Here’s what jumped into jars over the last 10 days or so:

roasted tomato sauce: 47 pints

tomato juice: 13 quarts

salsa: 27 quarts, 2 pints

plain chopped tomatoes: 26 quarts, 10 pints

tomato and red wine sauce: 8 quarts

Summer Rambo and Ginger Gold applesauce: 80 quarts

sliced nectarines: 13 quarts

chopped nectarines: 39 quarts

sliced peaches: 31 quarts

And into the freezer:

nectarine wedges: 4 quarts

dried nectarines: 10 6-cup quarts

peach slices: 12 quarts

That was the main big push. Before August came along, my shelves were fairly bare. But now? Now they’re all red, yellow, and green.

Here’s the rest of the stuff we’ve put up:

spinach, frozen: 3 quarts, 6 pints

strawberries, frozen: 13 quarts

blueberries (from a vendor), frozen: 29 pints

red raspberries, frozen: 14 quarts, 5 pints

basil, frozen: 6 recipes butter-walnut pesto

Lodi applesauce: 54 quarts (22 frozen, 32 canned)

onions, caramelized, frozen: 2 pints, 6 half-pints

corn, frozen: 12 quarts, 14 ½ pints

blackberries, frozen: 16 quarts, 4 pints

chickens, frozen: 23

green beans, frozen: 21 5-cup quarts

Yet to come are more tomatoes, red raspberries, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and grapes.

Some notes to my 2012 self:

*Drying nectarines at lower temps for longer times results in chewier, more candy-like nectarines. Fast and furious gets ‘em too crispy.

*Good job watering the tomatoes regularly—no dry rot!

*I am so in love with this roasted tomato sauce that it’s practically sinful. I’m not sure 47 pints will be enough.

*When choosing between two local orchards, always go with the one that starts with O. The one that starts with an R lets you down every. single. time.

*Sun High peaches are really, really good. Maybe even better than nectarines.

*Leave a little extra space in the top of the jars when canning salsa—the raw veggies do a funky expansion thing that causes the insides to leak out and then you have to recan the jars and you know that that’s always a bummer.

*Tomato jam—make it.

*Cut-into-pieces chicken is easy to do and much more accessible for meal prep.

*I know you’re frustrated with green beans—3 separate plantings and 3 pounds of seed for a paltry 21 quarts, I know. But you need green beans, like 100 quarts. So keep trying.

*Plant ounces of spinach, like 2 or 3 of them. Be extravagant. Aim for at least 30 quarts.

*To make tomato juice, put the tomatoes through the Victrola cold! There’s no need to cook them first! The uncooked juice, despite separating out in the jars and looking kinda gross, has a fabulously fresh taste.

*Too much sugar in Lodi sauce will ruin it, doofus.

This same time, years previous: topping for apple crisp

This is what I’ve had for lunch for the past two days. It makes my heart sing.

I got the idea from the trailer for Pioneer Woman’s cooking show. It’s just chunked up tomatoes and minced onions with a vinegar, oil, and—this is key—brown sugar dressing. Plus, basil and parsley.

When I fix it for my lunches, I add feta and perhaps some green olives (black would be good, too), and I butter a piece of sourdough toast and use it like a spoon to scoop up the tomato chunks and to sop up all the juices at the end. Though yesterday I just picked up the bowl and poured the vinegary sweetness directly down my throat.

This dish is reminiscent of a tomato platter my mother used to make. Except that my clearest memories are not of her making it, but of my friend Amber’s mother, Ann, serving it at lunch (or supper) one day when we were visiting. I see the large kitchen table, a picnic table, planted squarely in the middle of the blue and white linoleum checkered kitchen floor, a quaint, well-worn cloth draped over the red wooden slats, little cloth napkins at each plate and jelly glass jars to drink out of. As for the tomatoes, the giant, juicy red and yellow slices were dotted with minced onion and celery, sprinkled with brown sugar and S&P, and drizzled with cider vinegar. Eye candy, they were.

