As I have done for the last few years, I tagged a few days onto Fall Break and came to France. I have a batch of papers to grade, a batch of blog post drafts to review, and three half days of one-on-one meetings to discuss those things (instead of classes), but the payoff is 10 days in France. When I booked this trip in August, Mia was sick with a stubborn urinary infection and Andrée had an arthritis flare-up that left her in a wheelchair, so the trip seemed really necessary both to see them and to support Walter. But here we are two months later Andrée is up and about and enjoying outings and walking in the autumn sun, and Mia is not only pretty much herself but has gained weight. So the trip gets to be basically just fun.
And a little work.
The tomatoes are still ripening and soooo sweet; the basil is once again a row of thigh-high bushes (albeit with long flower stems); there are sweet and hot peppers and so many little popping peppers I think I’ll need to pickle them. Then there are black walnuts to harvest/glean. The rest of the lavender needs to be gathered. Everything needs to be weeded. I thought almost everything would need to be pruned, but in fact that is an early spring task to promote spring growth. So aside from work in the kitchen there’s not much to do. But I can always cook!
All that Basil
- Basil salt.
In the summer I planned to make basil salt and got as far as buying large containers of the gray salt (Guérande) so prized by Walter and Andrée, and the lighter Fleur de sel de l’Ile de Ré in honor of my brother and sister who both love to vacation there. Both are very salty so I wasn’t sure that either would work and in the end I ran out of time. I harvested basil from 4 plants and started with that. The “recipe” is grind up equal measures of salt and basil, dry on wax paper-lined baking sheets, and once totally dry put into containers.
√ Done. I think it is too salty, but we can try it and maybe gift some.
2. Green Goddess Dressing (with basil)
Not as green as its sister made with parsley, but very tasty, especially on a tomato-fennel-avocado salad. I used 1 cup of basil leaves to 1/2 cup yoghurt and 1/2 cup mayonnaise, and added 3-5 cloves of garlic, 3 or 4 anchovy filet, a handful of chives, and 1/4 cup lemon juice, whizzed it all in the blender until the leaves broke down, and then added about half a cup of parmigiano and it was “just what the doctor ordered.” We put it on a green salad with eggs, and tomato. You can add mustard of all kinds or go with all yoghurt depending what’s in your fridge. Next time I might go with 1.5 cups of basil. Or a mix of basil and parsley.
√ Done. It still doesn’t taste like the amazing dressing Giselle used to make at the pizza place, but still a treat.
3. Pesto
Of course. I had enough to make a few jars of pesto (4 in fact, each enough for a bag of pasta). I used Marvi’s recipe as always [see August 3, 2026] and we had pasta and pesto for dinner. I also spread some on toast and had it with a tomato, fennel, avocado, and cucumber salad with green goddess dressing. Amazing.
√ Done. But there are still eight more plants to harvest. . . .
And the tomatoes
Unbelievably sweet and tasting exactly as one imagines tomatoes. I can’t bring myself to freeze them, so we just eat them with every meal. Alone. With dressing. With a little olive oil. Or with basil salt. Sliced on toast on top of a smear of pesto and two anchovy fillet is actually the thing I could eat every day. They are smaller than the August harvest, but the flavor is so much more intense. I guess I will freeze some.
Green tomato jam
Nadine made some amazing green tomato jam last year. Her family didn’t much care for it, so we took it all off her hands and devoured it over the next few weeks served with everything from salmon to cheese (like a chutney). I plan to pick the green tomatoes near the ground that are less likely to ripen and try it myself. Need to get Nadine’s recipe first.
According to Ashley over at her Creative Canning blog, “Green tomatoes were one of the most popular ingredients in [American] canning recipes from the early 1900s. This jam is one of those old-fashioned sweet recipes, made for the breakfast table instead of the relish shelf.” She recommends 16 cups of green tomatoes chopped into 1 – 2″ pieces, 5 cups sugar, plus two medium lemons cut into quarters and deseeded, and two cinnamon sticks (the lemons and cinnamon come out before bottling), and a 45 minute boil (to 220ºF). That sounds about right, although I will probably go with 3-4 cups of sugar and no cinnamon and expect a longer boil.
Soup day
I harvested 5 of the Kuri (Kombucha) squash in late August and then left the rest, not knowing that they need to sit for at least a month *after* harvest for the sugar to set. (Thank you to my beloved co-author for that advice.) That is why the two I made soup from in August had no taste! The ones that had sat in the kitchen just made a fabulous ginger-squash soup with just two roasted squash scooped into sautéed onion and garlic and a thumb of ginger. Seriously all I added was salt and pepper! Sadly those that I left in the garden are all riddled with squash worm and probably unsalvageable, so this is it.
As if to compensate for the reduced squash soup, the one stall at the Saturday market that sometimes has Bintje potatoes did so last week [see August 19, 2024], so I also made a pot of potato-leek soup to freeze. It just needs a squirt of lemon juice to brighten it up once defrosted and it will be a treat hot or cold.
The orchards
There are apples and pears but they are not very juicy or sweet. We need to work out how to change that next year, but the question of the week is do we try to gather enough to make eau de vie? We have been picking up fallen black walnuts from the tree in the new orchard, which are a pain to get out of the shells, but the perfect snack. Next year we will make Vin de Noix from the green ones. This year one of Andrée’s helpers harvested enough from our tree to make several bottles, one of which she gifted to us. It is sooooo good.
Finally,
The garden still has plenty of bell peppers, salad peppers, hot peppers, and Chinese eggplant for Walter to eat once I leave, and the artichoke plants have come back, promising a treat next spring.
But perhaps the most exciting news is that we learned that the bees in the studio wall are wasps. The nest may have always been wasps, but it is also possible that there were bees there initially (when Jack ID’d them for us) [see September 30, 2026] but more aggressive wasps took over. Either way, they are wasps now. I hate to kill anything and wasps are also pollinators, but they have worked out how to get into the studio and they make the patio unusable, so they need to go. And now we can make that happen.
Can’t wait until I come back in December . . .
Aren’t they pretty?? That is 28lb of green tomatoes from the bottom of the stems of two rows (10 plants). There’s plenty more where they came from! I chopped 16lb for jam, chutney, or sauce and sliced 3 bags of 4lb each. And into the freezer until I return and can deal with them!
