I Feel Like a Squirrel

At some point over this weekend, Nate and I were looking out the window, watching a squirrel run along the fence with a good two or three nuts precariously clasped in its mouth. Nate wanted to know where the squirrel was going, so I told him it was probably going to stash those nuts away for the winter. Doing the human version of that was pretty much how I spent much of the rest of the weekend.

I husked two dozen ears of corn, stripped off the kernels, blanched it all, and packed it into the freezer. I harvested a bunch of kale from the garden, where it was once again overshadowing the smaller greens around it, steamed it and packed that into the freezer. I made tons of pesto, both the standard Italian basil variety and my own parsley-mint version, and stashed all that away in the freezer for quick meals to come.

While I was at it, I cooked a big batch of black beans in the crock pot (plugged outside on the deck to avoid heating up the kitchen unnecessarily) to replenish the stock I like to keep in the freezer and also to provide the basis for a quick meal later this week (to provide more time for working in the garden and putting up additional food). Oh, and I harvested a load of eggplant from the garden along with some tomatoes and cooked it up into sort of a stew with some garlic and onion, to be embellished later with additional ingredients for quick meals. Again, some went into the fridge for later this week and some went into the freezer. Whew.