Winter Solstice 2024

In the Northern Hemisphere where I live, winter clamps down cold and dark. Wet, too, now that I'm in western Washington, and if it isn't actually raining it's cloudy or overcast. But then, that last condition is pretty common from October to June, according to a very detailed description of Olympia's weather.

Winter here is more like a long, gray slog than a magical season. It isn't like what we used to experience in Spokane with icicles hanging from the eaves, snow deep enough to build snow caves and enough on the ground to have a good snowball tussle when our kids were younger. 

And yet, and yet.... We have the turn of the seasons. We have the transition from the heat of summer to autumn's cool temperatures and blazing leaves. We have the closing down, the retreat into waiting and stewarding our energies, that comes when the light grows shorter and the darkness longer, longer, until we reach the longest night. The earth has tilted away from Sol, which rides low in the sky.

My ancestry is primarily from England and northwestern Europe, followed by Scotland, Germanic Europe, Wales, Denmark, and a bit of Ireland. In other words, my ancestors lived even farther north than my current latitude. My genes have survived through many, many long, dark winters. I'm good at this.

This is a quiet season, but not a dead one. As poet M.K. Creel writes in "Before the Longest Night" we can "Take inventory of what is becoming—". Seeds lie underground awaiting the signals of temperature and light to awaken, insects go dormant, trees deepen their root systems because they're not expending energy on leaves, blossoms, fruits and nuts. We human animals can learn from this and take this time to rest and restore.

Taking care of ourselves, taking care of others, matters more now than ever. The winter solstice can serve as a reminder to reflect on time passing, on our lives we live moment by moment, day by day, on tending our interior as well as our exterior selves. It can serve as our personal New Year's Eve, the pause between one season and the next.

How might you care for your body today? You might feed it lovingly with good food. You might move it around, gently or vigorously, indoors in the warmth or outside in the cold. How about a walk or a bike ride? Years ago when we lived in snowy Spokane I wrote A Solstice Post: Gifts I Give Myself by Riding in the Winter. Perhaps this is the day you commit or recommit to trying a practice like yoga. You might give the body you inhabit every day a nice, long nap or a hot bath.

For your brain or your heart, maybe you'd like poetry about the winter solstice that I collected a couple of years ago.

How about your senses? Last year for the winter solstice I compiled a selection of ways you can experience the winter solstice through your senses (and more poems). I'll add the Winter Solstice playlist on Spotify from the All We Can Save Project.

For your spirit, I offer these readings, excerpted here with a link to the complete piece:

"Winter Solstice"

Ray McNeice

Late December grinds on down.

The sky stops, slate on slate,

scatters a cold light of snow

across a field of brittle weeds.

Interview with Ross Gay and reflections from Carrie Newcomer and Parker Palmer on The Growing Edge newsletter and podcast.

"Thank You"
Ross Gay

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. 

"On the Winter Solstice"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Let’s reach toward each other

with gazes gentle

as midwinter sun—

with a seeing so generous

we can’t help but turn

toward the other

to let ourselves be seen.

"Winter Solstice"

Hilda Morely

It is from

the moon this cold travels

It is

the light of the moon that causes

this night reflecting distance in its own

light so coldly

(from one side of

the earth to the other)

A brief excerpt from a long and wonderful essay, "Burn Something Today"

Nina McLaughlin

"What now? Now it’s now it’s now it’s now and we are burning. Light the fire. We move through flames. We clutch hope in our palm like a tiny burning globe of snow. It’s painful, the flame of the snow of the hope that you will be okay and I will be okay and we will be okay, we will be here to see another season, to see, second by second, the light return to the world."

A beautiful gentle blessing from William Ayot on Philip Carr-Gomm's site, reproduced here in its entirety:

May the stars in their circling comfort and guide you.
May the great oak give you strength in troubled times.
May your hurts be healed and your soul be deepened
And in turning towards toward home, may you know you belong.

A Year of Poems: December

As a child perhaps you, like me, made snow angels: Lying on our backs, scooping snow away with arms and legs to leave the scalloped shapes. The trick was to get up, still within the angel's shape, then jump as far as you could to get away from it without leaving tracks. But then you realized you'd left tracks to the spot where you lay down in the cold white blanket. You marked the inviting whiteness the minute you entered it.

Several of the poems about December describe the tracks left by animals in snowfall, each poet choosing their own way in. Others describe the gritty gray of an urban setting or the unseasonable warmth of a California winter for someone raised in Vermont.

For this collection I resisted the easy choices: poems about Christmas or New Year's Eve. The winter solstice, as an astronomical fact independent of human calendars or belief systems, is worth its own consideration, as my 2022 winter solstice and 2023 winter solstice posts attest.

If these leave you cold and shivering you can always hop over to my collection of poems about soup for a warm-up.

"Winter Afternoon, Early December" by Tom Montag

The grey lid has been
lifted off the day.

Sun spills everywhere—
on snow, on house, on

me at the window.

"A December Day" by Sara Teasdale

Dawn turned on her purple pillow,
And late, late came the winter day;
Snow was curved to the boughs of the willow,
The sunless world was white and grey.

"December Thaw" by Milton Burgh

For three days the warm sun has been pulling
The silver wedges from the ground,
Until now it is soft and free.

"December" by Sarah Freligh

On the fire escape, one
stupid petunia still blooms,

"Chicago and December" by W.S. Di Piero

Vague fatigued promise hangs
in the low darkened sky
when bunched scrawny starlings
rattle up from trees,
switchback and snag
like tossed rags dressing
the bare wintering branches,
black-on-black shining,

"December in Los Angeles" by Timothy Steele

The tulip bulbs rest darkly in the fridge
To get the winter they can't get outside;
The drought and warm winds alter and abridge
The season till it almost seems denied.

"December" by Christopher Cranch

Like agate stones upon earth’s frozen breast,
       The little pools of ice lie round and still;
While sullen clouds shut downward east and west
       In marble ridges stretched from hill to hill.

"Deciphering the Alphabet" by Francine Sterle

Winter advances
leaving its white tracks
bounding over the hills
I climb each December
to get to the river
where velvety shrews,
voles and squirrels
crisscross in the snow,

"December Moon" by May Sarton

How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.

"December Notes" by Nancy McCleery

The backyard is one white sheet
Where we read in the bird tracks

The songs we hear. Delicate
Sparrow, heavier cardinal,

"Pupil" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I invite in December’s chill and the vast blue sky

and the dark before the moon and the moon.

