A Jarful of Summer...

I find this a kind of in-between time at the produce department of local grocery stores. It's well after the fall harvest here in Connecticut, and a bit before the fall harvest in the Southern Hemisphere, so the best we can hope for, produce-wise, is items that store. Unfortunately, many fruit and vegetable varieties that store (and ship) well don't taste like what we get at the farmstand during our local growing season. We can rely on traditional New England veggies, such as potatoes, onions, root crops and the like, for locally grown items, but we long for the tastes from our vegetable gardens of August.

Here is where canning comes into play. I love canning. I love the production of it, the gathering of bushels of veggies, the cleaning out of the kitchen to make room for all the equipment and the cooling jars, the laughter and messiness. Plus, to crack open a jar of bread and butter pickles, or dump a quart of September tomatoes into a saucepan, is like sneaking a peak back through the calendar to revisit summer days. I can almost hear the crickets chirping and sprinklers hissing when I arrange the dilly beans into a nice serving dish. And there is that feeling, when you pull those canned goods off the pantry shelf, that "I did this myself," the pride of taking time and pennies to put away enough food to feed my family through the endless New England winter. Re-using the year's pasta sauce and jelly jars makes it a very "green" venture, too.

Our oldest son, Evan, is in his own apartment, with our middle son, Christopher. Evan, like his mother, loves a good bargain at the store, and enjoys collecting wild fruits and berries to put up for later enjoyment. Last summer, he and his grandmother canned jelly that they made from Autumn-olive, an introduced species that grows unchecked along many highways and country roads. We are already planning several seasonal foraging and canning ventures to supplement our winter pantries and create some high-quality family time for ourselves.
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I promised my littlest one some homemade tomato soup the other day, when it was near zero outside and we needed a lunch that reminded us of summer breezes. Grilled cheese and hot chocolate completed the trifecta of comfort foods. I used store-bought canned tomatoes that I had stocked up on through coupon shopping, but your own home-canned tomatoes would make a tasty alternative. If you don't want so many seeds, you can run the homemade ones through a food mill before putting them in the soup.

Fire-roasted Tomato Soup
(adapted from www.bettycrocker.com)

1 T olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 cans (15 oz each) fire-roasted tomatoes, undrained
1 T chicken bouillon granules
2 cups water
1 T dried basil
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup whipping cream

1n a 3-quart saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly, until onion is crisp-tender.

Stir in tomatoes, bouillon granules, water, 1 T. of the basil, sugar, and red pepper flakes. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat; cover and simer 15 minutes. Remove from heat; pour mixture into a large, heatproof bowl and cool about 15 minutes.

Place half of the tomato mixture in the jar of a blender. Cover; blend until pureed. Return to saucepan. Repeat with remaining mixture. Heat over medium heat until hot. Remove from heat; stir in cream and remaining basil.
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