Cold Weather

Lemons

We've got a frost alert for the next few nights. This means various tender plants need to be protected from the cold, mostly citrus. This evening I went about covering and insulating my two lime plants and two lemon plants. I also picked most of the lemons from the lemon tree that bears fruit. Last year the fruit froze and fell off in a cold snap. This year I was looking forward to harvesting lemons on an as-needed basis. Now I have a basket full of lemons that will need some sort of processing. I could juice them and freeze the juice or I could make lemon marmalade. I love the idea of doing some of each.

I started making some green tomato jam yesterday, and it is resting before I'll cook it up some more and then process it in half-pint jars. Since water bath canning is so energy intensive I could do a batch of marmalade and process them all on the same day.

Thanksgiving day in the USA is on Thursday, November 25 this year, and I'm thinking I'll make a pumpkin pie using one of the pie pumpkins I grew this year. I'm going to brine two organic chickens on Wednesday and then on Thursday I'll roast them in the oven. One will be stuffed with tomato and feta from my Greek cookbook, and the other will be unstuffed.  We'll have mashed potatoes with lots of butter, perhaps some pan gravy, collards from the garden (which will be nice and mellow from the frost) and perhaps a few other things. I enjoy cooking with things that I've grown. The pie pumpkin and collards in this case. A few weeks ago I made some pumpkin cannelloni with one of the French heirloom pumpkins I roasted and some tomato sauce I made in September, and had in the freezer.