(I’m cringing because Amber, Valerie, and Shelah, all sisters, read this blog and are probably yelling at their computer screens: YOU HAVE IT COMPLETELY WRONG, DORK. Oh dear. I can’t help it that I’m getting old and each new year stretches my memory just that much thinner. I do my best, promise.)

Maybe my mom learned to make this recipe from Ann? Maybe she moaned and smacked her lips and asked questions and took thirds so enthusiastically that that’s how I remember the tomatoes? Perhaps.

Anyway, Ree’s little tomato salad invoked all those old-fashioned flavors and sweet memories and now I’m slightly obsessed with it.

I’m going to feast on this salad as long as summer lasts. And that’s a fact.

Fresh Tomato Salad

Inspired by Ree of The Pioneer Woman

I do not measure for this salad. The tablespoon jargon is just to give you a feeling.

The list looks way longer than it actually feels. Don’t be daunted.

1 large, fresh, juicy red tomato, cut into large chunks

1-2 teaspoons minced onion

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

1-2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1-2 teaspoons brown sugar

salt

black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

1-2 tablespoons feta

2-3 olives, green or black, torn into bits, optional

Toss together the tomato and onion. Put the oil, vinegar, sugar, and S&P into a pint jar and shake till combined. Drizzle over the tomato. Sprinkle with the herbs, feta, and optional olives. Serve with buttered toast for scooping and sopping.

Serves one very happy camper.

This same time, years previous: buttery basil pesto, basil pesto

“Do your kids ever wish they could go to school?”

This question, most recently posed to me by a friend, is something that I often wonder myself. I mean, I happen to know the answer so I don’t actually wonder, but back when I started homeschooling I kind of assumed that the kids would go through spells of wanting to go to school and it’d be me against them and I’d have to either put my foot down and say This Is The Way It Is or I’d eventually cave and let them scamper off to join their peers.

However, they are extremely vocal about not wanting to go to school. They say things like, “I’m NEVER going to school.”

And then I think, Oh dear, I’ve totally brainwashed them!

This year, day one of real school (public school, that is, not our homeschool) found us sleeping in, eating breakfast at 9 am, and then jumping into the canner and staying there for the rest of the day. Mid afternoon I suddenly hollered, “Look at that! The bus!” (except it wasn’t the bus but I thought it was), and then I lapsed into a dreamy speech, “Do you guys realize that if you went to school this would be the first year that all of you would be out of the house? Do you know what that means? It means that I would’ve just spent the entire day in the house by myself. Alone, all by myself, doing whatever I wanted, all day long…”

Through my half-closed lids, I could see the children, each of them standing still, watching me closely, trying to comprehend what I was saying. Then my oldest tentatively, almost fearfully, asked, “Do you wish we were in school?”

I snapped my eyes open wide and said firmly, slowly, “No. I want you right here with me. I like hanging out with you guys.”

My son exhaled sharply (had he been holding his breath?) and muttered “Good.”

The moment gone, the kitchen was once again a blur of flying feet, flashing knives, and fruit.

But my heartstrings were wrung just a tiny bit because my son sounded so genuinely relieved. Like he was unsure of his place in our family, and actually believed that I might send him away—regardless of his preference—for just a few hours of coveted alone time.

I felt kind of flattered, too. My kids, social animals that they are, actually want to be here at home with boring old me. What a pleasant surprise.

It won’t always be this way, I know. Eventually they’ll be chomping at the bit to get out of this house and on with their lives. They’ll get jobs and buy cars and higher education and fall madly in love and leave me to go make their own nests. All that will happen, sure enough, but just because it will happen (and should happen, hallelujah!) doesn’t mean I have to rush it.

So I won’t. I’ll savor our mid-morning breakfasts and hodge-podge lunches with all of us crowded around the little kitchen table and these late summer nights where they run pell-mell through the yard shrieking their fool heads off.

These years are fast and furious, so saturated with both exhaustion and exhilaration that I can hardly comprehend it.

But that’s not going to keep me from trying.

This same time, years previous: chocolate malted milk frosting, nectarine cobbler, odds and ends