Well, I thought of four books for you and pulled them off the shelf and three of them had a Pappa Al Pomodoro recipe, a sort of bread-y tomato-y soup.

Evan Kleiman’s Cucina Fresca (one of my favorite cookbooks) has an easy Pappa Al Pomodoro. YUM. OR Do you have potatoes? I also love her Potato-Tomato Soup with Sage.

Speaking of great bay-area chefs, Judy Rodgers’s Zuni Cafe Cookbook has a Pappa al Pomodoro, slightly different from Kleiman’s, but not by much.

Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Italy has a Pappa, too.

Another thought: Chez Panisse Cooking has a Ministrone of Shell Beans, String Beans, Tomatoes and Pesto that you could adapt. She gets all Alice Waters on us having you use a “piece of prosciutto bone with rind” (oh please) but you could work around the meaty bits.

A final thought: depending on what else you have there to use up, but I always go for succotash this time of year. Use tomatoes instead of corn, if you don’t have any or there isn’t any for sale out on the road. Not sure how that would freeze, though.

Do you have any of those enormous zucchinis? You know, in England I learned how to make Demerara Rum out of those suckers (well, Marrow to them, but I guess it would work with a zucchini) and would be happy to send you the process. I’ve always been curious…

Well I was absolutely wrong.

The splitter was old, but really well maintained lubed and greased. with help from my wife, my friend and my son over the weekend, we split up 6 cords. Now by no means was it an all day affair. It was actually very hard work humping those pieces of wood around. Mainly maple (fantastic to split)with beech, elm and some other unnamed species too. We are up to 13 face cords split and stacked. I am thinking it’ll take 18, but don’t wish to bum out my wife with that lil detail for a few weeks. It was a good layup, so to speak. Today I sneaked out for an hour and sawed up this 26 inch ole dead elm tree we had taken down. The new saw blade made my Jonsered cut like butter… yeah…. probably close to a cord…

So my wife laid up 21 pints of roma’s this weekend. We are not pioneers, but those tomatoes sure taste good when the snow is flying.

Today I cooked a beef tongue. Sorta gross to me. Boiled it in herbs for 4 hours. Peeled it, and am giving as a gift to my Swiss pal, Fritz, who swears he will turn it into a wonderful delight….

We shall see…
Dave

Between my various gardens and the Farmer’s markets I’m up to my eyeballs in fruits and veggies. Today’s chore include freezing and drying a huge box of lovely organic peaches, picking my red currents, and trying to figure out what to do with 30+ heads of garlic that were left in the ground so long they lost all their skin– any ideas?

Here’s a recipe we enjoyed the other night:

Stuffed Green Chilies
*Roast 10-12 chilies, I used Big Jim’s. Rub skins off peppers, slit open and scrap out the seeds.
*Pour boiling water over 1 cup of bulgar and set aside.
*Saute finely chopped garden veggies- I had 1 onions, sm. yellow squash, sm. zucchini, corn scraped of the cob and a few cherry tomatoes.
*Mix veggies with about half the bulgar(save the rest for tabbouleh.)
*Stir in some of you favorite salsa to taste, I used Roberto’s.
*Stuff peppers with a generous amount of bulgar and veggies, set into baking dish and top with a little grated cheese- I used Irish cheddar. Bake in 350 oven for ~20 minutes. Enjoy!