I invite in the braille of rabbit tracks

and I invite the rabbits that made them.

A Year of Poems

• A Year of Poems: January
• A Year of Poems: February
• A Year of Poems: March 
• A Year of Poems: April
• A Year of Poems: May
• A Year of Poems: June
• A Year of Poems: July
• A Year of Poems: August
• A Year of Poems: September
• A Year of Poems: October
• A Year of Poems: November

Thanks + Giving

I visit grateful.org as part of my morning poetry + coffee routine, so I don't wait for the fourth Thursday in November to think about gratitude. That said, I am extra thankful for the four-day weekend. 

With the history I've learned in recent years that they didn't teach me in school I think more about Indigenous people than about Pilgrims. Friday is Native American Heritage Day now, making Thursday Native American Heritage Day Eve. I share Indigenous writers year round on social media and make an extra point of doing so around this time of year.

The quotation from Thich Nhat Hanh below and the graphic I borrowed from Rebecca Solnit's post on BlueSky point to something else we may forget when we give thanks: How is whatever we're thankful for possible? Whose hands and which resources were used to create what we appreciate? Have we thanked them directly? What's going to happen to the waste created in all these processes? (Go watch Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy on Netflix if you're wondering about that.)

"This food is the gift of the whole universe: the earth, the sky and much hard work. May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it. May we transform our own unskilled states of mind and learn to eat with moderation. May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. We accept this food so that we may realize the path of understanding and love."
—Thich Nhat Hanh

Yes, yes, it's still an occasion for food celebrations. With my mom and her delicious pies long gone there's no big clan gathering for this meal. Each of my siblings has their own practices and nuclear families to think about and we live far away from each other. Now the "gathering" consists of sharing photos of turkey prep and pie decor.

A few years ago when we still had four kids in their teens/20s who would be with us for Thanksgiving I changed my approach from “must produce amazing spread all at once” to “Favorites Four-Day Weekend.” I asked everyone their favorite foods, especially ones you might associate with Thanksgiving traditions but that wasn’t a requirement. I committed to making at least one favorite for everyone over the course of the weekend and laid in lots of cheese, crackers, and other noshes. 

Each day I cooked what I felt like cooking from that list, never attempting to have a full meal available at an appointed time. We might have pie in the morning and dressing for lunch along with whatever else people felt like snacking on. Meals weren’t scheduled; people ate when they were hungry.

It was fabulous.

I love to cook but the timing and variety are killers for one person to produce. My mom had a systematic approach that extended to planning which serving dish and utensil would be used for each mandatory food item. I’ve done it occasionally, I’m capable of it, but that’s not fun for me any more.

Now those kids are far-flung adults and my husband has a very restrictive diet for health reasons. On these long weekends I cook what I feel like cooking over the four days to continue the tradition and have video calls with the kids, whom we visit at other times of year when it isn’t such a travel nightmare.

Also fabulous.

I'm breaking the words "thanks" and "giving" apart and sharing some poems on the topics. I like the older-sounding "giving thanks" as a phrase so I'll start with giving. As always, I'm excerpting the poems and not necessarily providing the opening lines. But first:

Giving Ideas

• American Indian College Fund
• Potlatch Fund
• Laurel Rubin Farm Worker Justice Project, Latino Community Fund
• Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
• Refugee Women's Alliance
• Cesar Chavez Foundation

Giving

"When Giving Is All We Have"
Alberto Rios

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

"A Prayer Among Friends"
John Daniel

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive
with one another, we walk here
in the light of this unlikely world
that isn't ours for long.
May we spend generously
the time we are given.
May we enact our responsibilities
as thoroughly as we enjoy
our pleasures. 

"On Giving"
Kahlil Gibran

There are those who give little of the much which they have—and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

Thanks

I remember one Thanksgiving when my quiet dad, sitting down for our very secular feast, pulled a "Dear Abby" clipping out of his pocket and shared this reading as grace. This was so out of character that we all sat quiet for a few moments after he stopped reading. It's by Pauline Phillips, AKA Abigail Van Buren, and is posted every year by her daughter Jeanne Phillips who now writes the Dear Abby columns.

Oh, Heavenly Father,
We thank Thee for food and remember the hungry.
We thank Thee for health and remember the sick.
We thank Thee for friends and remember the friendless.
We thank Thee for freedom and remember the enslaved.
May these remembrances stir us to service.
That Thy gifts to us may be used for others.

Amen.

Then there's the gratitude that comes from awareness of the details.

"Thanksgiving"
Tim Nolan

Thanks for the Italian chestnuts—with their
tough shells—the smooth chocolaty
skin of them—thanks for the boiling water—

itself a miracle and a mystery—
thanks for the seasoned sauce pan
and the old wooden spoon—and all

the neglected instruments in the drawer—

Feeling grateful takes many forms in the body, as Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer describes.

"A Partial List of Gratefulnesses"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

There’s the giddy gratefulness that sparkles
like morning sun on the river and the peaceful
gratefulness that soothes like warm wind.
There’s the gratefulness that almost hurts
as it squeezes tight around the heart,
the gratefulness that arrives quiet as cat’s paws
in the night, and the gratefulness that thrums
and swirls in us as if we’re a sky full of starlings.

"To Say Nothing but Thank You"
Jeanne Lohman

All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

"Thanks" 
W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

"Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude"
Ross Gay

thank you what in us rackets glad
what gladrackets us;

and thank you, too, this knuckleheaded heart, this pelican heart,
this gap-toothed heart flinging open its gaudy maw
to the sky, 

And finally, the ultimate gratitude for the world we're a part of and all who came before, everything that makes our lives possible.

"Remember"
Joy Harjo

"Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth."

"I’m going to eat some turkey. But not in honor of some mythic coming together of Natives and colonizers. Because it’s delicious. The fight will still be there after that turkey, and I’ll be ready."
—Adrienne Keene, citizen of Cherokee Nation, founder of Native Appropriations

"The path to reconciliation starts with honest acknowledgement of our past, with open eyes and open hearts for a better future." 
—Matika Wilbur, Swinomish and Tulalip, photographer

Related Reading

• Whose lands are you living on? Native Lands map
• Thanksgiving is an act, not a menu
• In Which I Give Thanks for Biking
• Giving Thanks for Bicycles
• "We Are Still Here": Indigenous-Focused Bicycle Programs

Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe

Invasive so-called Himalayan blackberries clamber over much of western Washington's terrain. Dubbed "Himalayan" by Luther Burbank as a marketing move even though they probably originated in Armenia, these blackberries aren't the thornless variety he had hoped to breed by a long shot. Not even close; when I pick them along the roads near my house I wear long sleeves, some hiking pants with a smooth finish, and a glove on one hand to push the vines back.

