This is a tale of three girls: an early girl, a dirty girl and a lazy girl. The early girl definitely did not get the worm. She is a luscious ripe tomato with the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity. The dirty girl is often hot and has her own natural beauty...she's Dirty Girl Produce, an organic farm located near Santa Cruz and the grower of those beautiful tomatoes. And the lazy girl? Well, that would be me, but that's a longer story...

Now I'm a girl who loves home-canned foods. Bell jars that have been meticulously sterilized and then lovingly filled with someone's recipe for apricot jam, apple butter, and raspberry jelly make my heart go pitter pat. When someone shows up at my house with a gift of handmade preserves, my esteem for them grows and like the Grinch, my heart grows 10 sizes, bursting with appreciation for their efforts.

I have also been known to do some canning of my own. For years, an old and decrepit apricot tree sat in my backyard, looking scragglier by the year, but producing the sweetest apricots with just a hint of tartness. By far the best apricots I've ever eaten that produced the best jam I've ever made. Thick and sweet, it lay perfectly on freshly toasted challah or in a tart pan. We had so many apricots I made two to three dozen jars of jam each year in addition to making numerous tarts and simply eating tons fresh. We gave away apricot jam at Christmas to family members and neighbors and then had more to keep for ourselves. But then about three years ago, spring arrived and hardly any buds bloomed and the branches lay half naked in summer. We got 5 apricots that year. The next year, the craggy limbs lay bare -- our apricot tree was dead. I've since searched for apricots worthy of canning, but haven't yet found them.

But our apple tree survives, albeit in an even craggier state than the apricot tree seemed to have ever been. Poor tree has fire blight and although I keep saying I need to cut it down, I can't bring myself to actually do it (or, rather, ask my husband to do it). So this year, I am grateful to still have my usual bags of apples ready to be turned into apple butter, waiting in the basement.

What does any of this have to do with the lazy girl? Everything. After years of canning apricots and apples, I'm tired: tired of peeling, tired of sticking produce in a food mill, tired of hot water baths, and tired of sterilizing jars. I love the results, but not the work. So when I bought a 20 lb box of Early Girl tomatoes from Dirty Girl Produce this last weekend, I knew I couldn't bear to can them when I would just have to break out the canning equipment next weekend all over again to turn those apples into apple butter.

So what do you do with 20 lbs of tomatoes and a can-not attitude? What do you do when you have no desire to stand over a boiling pot of tomatoes in 90 degree weather? You roast and freeze. That's right. I let my oven do most of the work and then after that, I'm letting my freezer do the rest.

The roasting idea came from an amazing plate of roasted tomato risotto Kim Laidlaw recently made for me (from her own box of Dirty Girl Produce Early Girl tomatoes). Roasting had given the tomatoes a caramelized intense sweetness that I wanted to replicate. So, after seeding and then roasting most of my tomato haul with some olive oil and freshly minced oregano, the tomatoes were concentrated down into their essence. Each tomato was bursting with a deep summer tomato flavor and the kitchen was filled with a sweet heady aroma. I added in the cooked juices from the seeds and stirred to create a deep red sauce. After it cooled, I ladled equal amounts into Ziplock bags and then set the lot in the freezer. The perfume of summer and sunshine now stored and ready to be used in sauces and stews this winter, accomplished without me burning myself on a hot jar or pressing even one tin lid.

Next week, I'll can; but this week, I'm happy to be lazy.

How to make frozen roasted tomato preserves
1. Wash and dry your tomatoes.
2. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees if using a convection oven and 400 degrees if not.
3. Set up a work area with the following:

• Your washed and cleaned tomatoes
• Pans lined with aluminum foil that have been greased on the top side with olive oil
• A fine-mesh colander set atop a large bowl
• A cutting board
• A knife

4. Remove any blemishes or bruises from the tomatoes and then cut each one in half.

5. Gently squeeze the tomato halves into the colander so the seeds fall inside.
6. Set the tomato halves on the lined baking sheets, cut side up.
7. Sprinkle extra virgin olive oil, kosher or sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and freshly minced or dried oregano or basil onto your tomatoes.
8. Bake for 50 minutes if using a convection oven or 1 hour if not (or until the tomatoes are cooked through, being careful not to burn them).
9. When the tomatoes have only ten minutes to go, place the juice from the bowl into a pot and slowly boil with some salt and pepper for about five minutes.
10. Remove the pans from the oven and scrape the tomatoes into a small pile using a wooden spatula and then spoon them into a large bowl.

