the end of the salad days
Actually, the title of this post isn't quite accurate: we haven't been eating salad for a while now. However, this evening I finished the last of the summer's tomatoes, just a bit later than last year. It was delicious on a homemade bagel with cream cheese and salmon spread... thanks Leah! I brought in a whole bushel (speaking metaphorically: I don't actually know how big a bushel is) of green tomatoes before the first hard frost, and they've been hanging out on the buffet since then. Many of them rotted in whole or part, unfortunately, thanks to either preexisting blemishes or our complete lack of any idea of how to store them properly. Still, we ate a goodly number: more than we expected once the cold weather arrived. And next year we'll do even better!
We also still have some carrots as well, now that I think of it, so my title is even less apt than I thought. I just can't resist the easy joke. In all seriousness, though, it's pretty cool to still have garden vegetables in December without any real effort to preserve them. Imagine what we could do if we actually worked at it! We're a long way from self-sufficiency, sure, but baby steps!