The peck that I picked and froze earlier this week diced down to about seven fat quart bags. I added fresh-picked and dried basil (I have a large screen on sawhorses up in the unfinished attic, where it gets really hot and dry) to all of them, and to three of those bags, I added chopped bell and hot peppers.

Today, I picked and froze up another four quarts with basil and to two of them, I added some red wine. We'll see how that works out.

Today's batch is especially pretty, as I used a lot of little, yellow pear tomatoes.

I've got enough Roma Tomatoes left over to make a lasagna for this evening.

As I type, I've got two gallons of fresh milk from a cow farmer around the bend on the stove, heating up to make two pounds of fresh mozzarella cheese for the lasagna. The mozz recipe is found HERE. You need citric acid and rennet, and a good thermometer, which can be purchased cheaply at that link.

I traded the farmer a half-dozen Big Boy Tomatoes, some Cucumbers (bugs killed his Cukes this year), a quart of fresh Strawberries, a huge bunch of Swiss Chard, and four Eggplants for the two gallons of fresh milk. If that crappy white chemical and steroid shit that they sell as "milk" in the supermarkets is worth $4 a gallon, I think that I made one hell of an excellent trade for the real thing. I also bought a bunch of ground beef, steaks and roasts from him. He raises free-range, chemical-free cows, and grows his own organic grains and hay for them.

Once the cheese is done, and the lasagna is in the oven, I'm going to make a bunch of spicy bread and butter pickles, as I cannot keep up with my Cukes this year, and I really like how my last batch of B&B pickles turned out. Tomorrow, I'm pickling peppers all day, as the harvest is decidedly IN.