Like my gleaned apples, they're free for the taking so I end up thinking up things to do with them. 

• Fruit leather: I have a batch waiting in the freezer for me to decide whether I'm turning them into fruit leather along with plums I got from a Buy Nothing offer.
• Flavored vinegar: I soaked a big batch in white wine vinegar to make this for gift-giving. I used a sugar-free blackberry vinegar recipe, although other recipes involving sugar would be fine if you'd like to start with a sweeter base. I didn't take the longer-term route of extracting and then fermenting blackberry juice to turn it into vinegar. I hung onto the soaked blackberries and used a bunch of them in the chutney, which provided vinegary quality. Now pink, with much of their color along with flavor transferred into the vinegar, a few of them wait in the freezer for a future something or other.
• Blackberry chutney: If you've read my other recipe roundups about tomatoes, apples, pears, zucchini, and green tomatoes, you know I love me some chutney! So of course I had to riff on a few recipes I found. This turned out not to be as tangy as most of my other chutneys, more along the lines of a complex jam than anything. Well worth putting on a cracker with some cheese though

Blackberry Chutney Recipes

Where I started for inspiration, considering proportions of ingredients, whether or not it included apples (most did and that seemed like a good medium to carry the blackberry flavor), and the spices used:

• BBC Apple, Blackberry and Cinnamon Chutney
• Larder Love's Easy Blackberry (Bramble) Chutney
• Wellington Bakehouse Blackberry Relish: No apples
• Feast Glorious Feast Blackberry Chutney
• Foraged Farmacy Spiced Blackberry Chutney

I had a lot of blackberries even accounting for the ones waiting for fruit leather so this recipe uses large quantities. All the reference recipes use about a third of the quantities here. I scaled up and checked the spicing levels along the way.

Blackberry Apple Chutney

• Blackberries: 1,300 grams (mine were soaked in vinegar; refer to note with the vinegar amount)
• Apples: ~415 grams, approximately 3-4 apples depending on size, diced small
• Onion (red or yellow): 400 grams, diced small
• Brown sugar (white okay; brown sugar gives a caramel element): 450 grams
• Apple cider or any other vinegar with 5% acidity: At a guesstimate, 350 grams; taste and adjust after it's all cooked together. I used blackberries soaked in vinegar so the vinegar amount is based on proportions from the source recipes
• Garlic: 3 cloves, diced or crushed
• Ground cumin: 1/2 t.
• Crushed red pepper: 1/2 t.
• Fine salt: 1 t.
• Cinnamon: 1 t.
• Cloves: 1/4 t.
• Optional: Zest of 1-2 oranges

Yield: 4 half-pints and 8 quarter-pints

Prepare jars for canning following best practices such as those on the National Center for Home Food Preservation or Food in Jars.

Dice the onions and start them cooking at a gentle heat. After five minutes add the apples, blackberries, and spices and cook until the fruit is soft. Depending on the apples this will run around 15-20 minutes. Add the vinegar and sugar. Stir the sugar in and allow it to dissolve. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring often. At about 10 minutes taste and adjust sweet/sour balance by adding a bit more vinegar or sugar to your taste. Cook until you can drag a wooden spoon through the base of the chutney and leave a clear trail in the pan before the thickening liquid fills the line back in. 

Ladle into sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for 15 minutes. For best flavors, wait at least two weeks for the chutney to mature before using.

A Dusty Collection: Poems about Dust

I'm not the world's most meticulous housekeeper. If I look at a dusty surface and feel guilt for not dusting more often, I'm missing the chance to think of it, or of myself, as a collection of protozoa, ocean salt, stardust. Made up of so many tiniest fragments of ourselves and our lives, dust is unavoidable, metaphorical, even astronomical in these poems. Put down that duster and read a while.

"The Dust Speaks" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I am the memory
of everywhere you’ve been
and I am the memory
of what you do
and I come from places
you’ll never go.

"Dusting" by Marilyn Nelson

Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things

“The Joy of Sweeping” by Maya Stein

the settling of dust
or its disturbance,
the silence
or the song.

“View with a Grain of Sand” by Wislawa Szymborska

We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.

"Belonging" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

we are the dust, the dust that hopes,
a rising of dust, a pitch of dust
the dust that dances in the light   

"Porcelain Musician in a Child's Bedroom" by Brenda Hillman

dust, the noun & verb that is
   a thing & isn’t, drifted, its dreamy
abstract qualities sent
         off with a cloth till nothing
    said you had to or you didn’t,—

"Memo to Self Re: Meditation" by Ron Stone

Slowly learn the lesson about who you are:
dust of the earth, dust of a star.
The stuff that is you has always been here
fulfilling its purpose in losing its Self.

Until you.

"In Any Event" by Dorianne Laux

Nothing is gone forever.
If we came from dust
and will return to dust
then we can find our way
into anything.

"Stardust" by Kay Ryan

something like
sugar grains on
something like
metal, but with
none of the chill.
It’s hard to explain.

"Saltwater" by Finn Butler

Everyone who terrifies you is 65% water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust,

A Year of Poems: November

I have a particular reason for appreciating November: It's my birthday month. According to my mother I was supposed to be an October baby but I hung in there an extra month. In a fun twist of fate that meant I ended up being born on Election Day, and then when I was elected for the first time to the Idaho state legislature it was on my birthday. Quite a big present from the voters of Kootenai County, Idaho!

November has come to mean more to me beyond my birthday and Election Day, in particular becoming the birthday month for my first baby, Eldest Daughter. 

As the poems below describe, for all of us in the Northern Hemisphere it's the month when days really feel shorter, sun really rises later, autumn really does turn around and hand us into the cold arms of the waiting winter.

"Monday" by Cindy Gregg

On this first day of November
it is cold as a cave,
the sky the color
of neutral third parties.

"Why You Should Go Outside at 4:40 am in November" by Rosemary Royston

Because it is more silent than you can imagine
and above you the moon is a nickel
glinting from the unseen sun,
surrounded by broken crystals.

"Enough" by Jeffrey Harrison

It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning

warm enough for you to walk without a jacket

along your favorite path.

"Praise Song" by Barbara Crooker

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.

Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;

though they are clothed in night, they do not

despair. Praise what little there's left:

"November for Beginners" by Rita Dove
(Bonus for me: The site where I found this posted it on my birthday)

Snow would be the easy

way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.

"The Crazy Woman" by Gwendolyn Brooks

I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

"Like Coins, November" by Elizabeth Klise Von Zerneck

We drove past late fall fields as flat and cold
as sheets of tin and, in the distance, trees

were tossed like coins against the sky. Stunned gold
and bronze, oaks, maples stood in twos and threes:

some copper bright, a few dull brown and, now
and then, the shock of one so steeled with frost

it glittered like a dime. 

"November" by Maggie Dietz

Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge

On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster
Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin,
Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters.

"November" by Ben Howard

These last warm days are telling a funny story
whose punchline never comes. You could put your hand
on the iron railing of your neighbor's steps
and feel, in its frigid core, the steadiness
of winter.

"November" by Lucien Stark

 First frost, the blue spruce
against my window's shagged, 
and the sky is sombering. I

draw close to the fire, inward
with all that breathes.

"November" by Jay du Von

And the earth was heavy, the roads
soft with yellow mud and lined with coming
and going. Always the days were shorter
and now the evening came far on the road
to meet us.

A Year of Poems

• A Year of Poems: January
• A Year of Poems: February
• A Year of Poems: March 
• A Year of Poems: April
• A Year of Poems: May
• A Year of Poems: June
• A Year of Poems: July
• A Year of Poems: August
• A Year of Poems: September
• A Year of Poems: October

Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.

Twenty-two and a half pounds, to be precise (ish). That's how many green tomatoes I picked on Oct. 19 on a rainy day at the end of the growing season. Around 12-1/2 pounds of bigger tomatoes of various varieties from Roma to San Marzano to Black Prince to an heirloom yellow one, about 10 pounds of cherry and grape tomatoes. These plants have been prolific all summer long and I've already processed a lot of tomatoes.

What to do, what to do. 

A search yielded a number of options:

• Fermented Green Tomatoes: A comment on Reddit/Canning suggested these might resemble green olives, I assume in appearance rather than flavor.
• Pickled Green Tomatoes: Small Batch Pickled Green Tomatoes by Food in Jars, Pickled Green Tomatoes by Creative Canning with several spice options; Crunchy Pickled Green Tomatoes by Brooklyn Farm Girl, a quick pickle version that will need to be kept refrigerated so nope, not good for lots and lots of tomatoes; Pickled Sweet Green Tomatoes by National Center for Home Food Preservation
• Green Tomato/Tomatillo Chutney from Brooklyn Farm Girl: I still have around 3 gallons of tomatillos from last October's final harvest and this would be a way of using them up. But do I really want to add any volume at all to 22-1/2 pounds of green tomatoes?!?!
• Relish: Not my favorite condiment 
• Salsa and some other ideas, but that salsa recipe reads a lot like salsa verde and I still have some of that left from last year along with all those tomatilloes
• Cake?! : Not a recipe for long-term preservation, but interesting
• Green Tomato Ketchup: I know from experience this will take for-absolutely-ever to cook down but I have so many tomatoes I'm tempted to try it out, and maybe it could work in a slow cooker. Several recipe options: Mamta Gupta's Green Tomato Ketchup; Green Tomato Ketchup by From the Larder (which calls for British Mixed Spice and she kindly includes the recipe for that; it sounds great for oatmeal, quick breads, baking, other uses); a 1940s Green Tomato Recipe from Gourmet; a Quebec Green Tomato Recipe posted on Reddit that says to soak the tomatoes and celery in salted water overnight so that would mean planning ahead and a quantity of "20-25 green tomatoes" with no reference to either weight or volume so that's a bit vague; a Green Tomato Recipe on Spruce Eats; and then there's the seasoning mix suggested in my edition of The Joy of Cooking, copyright 1975 (which matters because they changed things for more recent editions) for Tomato Catsup that could presumably work in a green tomato ketchup, although I'm surprised they didn't have a recipe involving green tomatoes. Looking for more versions of the Quebecois recipe, I learned that for some people, particularly in the American South, a reference to Green Tomato Ketchup labels something that's more of a chutney or even chow-chow, which I made last year with some of my green tomatoes and which includes cabbage as an ingredient. If I go this route I'm going to make a smooth ketchup/catsup more similar to the red kind in texture.
• Dehydrated Green Tomatoes: I just loaned out my dehydrator to a friend who needs to process 50-60 pounds of chantarelles so this won't work for me, but something to bear in mind for the future. Drying Green Tomatoes by Healthy Canning mentions reconstituting them as “Pomodori verdi secchi in olio di oliva”, which sounds good. Good discussion on Garden Web of drying green tomatoes and other produce with some tips and ideas for use. Video on slicing them with a mandoline and making "chips" with a bit of sugar and salt.
• I could throw them in the freezer until I decide what to do with them, or can them plain for future reincarnation mid-winter when I want to fill the house with the scents of summer.

Last year I'd made green tomato chutney and that was delicious. I have several kinds of chutneys already, although I'm never opposed to having more on hand. Thanks to Mamta Gupta  I learned that the word "chutney" comes from the Hindi word Chatni, "a tangy and spicy sauce/paste that makes you smack your lips." Yes indeedy.

Lip-smackin' goodness, here I come. The list of recipes I worked from to develop mine below, with a note on whether it includes a specific element beyond green tomatoes and onions:

• Green Tomato Chutney with apples, Food.com
• Green Tomato Chutney with apples, Blue Dot Living
• Green Tomato Chutney with apples and green bell peppers, Culinaria Eugenius (wildlly optimistic cook time here; don't believe it)
• Green Tomato Chutney, Food in Jars
• Spicy Heirloom Tomato Chutney recipe, Food in Jars
•  Green Tomato Chutney, Swasthi's Recipes
• Green Tomato Recipe, Mamta's Kitchen
• Easy Green Tomato Chutney, Lovely Greens

Handy tools: My food processor with the sharp blade serves as one of the key tools for dealing with this many tomatoes and associated ingredients. I picked this little trick up from a ripe tomato chutney recipe and realized I'd been doing a ton of unnecessary hand slicing and dicing for things destined to go into a pan and break down as they cooked. Integrity in hand-crafted artisanal slicing and dicing truly not required.

Another trick I came up with on my own: Using my strawberry capping tool to nip the stems off the tops of tomatoes. I don't core tomatoes and the little bit of skin at the top where the stem attached softens in cooking so I'm not worried about making sure I get every last bit out.

