Farmers Market Challenge: Week 2

I went to the Farmers Market with $20, and I bought...

Umm, I guess I went to the farmers market with $30 and picked up $5 worth of stuff for a friend and forgot I had that other $5... (oops)

I went to the Farmers Market with $25, and I bought...



A Baker's Dozen Ears of Corn - $5

2 Baskets of Apples (to augment the extra bag Nick accidentally bought) - $5

2 Jalapenos - $.50

"As Many Roma Tomatoes as $14.50 will get me" - $14.50

To go with some sweet banana Peppers from our garden

As well as Tomatoes from our garden.

The Plan: 

Applesauce, using my pearsauce recipe.  

This spring I picked up a pampered chef apple peeler for $.50 at a garage sale, remembering how hard it was to peel pears last year (and that I'm a painfully slow peeler).  

There was definitely a learning curve, since it didn't have its instructions any more (and for some reason, it didn't occur to me to look it up) but once I got a hang of it, it peeled the apples beautifully:

Sure, there was a little peel left for me to deal with, but it was SO much better.  The store-bought apples didn't peel as well and I really had to do those by hand.  I think maybe it was the wax they put on the skin.  Anyways, I peeled'em, cored'em, chopped'em and tossed'em in the crock pot (with enough lemon juice for me to feel comfy about the acidity level, about 3/4 c.)  Thankfully, what I had was just enough apples to fill my oval crock pot to the brim without going over (how convenient).  After a few hours of cooking, they actually kind of mashed themselves, no food processor required.  I just hit the few bigger chunks with my spoon and that was it.  

Yield: 4 pints canned and a half pint freezer jar

Corn Salsa:

I followed this recipe, which i found on pinterest... duh, to a T, with two exceptions.  I substituted our sweet banana peppers for the bell peppers, and I simmered mine down for a while cuz I felt like it had too much liquid.  In the process, I used up most of our homegrown tomatoes, all of the banana peppers, the jalapenos, and 11 ears of the corn (some of them were really big and I wanted to have corn on the cob sometime this week).  

Yield: 8 pints (exactly!)

Corn Stock:

Inspired by this recipe I found on pinterest, I took those 11 corn cobs and covered 'em with water and tossed in some carrots and onions.  How awesome is that? Talk about no waste...

Yield: 1 Quart

Spaghetti Sauce:

I promis I'll share my recipe another day, but there's a LOT to say and holy cow is this post getting to be long.  I made 2 big pot-fulls, and there were still some tomatoes left.  

Yield: 6 Quarts (exactly!)

Stewed Tomatoes:

The fate of the last, small bit of tomatoes.  Probably tomorrow.  

Probable Yield: 1 Qt, 1 pt (aka: 3 pt)

 $25 at the farmers market:

4 1/2 pt Applesauce

8 pt Corn Salsa

1 qt Corn Stock

6 qt Spaghetti Sauce

3 pt Stewed Tomatoes

Whew!