EATING FRESH ALL YEAR ROUND

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When we are ready to eat frozen vegetables they go directly from the freezer to the stove top. In a few minutes they are ready, having lost very little garden goodness in the process.

I have not covered drying. We have done very little of it. I mentioned corn for cornmeal and popcorn. Dry beans and peas are also pretty easy. We usually have some of both in the garden because I am not diligent in cleaning up garden plants when they go by If left alone the plants will dry and the pods left at the end of the season will dry along with the vines. These can be harvested, shaken or popped from the pods, and stored in jars. The peas should be split and the husks blown away leaving split peas for soup. I haven't done this so I'm going to leave you to your own theories on how best to do it.

Barbara dries herbs by collecting them at their peak, before flower, and hanging them from the kitchen ceiling. Once dry she crumbles them into various jars and cans she has collected over the years for the purpose.

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Battered and splattered books we have used over the years are Putting Food By by Ruth Hertzberg, Beatrice Vaughan, and Janet Greene (Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, VT); Keeping the Harvest by Nancy Thurber & Gretchen Mead (Garden Way Publishing, Charlotte, VT); Stocking Up, edited by Carol Stoner (Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA); Joy ofCooking by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker (N.A.L. Dutton, New York); and Ball Blue Book (Ball Brothers Co., Muncie, IN).

Each garden brings new successes and unexpected events that are not always wonderful. In all my years of gardening I have never ended a growing season feeling that there were no challenges left. There was even a year when I had a full-scale zucchini failure, so even us experts are occasionally caught with our pants down.

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