Spices: Most of the recipes I found had fairly low key (boring) spice combinations, not nearly as inspiring as the ones for chutneys made with ripe tomatoes and other ingredients. Dried spices don't affect canning safety so I looked up a few chutney recipes like this Green Tomato Chutney from Swasthi's Recipes (not designed for canning) and this Green Tomato Recipe from Mamta's Kitchen that provided a lot more inspiration. The Food in Jars recipe was also seasoned in a more interesting way than others, one of which just offered up chili powder and salt. Excuse me, do you know where chutneys come from and what makes them delicious??

This looks like a long list of spices and it is. My garam masala was a bit old so I reinforced it with some of the spices that are typical ingredients in this tasty spice blend. You could certainly start with just the seasonings from any of the recipes linked above and decide for yourself what to increase or add.

Fruit: For some reason, several of the recipes didn't call for raisins, which I 100% associate with chutney. Food.com was the exception here. I like to use dried cranberries for some or all of these, and this time I also went for some dried dates. (Yes, home botanists, tomato is also a fruit.)

Quantities and ratios: Quantities can be adjusted based on tomatoes as the core ingredient, bearing in mind that bigger quantities take a lot longer to cook down. 

The ratios were very different between a couple of sources. For comparison:

• Food.com: Tomatoes 10 lbs., Apples 3 lbs., Onions 3 lbs., Raisins 1 lb., Brown Sugar 1.5 lbs, Vinegar 1 qt.
• Culinaria Eugenius adaptation of Ball: Tomatoes 16 cups, Apples 16 cups, Onions 3 medium (resulting in maybe ~3 cups?), Bell Peppers 3 medium (~3 cups?), Brown Sugar 6 cups, Vinegar 4 cups
• Food in Jars: Tomatoes 6 cups, Onions 1-1/4 cups, Brown Sugar 1-1/2 cups, Vinegar 1 cup
• Lovely Greens: Tomatoes 1 kg. or ~6 cups, Onion 1 kg or ~6 cups, Brown Sugar 500 grams or ~2.5 cups, Vinegar 1 liter or ~1 qt.

Clearly a somewhat flexible set of proportions for the tomatoes, onions, and apples. Smashing all these together I decided this would have to be a taste-and-adjust on proportions to get the right level of tanginess across tomatoes/onions/apples/peppers, building on the ones from Food in Jars and Culinaria Eugenius for sugar and vinegar. 

Sugar and vinegar: Sugar levels are mostly for flavor since this isn't a jam in search of pectin setting qualities, vinegar is for food safety, and both of the recipes I relied on have a ratio of sugar 1.5 to vinegar 1. I started with 4 cups of vinegar, 4 cups of sugar, so I could taste and adjust the sweetness factor.

I also had to deal with the quantities I had available to me. For apples I used some of those I canned earlier this year.

Green Tomato Apple Chutney Recipe

Read this first: Start this recipe early in the day when you have time to tend it and stir often. 

Read this too: Wear an oven mitt when you stir the pot. The mixture will tend to splatter but you can't keep a lid on it or it won't cook down the way it needs to. Hot tomato is very very hot and will burn you. It may look tame, then when you start to stir and loosen the solids the liquid part will suddenly boil up like wild and throw hot tomato droplets at you. Every. Time. You. Stir. Ask me how I know.

This volume completely filled my biggest stockpot. It's a lot.

• Tomatoes: 16 cups chopped
• This was the output from around 6 pounds, whirled briefly in a food processor to create a diced size or chopped by hand if you want to do this the hard way. No need to remove skins.
• Onions: ~7 cups, finely chopped
• For me this was output from 4 truly giant yellow onions, close to 3 pounds, also whirled in the food processor but not until reduced to onion paste.
• Apples: 4 cups home-canned with the juice they were canned in
• No need to chop as these will fall apart into applesauce. If you start with whole apples then yes, reduce to dice. Your call on whether to peel or not.
• Green bell peppers: 4 cups finely chopped, approx. 1-1/2 pounds, output from 3 really giant ones
• You could substitute hotter peppers for some of this if that meets with your family's Scoville settings
• Dried fruits: 2 cups, chopped if they're big to create pieces the size of raisins
• I used dried cranberries and dates
• Optional: Crystallized ginger: 1/2 cup, chopped fine, mostly because I had some left from earlier recipes like my version of Chai Ginger Apple Butter
• Optional: 2-4 T. chopped mild to hot peppers
• Vinegar: 4 cups of a vinegar with 5% acidity
• I used 2 cups each of red wine vinegar and white wine vinegar; you could use apple cider vinegar
• Brown sugar: 4-1/2 cups
• Taste and adjust when the volume has cooked down a bit. I started with 4 cups and added the additional 1/2 cup later.
• Garlic: 8 cloves, crushed, grated, or chopped fine
• Feel free to add more!
• Salt: 2 T.
• Garam masala: 1-1/2 T.
• Curry powder: 2-1/2 T.
• Powdered hot mustard: 1-1/2 T.
• Ground black pepper: 2 t.
• Crushed red pepper: 1-1/2 t.
• Adjust this amount for the heat level you want
• Cumin: 1 t.
• Powdered ginger: 1/2 t.
• Cinnamon: 1/2 t.
• Coriander: 1/2 t.
• Cardamom: 1/2 t.
• Cayenne pepper: Pinch or two, maybe a dash
• Nutmeg: Dash

Stir all ingredients together in a large non-reactive stockpot, or divide between two smaller pots so it can cook down a bit more quickly. 

Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, then reduce to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, stirring often, at a simmer over medium-low heat 2-3 hours or more, or until it has reduced by approximately half. Wear that oven mitt to stir! Be sure to stir completely from the bottom and scrape across the entire bottom of the pot to avoid any scorching of the ingredients.

It will thicken and eventually be scoopable, more like jam than soup. If you get tired of waiting for that phase and it's reasonably thick with a fair amount of the liquid cooked off, no one can stop you from canning it at that stage. I don't think mine had truly reduced by half when I was four hours or more into the cook time but it was late and I was tired so into the canner it went.

When you start seeing it thickening enough that you think this marathon may finally end, prep for hot water canning. Get your canning kettle started toward boiling, sterilize the jars in an oven at 250 degrees for at least 10 minutes, and warm the jar lids in hot water. For more details on hot water bath canning consult the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Process quarter-pints and half-pints 15 minutes and let sit for 5 in the rack above the hot water before removing to a baking rack covered with a towel.

