Tomatoes and zucchini and pumpkins--oh my!

The garden has officially frozen over. I must say it's a relief.

But then, I'm kind of surprised it took this long. Usually we have killing frost by mid-September, and here it is, well into October. I did have the tomato plants covered Sunday night when it froze, but when the frost is heavy enough, it goes through the tarps anyway. Most interesting, the leaves were wilted looking and black but the tomatoes themselves didn't look affected. Monday afternoon I picked off anything that looked orangey to red and covered them again, as well as the pumpkins which I'd forgotten to cover Sunday. The ones tucked under lots of leaves had survived the first frost, but the ones on the outskirts were frost-bitten. The zucchini are simply toast, but I've eaten enough of them to do me for a few months anyway.

This afternoon my sis-in-law came down and picked off the remaining tomatoes and pulled the plants. She didn't have room in her car for a pumpkin as well, but she wants one. I've quadruple covered the three surviving pumpkins in hopes of finding them homes tomorrow. Hubby's sisses' all say they want one but keep not coming to pick them up.

We butchered one of the biggest on Saturday, though. Hubby rolled it over to the compost pile, hacked it up with an axe, and *gutted* it there. The chunks filled our wheelbarrow. Mom-in-law looked interested so we gave her a bunch of it, maybe a quarter. I spent the rest of the day prepping pumpkin for the freezer. Folks had told me the fastest way to do it was to bake the pieces and remove the peel afterwards. Way too slow. It took about 90 minutes to do one pan-full, and the wheelbarrow (which we drove right into the kitchen) had too much in it for that rate to be effective.

I kept a couple pots on the stovetop going as well as two large broiler pans in the oven. I peeled and cubed the pieces and put enough water to steam. The broiler pans I covered with foil. With all these pans going simultaneously it was all I could do to keep ahead prepping--and pureeing at the other end. (By then hubby was out in the field, plowing a pasture under.)

Adding water to pumpkin that way makes it kind of soggy, so the next step was to fill a couple of pillow cases with puree and tie them up from the beam in the kitchen ceiling with empty pots underneath to catch the drips. Not very beautiful, but it works.

45 2-cup packages of pumpkin now live in my freezer. There will be pumpkin recipes coming to the forum, trust me...

Really, I haven't forgotten about the forum, I've just been kinda...busy.