11. Add in the cooked tomato juices and stir.
12. Let cool until room temperature and then ladle into quart-sized freezer bags that have been labeled with the date and contents.

13. Set bags in the freezer until ready to use.

Listen Live to Novella Carpenter on KQED 88.5FM Fri, Aug 7, 2009 -- 10:00 AM.

Listen to the audio archive of Novella Carpenter on KQED's Forum. (archive posts 8/07 late eve)

Farm City
Novella Carpenter took over an empty lot next to her apartment in Oakland's gritty Ghost Town neighborhood, and over the years turned it into a lush garden and farm complete with bees, chickens, rabbits and even pigs. Urban farms are popping up in even the most cramped corners of densely populated cities, fueled by a desire for good food and a closer relationship with what we eat. Carpenter joins Forum to talk about her new book, "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer."

Host: Dave Iverson

Guest: Novella Carpenter, journalist, urban farmer and author of "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer"

Explore and buy the book "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer" at Amazon.com

Farm City News: Novella Carpenter's blog

Listen to story and view a slideshow of Oakland's Ghost Town Farm on The California Report: Urban Farming in Oakland

How are we celebrating the Fourth of July up in Bernal? We're harvesting the tater bucket! You might recall, back in the early, chilly days of spring, right around St Patrick's Day, a handful of ugly sprouting potatoes were thrown face-down in a bucket of dirt, given their chance for producing the next generation. And now, the resulting crop of new potatoes has been dug up, rinsed, steamed, browned in butter and chives, and eaten.

To be true red-white-and-blue homesteaders, we could have whisked up some homemade mayonnaise and made all-American potato salad. But the patio potatoes were too few, and too precious, for that. They needed to be appreciated just for their dainty little selves.

You might be saying to yourself, wow, those sure are some small potatoes. And it's true. The original potatoes planted were fingerlings, which are naturally small, but these are rather petite even for those.

What happened was, alas, a fungal infection of some kind. Might have been early blight, might have been a wilt like fusarium. All of a sudden, about a month ago, the lovely healthy leaves got brown-spotted one by one. The brown turned to yellow, and eventually the whole stem got limp and died. The brown turned to yellow, and eventually each cluster of leaves faded and died while the stem below the soil line rotted. And once the leaves were gone, the pizza delivery to the potatoes stopped, so to speak, and so did their growth.

These, then, were my teenage potatoes, kicked out of the nest a little young. I think it was partly my fault, due to some overwatering that probably spurred the blight's progression, since fungal diseases are spread and exacerbated by moisture.

Luckily, though, this happened pretty far along in the tater-growing process, meaning we still got a few good handfuls. And there is something pretty wonderful about harvesting your own dinner--not just picking a few tomatoes or plucking a little basil but plunging your whole arm past the elbow into a bucket of warm dirt, fishing around for what slender gold treasures might be hiding in there. These were true new potatoes, fresh and moist, their skins tattered off merely by washing. Not to mention really, really delicious, if I say so myself.

And just in case you were wondering what a potato looks like when it's still growing, well, it looks like this, only deep in the dirt. You can see that the potato itself isn't a root, like carrots or beets, but rather a stolen, or swollen stem, branching off from the main stem above the roots.

Since most potatoes take about 100 days from sprouting to harvest, there's still time for another crop before the winter wet weather comes on. Will tater bucket #2 be more successful? Stay tuned!

Photos by Sally Carter

Chickens pecking around the backyard, kombucha fermenting on the shelf, beer brewing in the closet: there's been a lot of interest in DIY urban homesteading lately. For months now, I've been meaning to get into the slow-process stuff, like curing my own olives and making my own vinegar.

Then again, my homestead is a wee share house in Bernal, already stuffed with other people's tchotchkes. I've commandeered the tiny back patio with my buckets of tomato and potato plants; adding an olive crock and a vinegar barrel might be pushing it.

And honestly, I'm still wedded to the easy delights of jam. Like pie, it's a little bit of a production, but just like pie, no matter what you do, fruit+sugar=sweet fruity goodness. And like homemade pie, homemade jam is better than anything you can buy. Why? Because anywhere this side of Smuckers, you're using more fruit and less sugar when you make your jam at home.