This was my first time trying out one-piece canning lids, following instructions from Food in Jars. They look so nice! And they pinged just fine, some of them before I even took the jars out of the canning kettle, which is always a good sign of lid quality. I got these from Fillmore Container and they're going to become my standard. Much more attractive when I gift a jar to someone, with more utility.

My yield from quantities above: 16 half-pints, 14 quarter-pints. 

That's probably enough chutney considering I already have zucchini chutney, apple chutney, blackberry chutney, and a couple of jars of last year's green tomato chutney on hand. I'll eat it with cheese on crackers, spread it on sandwiches, maybe put it on scrambled eggs.

As I said, lip smackin'!

And I still have pounds and pounds of green tomatoes.

I like putting a tiny illustration representing the contents on my canning jar labels. This helps me find things at a glance when I'm looking at my garage shelves packed with food in jars.

I like putting a tiny illustration representing the contents on my canning jar labels. This helps me find things at a glance when I'm looking at my garage shelves packed with food in jars.

 

Keep It Growing: Poems about Gardening

We moved into our Olympia house four years ago in late November, too late to do anything about yard or garden. The first spring brought recognition that we were the proud owners of an awful lot of false dandelion, burdock, and a layer of clay, none of which was particularly conducive to the kind of vegetable gardening and naturescaping that I hoped to do.

That meant a year of gardening in pots (tomatoes and herbs) and using my Grampa's Weed Puller weekend after weekend. I plugged the holes with a bit of compost and clover seed, seeking to add some health to the soil and habitat for pollinators when it bloomed. On the side of the property that gets the best sunlight we began laying plans for gardening in raised beds. My sweetheart worked to level the ground for a terraced set-up that will eventually hold six beds. We put in two raised metal bins on another side of the property suitable for growing greens.

Fast forward and I have three of the planned six beds on that sunny side. The raspberries and tayberries we put in next to the house are thriving; the raspberries I didn't prune last fall even gifted me a second late crop of some big, beautiful jewels. The elderberry bush put on so many berries this year that unfortunately the sheer weight broke off a major branch, but the bush has already propagated a little neighboring bush. The nectaplum (a nectarine and plum hybrid), hazelnut, and almond trees are well established and will start producing sometime in the next few years. 

And the tomatoes in those beds! Whoa. Definitely should have planted them with big strong trellises to climb on. I had to muscle those much-needed trellises in late to get the vines up off the ground and somehow got away with it, but next year they'll be trained from the beginning.

As I start each morning with poetry, naturally I find poems that celebrate the earthy abundance of gardening. Before this year's harvest of vegetables and herbs ends, I'll share this harvest of poems.

"Believe This"
Richard Levine

....All morning,
muscling my will against that of the wild,
to claim a place in the bounty of earth,
seed, root, sun and rain, I offered my labor
as a kind of grace, 

"Tender"
Jose Antonio Rodriguez

But about the strength and will to cradle the plants
Outside—the pruning, the watering, the sheltering

In found tarps and twine against the coldest nights.
To lean into the day’s hard edge,

And still find that reserve of tenderness
For the bougainvillea, the hibiscus, the blue morning.

"Patriotism"
Ellie Schoenfeld

My country is this dirt
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots.

"Gardening as a Form of Worship"
Bruce Taylor

To bring us to our knees.
To bring us back to quiet.
Inclined as we are
to this labor and attention.

"Vegetable Love in Texas"
Carol Coffee Reposa

Farmers say
There are two things
Money can't buy:
Love and homegrown tomatoes.

"A Warm Summer in San Francisco"
Carolyn Miller 

Although I watched and waited for it every day,
somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached
the peak of ripeness.

"Slower"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

They are beautiful, the Japanese eggplant,
dangling beneath wide fringed leaves.

"Therapy from the Garden"
Glenn Morazzini

From the lettuce there is common sense for narcissism:
acceptance as side dish, garnish for a meaty sandwich.
If that leaf isn’t the dose, there’s always the soil
people shovel and level, rake and make wishful with seed,

"An Observation"
May Sarton

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.

"The Seven of Pentacles"
Marge Piercy

as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,

"Towel and Basin"
Michael Escoubas

This morning I plodded in pajamas
and bare toes toting my full water pitcher,
prepared as an offering for my
hanging blue Fan plant. The tall
grass washed my feet as Jesus might.

"Practice" 
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I plunge my hands into the soil
and tug on the long white bindweed roots
that cling to the cool damp dark.
Never once have I pulled the whole plant.
Always, the bindweed comes back.

"More"
James Crews

I know it’s summer when we wade out
into the field and pick these crisp wonders,
tiny cucumbers bleached of their green
as if they’ve already seen too much
of this dazzling light, and can take no more.

"Planting the Sand Cherry"
Ann Struthers

It is important for me to be down on my knees,
my fingers sifting the black earth,
making those things grow which will grow.

"Ode to Digging Potatoes"

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Each firm, red-skinned round

I pull from the earth is a small proof

of how things can grow in the dark—

"On the Cusp of Equinox"
Joan Mazza

Summer ends with a chill over the garden,

breath of coolness to make the spinach

and lettuce happy. I pick another bucket

of tomatoes, more chewed each harvest,

and welcome the wildlife to this messy table

A Year of Poems: October

Compiling these lists helps me anticipate the change of season by reminding me of the beauty in each month. Fall is my favorite season in many ways and October embodies it beautifully. We are leaving summer, summer is leaving us as autumn shares her glory and we soak up the sun while we can.

As with all my poetry collections, I share a few lines, not necessarily the first ones, to give you a taste of what you'll find if you follow the link to savor the whole poem.

"Outside" by Dolores Stewart

October.  Its brilliant festival of dry
and moist decay.  Its spicy, musky scent.

"A Leaf" by Bronislaw Maj

A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades.

"Some October" by Barbara Crooker

Some October, when the leaves turn gold, ask
me if I've done enough to deserve this life
I've been given. 

"Into this Foggy Morning Comes a Song" by Judith Heron

driven by no other instrument than dew
how it gathers into one small drop
falls from a fading apple leaf

"Ode to October" by MK Creel

October lulls us with
its smoky, cinder scent—

leaf pyres, Hickory bark,
pine sap and pith. 

"Reel" by Barbara Crooker

It's half-past October, the woods
are on fire, blue skies stretch
all the way to heaven. 

