Mick Kelly's freezer may be the secret to surviving winter (nuclear or otherwise)
The veg patch feels like a hard task master right about now, churning out seemingly never-ending gluts of produce. There’s a level on which I feel grateful for this abundance, particularly when it’s all laid out in big beautiful trays, buckets or bowls. But there’s another level in which I feel “ENOUGH ALL READY”, particularly when said trays, buckets or bowls of produce have been hanging around the kitchen for 3 days and I know I have to do something with them.
Specifically, it’s the tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and French beans that are unwaveringly relentless at the moment and no amount of chutneying, spiralizing, saucing or freezing seems to get to the bottom of them. The porch (a cool place that’s ideal for storing veg) is full of produce at the moment and I know that after I finish writing this, I should really saucify another 6 or 7 baking trays of tomatoes for the freezer. And after that, I should really go out and harvest another massive batch of tomatoes that need picking too. By the way, if saucify is not a word, it totally should be.
There’s a simple way to reduce the incessant flow of vegetables, and that’s to sow less of them. But sowing less of things is not something that I would ever really consider. I know if I did that, I will just be annoyed with myself sometime after Christmas when I go hunting in the freezer for a lovely home-grown tomato sauce for a pizza and see that we’ve run out. But I reserve the right to whinge and moan a little at this time of the year.
Anyway, there are obvious upsides to all the work, albeit that the gratification is somewhat delayed. At last count, there are now 40 bags of passata in the freezer which by my nerdish reckoning should take us well in to the late spring of next year (using one a week). Mrs. Kelly just finished making a batch of cucumber pickle (recipe below) which is one of the handiest sandwich fillers known to man, and if there is a better accompaniment to a pair of good quality sausages and a decent Waterford blaa, I’ve yet to find it.
We’re spiralizing the divil out of courgettes. Spiralizing gets dismissed regularly as a rather laughable hipster fad, which is unfair, because actually it’s unbeatable as a way to use up serious quantities of courgettes (and there are always serious quantities of courgettes). Tonight’s dinner of ‘courgetti’ with (you’ve guessed it) tomato sauce, will see our family of four munch unwittingly through 2 marrow-esque courgettes.
We’re also freezing French beans like there’s a flood, war or some other class of pestilence coming down the tracks (and let’s be honest, there could be). 30-odd bags of them in the freezer will join many a quiche, stir-fry or Sunday roast during the Hungry Gap next year.
It’s worth considering amidst the belly-aching, that though the harvest currently seems endless, there will of course be an end at some point. We will rue that day when it comes.