Relish, applesauce and oven roasted tomatoes

We had a busy weekend of cycling, a trip to the 104th street market and putting up some food for winter.

Our friends Lara and Ryan offered us some apples from their tree so we brought home two bags. Jennifer pitched in to peel, core and quarter 36 cups of apples (my hero!) while I sauced them.

We got just over four litres of apples sauce and the remainder was delicious on oatmeal in the morning. While the prep was a bear, this was perhaps the easiest of the fruits to can and I would do applesauce again in a minute.

I also wanted to make relish with some peppers and cucumbers we picked up at the market. I ran out of celery and ended up out in the garden in my boxer shorts hacking down one of the four celery plants Jess and I grew this year.

I've never grown celery (or even seen it fresh from the garden) so this was an adventure. The knife in the photo is 12 inches long and I've glad I had it to severe the huge tap root that the plant had. I'd definitely grow this again next year.

The fresh celery was quite a lot more flavourful than the store bought (which might be blanched a bit?). After two hours of prep cutting (again by Jenn) she went out and I sweated it out in the kitchen (it was 32C outside).

We made six 500ml lars of relish and it tastes really quite good. Jenn, who is not a relish fan, was even impressed! We also made 48 oven-roasted tomatoes this weekend--half we're eating and half I froze. We had some on a bagette (with basil and asiago) for lunch today on a hike and it was fantastic.

Up next: As my vacation comes to a close, I'm checking off the things I wanted to preserve and try quite quickly. If I get ambitious today, I will make soup stock while the bread is rising. Tomorrow we're having a corn roast with potatoes and perhaps the little pan fryer squash I've been growing in corn patch. Maybe I make some salsa on the weekend. We'll also need to dig some potatoes as the plants are dying back.