"Early October Snow" by Robert Haight

The pumpkins, still in the fields, are planets
shrouded by clouds.
The Weber wears a dunce cap
and sits in the corner by the garage
where asters wrap scarves
around their necks to warm their blooms.

"October's Bright Blue Weather" by Helen Hunt Jackson

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

"October-Midst" by Eve Merriam

The mornings careless, sun-sprawled, radical with light,
roller-coaster air; plunging to bottomless bright
then giddying climb to shattering sky-sight
blue!

"Flathead Lake, October" by Geraldine Connolly

so too, autumn descends,

to steal the glistening
summer from our open hands.

"October" by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.

"October 10" by Wendell Berry

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

"Mystery" by C.G. Hanzlicek

Roots, the leaves turning,
The spiders hard at their geometry lessons,
The seed that obeys perfectly
Its own limits,
The worms turning among the leaves,
Turning the leaves to compost,

A Year of Poems

• A Year of Poems: January
• A Year of Poems: February
• A Year of Poems: March 
• A Year of Poems: April
• A Year of Poems: May
• A Year of Poems: June
• A Year of Poems: July
• A Year of Poems: August
• A Year of Poems: September

Apples, Apples, Apples!

It's apple season on top of tomato season and people are leaving bags just sitting out by the curb. Trees in the public right of way are dropping their bounty on the ground. People are posting on Buy Nothing: "Neighbor's tree is dropping apples in my yard. Please take these or I'll be composting them."

I abhor food waste thanks to my Depression-era parents so all that free food has to be put to some good use, right? And apples are my favorite fruit.

Getting the apples home carries its own stories and memories. The first ones this year grow close to home. There's a wide shared-use path near our house on the way to Squaxin Park. A tree there that produces somewhat bland gold apples with a bit of blush to their cheeks produces early, which was helpful when I wanted to make chutneys in August. I rode my bike down and picked up the ones I could salvage the most from.

My Sweet Hubs, knowing of my fondness for gleaning, spotted a tree producing beautiful snappy green and gold apples on another street as we biked along one day. I stopped and filled my panniers and I've done it again since then. That spot has the apples falling on deep, soft grass so they don't get as bruised as the ones falling on the path. 

The third big batch came from one of those neighbors leaving bags by the sidewalk. I saw them one day and didn't stop to pick them up. A couple of days later as I drove past en route to the office to return a vehicle used for a work trip, there they still sat. I stopped and picked up three of the bags. 

When I got to the office and went to carry them in so I could load them into my panniers to carry home by bike, a scene worthy of Laurel and Hardy ensued. The bottoms of the bags had softened sitting in the grass and apples began escaping and rolling across the garage floor. I'd get some contained and others would leak out a different corner. I chased them down and after many attempts worked out a precarious system of balancing the bags atop a notebook. Made it upstairs, genuinely worn out by the effort, and transferred them into the bike bags at last.

My list of recipes made, and recipes I considered that I may come back to if I spot more apples in the wild:

• Hot & Spicy Zucchini Chutney: 8 half-pints, 9 quarter-pints
• Blackberry Apple Chutney: 4 half-pints, 8 quarter-pints
• Apple Mint Jelly: 4 quarter-pints, made using this Ball recipe found via Reddit but without the pectin because of this Apple Mint Jelly recipe, although I didn't put chopped mint in as the latter calls for because jelly should be clear, not look as if you dropped something into the pot accidentally
• Chunky Caramel Apple Jam: Found this one via the Food in Jars Facebook group. 5 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints. I forgot to add the vanilla at the end and it still tasted great.
• Indian Apple Chutney: 13 half-pints
• Plain old Canned Apples packed in juice: 7 quarts
• Plain old Applesauce: 4 pints
• Maple Applesauce: 7 pints
• Apple Ginger Jelly: I did the prep for this and put the juice in the fridge while I traveled for work. Ended up with 12 cups of juice after the first straining, strained again after I came back and took out around a cup of pulp I added to the apple butter process below. The jelly turned out the most beautiful rosy color thanks to some of the apples having a blush to the peels. Yield: 5 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints

Chai-Ginger Apple Butter

I put the cooked apple/ginger mash from the jelly prep through a food mill, ending up with a bit over 4 cups. The second straining of the juice yielded another cup or so. The pulp was pretty bland, with a hint of ginger. I had in mind turning it into applesauce but I already have several pints so instead I made apple butter. My recipe is a mash-up of:

• Slow Cooker Chai-Ginger Apple Butter 
• Adding vinegar similar to the level of Alison Roman's Apple Butter Recipe in the New York Times
• Using maple syrup thanks to Food in Jars' Maple Bourbon Apple Butter (can substitute apple cider for the bourbon if you make that one)

I've found that apple butter recipes vary widely in how much vinegar they add; I want this to be tangy because it isn't jam, so the Bon Appetit Apple Butter doesn't sound vinegary enough. Other possibilities considered that are also low on vinegar, from Food in Jars: Low-Sugar Apple Ginger Not-Quite-Butter, or another deep, multispiced Apple Butter along the lines of Spiced Apple Butter. 

For spices you'll taste and adjust toward the end, when flavors have concentrated. I started with less than what I list here and increased.

• Cooked-down apples put through a food mill, or applesauce: 4-5 cups
• Apple cider vinegar: 1/2 c.
• Maple syrup: 1/4 c. (I might increase this next time)
• Brown sugar: 2/3 c.
• Ginger: If you didn't cook the apples with a few slices of fresh ginger, stir in 2 t. ginger paste from a tube, or add 1 t. powdered ginger
• Candied ginger: 1/3-1/2 c., chopped fine
• Cinnamon: 1 t.
• Cardamom: 1 t.
• Cloves: 1/4 t.
• Allspice: 1/8 t.
• Pepper: 1/4 t.
• Salt (sea salt or pickling salt preferred): 1-1/2 t.

I used the slow cooker set on low and cooked all day, stirring and tasting occasionally. As it darkened and thickened I decided it was still a bit bland so I increased the vinegar, added brown sugar, and increased the spices to bring the amounts up to what I list above. By 10:00 p.m. I had canned the Apple Ginger Jelly along with a batch of Tomato Chutney (8 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints). I turned the cooker off, went to bed, and started it up again the next morning to cook for another hour or so. 

Before jarring it up for canning I used the immersion blender to break down the candied ginger and a few stray bits of fiber that had made it through the food mill. That worked okay but it isn't silky smooth; a pickier or more careful cook might want to run it through a blender or mill it again, although at this point it was hot and I didn't want to handle the blender business with a thick, hot paste that's likely to backfire.

