All the Dirt on Gardening

Every year gardeners and cooks preserve the bounty of summer by drying, freezing and canning produce. Some use the ones that came from a grandmother's kitchen and others experiment with new flavors. Here are a few recipes I have used for decades. Eggplant Caviar This recipe was in a Gourmet magazine in 1973. It calls for one-pound of eggplant so for every pound of eggplant you want to preserve, increase the other ingredients. There is no need to be precise. The more finely you chop the ingredients the less lumpy the spread will be. Large black skinned eggplant have to be peeled after baking. The long thin Asian eggplants do not have to be peeled. Just remove the stem and flower ends – they are pretty crunchy. The 4-ounce jelly jars and a 15-minute boiling water bath preserve Eggplant Caviar for gifts and personal use during the winter. ( Hoopes Hardware in Muskogee 918-682-0711 will order cases of the 4-ounce jars - $7.49 a dozen.) Directions Bake one-pound of eggplant at 400 for...