine Ice wine, does anybody in Canada make fine brandy?

Yeah, but we grow wheat only in the summer.