Yield: 1 half-pint, 4 quarter-pints

Not made yet, but keeping the link handy in case another bag or two falls into my hands:

• Rosh Hashanah Apple Jam with Rosewater: Very fitting since apples are a member of the rose family. I'll be careful if I make this one because I've had some dishes with rosewater that were so heavily floral it was a bit like eating hand lotion

Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)

OK, definitely should have taken a picture of the giant zucchini. It was roughly two feet long and at least 6-8 inches wide at the big end. One of those white and green striped variety, not the solid green. I looked up zucchini varieties and this was a cocozelle.

It sat in the garage fridge giving me guilty feelings for a long time, at least four weeks after Sweet Hubs brought it home from the RC flying club field where someone said, "Who wants a zucchini?" Hubs knows how I love to preserve foods and that I could turn it into something so he said yes.

It sat so long I thought maybe it would have aged out of utility, but no, when I finally brought it out of the fridge on a sunny Saturday after I had bread in the oven and had made some sourdough discard crackers it was as firm as the day he brought it home. I'm saving seeds from this one to plant for next year.

Speaking of seeds, a summer squash this size has seeds big enough to do something with. Enter this recipe for oven-roasted zucchini seeds. But what about the rest of it?

I'd already made a big batch of Hot & Spicy Zucchini Chutney. I love that so I could see making it again but I've also made a huge batch of Indian Apple Chutney and a smallish batch of Blackberry Apple Chutney and I have some Green Tomato Chutney left from last year. I may be over-chutneyed, if such a thing is possible. I still have jars and jars of pickles from last year, so no pickles, and relish is pretty close to pickles so no relish. Time to mix things up.

Zucchini Salsa to the rescue! I found two similar recipes, both calling for cups and cups of zucchini. Conveniently they also called for cups and cups of tomatoes and my garden produces several pounds a day right now, so I was all set there. 

• Zucchini Salsa from Food.com has half the quantity of tomatoes to zucchini, with onions given in terms of number of onions, not chopped cups, which isn't helpful since onion sizes vary; maybe 1/3 the quantity of zucchini?, and 4 peppers, again without giving chopped cup quantities so I'd guess 2-3 cups or 1/5 the quantity of zucchini.
• Zingy Zucchini Salsa from The Vibrant Veggie has 2/3 the quantity of tomatoes to zucchini, 1/3 the quantity of onions, 1/6 the quantity of peppers.

About the peppers: Mine have been coming on, mostly sweet and a couple with a little heat: Padron, which has a nice tongue-tingling quality without burning, and pepperoncini that's pretty mild. Since pepper heat varies across varieties this seems like a great place to customize to your family's Scoville settings with a mix of sweet peppers and whatever else turns your cranks. I started mild figuring I could adjust with the dried chili spices I'd add later.

The two recipes varied in a couple of techniques. 

To drain or not to drain: After salting the zucchini, onion, and peppers and leaving them to sit anywhere from 3-24 hours, do you drain off the juice or not? One did, one didn't. The juice is more to cook down but with the other veggies in there it carries some flavor. 

After around four hours of soaking I drained off about 2-1/2 cups of liquid and saved it in case I ended up cooking down too much. At the end because I used very juicy homegrown tomatoes it had a fair amount of liquid but I didn't want to turn it into completely broken down mush so I called it done. 

Next time I'd salt only the zucchini and drain that, press it to get even more water out, then add the other vegetables that aren't as watery and start cooking. Or I might even start the zucchini cooking on its own, drain the liquid produced after a while, then add everything else. That would allow a shorter cook time with the tomatoes, onions, and peppers to keep some of the individual veggie qualities without being too watery.

Cook time: The Zippy recipe cooks on a low temp for an hour after bringing to a boil, the Food.com recipe for only 15 minutes. If you want the veggies on the raw side you could go for that short cook time but I wanted more melding of flavors and time for the vegetables to break down a bit. That did result in a lot more release of the liquids but it had a chance to boil off a bit.

Proportions: From the comments on the one at Food.com, a lot of people add ingredients and reduce the acid component willy-nilly before canning. I hope everyone's all right over there. I stayed away from too much ad-libbing and improv and paid attention to ratios of ingredients.

This giant squash produced 16 cups of shredded flesh even after taking out the guts with the seeds. Tracking my adjustments to the two recipes, here's where I landed:

• 16 cups shredded zucchini
• 6 cups diced onion; I had white on hand but yellow would work fine, even red
• 2 cups diced peppers; roughly half sweet red bell, a couple of Padrons,one jalapeño, the rest pepperoncini
• 1/4 c. + 1-1/2 T. salt (any kind, table salt, sea salt, pickling salt) sprinkled over the shredded zucchini, onion, and sweet/hot peppers
• 12 cups diced tomatoes (mixed yellow, orange, red, black, striped)
• 2-2/3 cups apple cider vinegar (could use another that's also 5% acidity such as regular distilled vinegar, red or white wine vinegar; lime juice could also be substituted for part of this if it's 5% acidity)
• 1/3 + 1/2 cup sugar (can use white or brown) (I started with 1/3 cup, which was the amount for 12 cups of zucchini, because I wanted to taste first; I ended up adding 1/4 cup and then another 1/4 cup to offset the vinegariness)
• 8 cloves garlic (when in doubt I add extra garlic; you could increase this)
• 1 T. dry mustard
• 1 T. cumin
• 1 t. chipotle (I like a smoky quality to my salsa; you could use chili powder instead)
• 1 t. chili powder
• 1 T. dried cilantro, optional (dried because I had it; I'd rather have chopped up a bunch of fresh cilantro to throw in but not everyone loves it)
• 1/8 t. cayenne (added after I tasted with all of the above)

Put the drained zucchini in a large pot, add the chopped tomatoes and all other ingredients. Or, as noted above, cook the zucchini on its own for a few minutes to release more liquid, drain that off, then add the other ingredients.

Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, then reduce to a simmer. Cook for 30-45 minutes or so. Depending how cooked down and thick you like your salsa you may want to adjust the cooking time to less or more.

Meanwhile prep your jars for hot water bath canning. 

My yield with these quantities: 10 full pints, one pint jar not quite full, but more than 1/2 pint so gosh darn, we'll just have to eat that one right away. (Yes, I could freeze it. Hush.) I processed for 20 minutes.