bounty, in small doses

I tend to think of preserving as something to do in large amounts. Seventeen pounds of strawberries to turn into jam, for example. Big projects. A afternoon or day that produces a year's worth of something for the store cupboard.

With my garden still limping (albeit a little better now that we've had some more sun) I'm not going to be getting any big hauls, at least not until later in the summer. So I'm making do with small amounts of produce to work with. A jar here, a jar there, a bag for the freezer, little by little, filling up the cupboard. My favorite preserving book is coming in handy for this, with lots of recipes that produce two or three jars or this or that. Roasted tomato passata, scape pesto, soup mix. Not a lot, just a few jars of each. And much more doable, as it turns out, mixed in with summer Frisbee games between rain showers and building a wall in the basement and keeping everyone busy and fed. It makes me wonder how much, over the course of a summer, I can put away, little bits at a time.