Ah yes, the sugar issue. First off: most cookbooks call for way too much sugar. Why? The more sugar you put in, the easier it is to get a firm and reliable set. Sugar is also a preservative, and jam with a lot of sugar will last longer in your fridge. But capturing the essence of beautiful fruit is the whole point of jam, rounded out with just enough sweetness to bring a smile to your toast. Halve the amount of sugar in most recipes, and you'll do just fine.

For the same reason, I never use commercial pectins, like Sure-Jel. There's nothing wrong with pectin itself; it's a natural compound found in varying levels in all fruits. However, commercial pectin requires a lot of sugar to jump-start that jelling reaction, and the precise formulas turn canning into chemistry, with no adjustments for personal taste.

But with less sugar and no added pectin, won't your jam be a runny mess? Nope! There's an easy, just about foolproof way to get good jam every time, and all you need is sugar, lemon juice, and time.

Take a look at this bowl.

That's 4 pints of strawberries, sliced, mixed with sugar and left to sit overnight until they've shrunken into little berry quarters bobbing in a sea of juice. All that liquid was originally trapped in the berries themselves, and you'd be boiling it mightily for a long time if you just threw the fruit and sugar together and tossed them on the stove.

But separate the liquid from the fruit, add a little lemon juice (which is rich in pectin), and--here's the trick-- cook down the liquid, not the fruit. By cooking the liquid by itself first, you can evaporate any excess water without exhausting the fruit's delicate flavors. There's also less risk of burning and sticking when you're just simmering juice.

This is a technique I first picked up from Helen Witty's invaluable, library-available collection, The Good Stuff Cookbook. In my copy, the jam chapter is wrinkled and spattered on every page, with annotations, additions, and comments in pen and pencil from years of messing around. I use a lot less sugar than Witty does, but her method (streamlined here) still works like a charm to produce delicious jams just thick enough to cling to your biscuit, redolent of ripe, sunwarmed summer fruit.

Since strawberries are ripe and wonderful this week, now's the time to grab a case of jars, a flat of fruit, and get your birthday-and-holiday gifts nailed down. I love Albion berries in particular, but Seascapes, Tristars and Chandlers, all varieties that do well in our cool coastal climate, won't do you wrong, either.

If you want your sealed jars to be able to sit around in the pantry, you need real canning jars topped with two-part lids. Otherwise, if you're just going to stick your jam in the fridge immediately and eat it soon, you can reuse any clean, cute glass jar you have. For best results, sterilize any jar in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes before using.

Strawberry Jam

Ingredients:
4 pint boxes whole strawberries (2 1/2 lbs)
1 1/2-2 cups granulated sugar, depending on sweetness of berries
juice of 1 lemon, about 2 tablespoons

Preparation:
1. Rinse, drain, and hull strawberries. Slice in halves or quarters. In a nonreactive bowl, toss berries with sugar and lemon juice. Cover and let stand for 3-4 hours at room temperature or 6 hours to overnight in the refrigerator. Stir occasionally, scraping the bottom of the bowl to distribute and dissolve the sugar.

2. When sugar is dissolved and berries are floating in a bright-red syrup, pour into a large nonreactive pot. Bring to a frothy simmer, stirring frequently. Let simmer for 2 minutes, then pour back into bowl. Let cool. Cover and let stand for 2-3 hours at room temperature, or in the refrigerator for 6 hours or overnight.

3. Meanwhile, sterilize your jars, lids, and rings. Set a colander or strainer over a wide, large, and heavy stainless steel or enameled cast-iron pot. Pour berries into colander, letting all the syrup drip into the pot. Remove colander full of berries and set aside.

4. Bring syrup to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently. Once syrup comes to a boil, stir and watch: it will move from what looks like a pot full of Kool-Aid to a seething, deep-garnet mass of thick, glossy bubbles. Dip a metal spoon into the syrup and let syrup drip off the side of the spoon; it's ready when the last few drops are fairly thick and sticky.

5. Pour in reserved berries. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. If you'd like a thicker jam, mash berries lightly with a potato masher. Simmer for 5-8 minutes, until berries are translucent and mixture has thickened slightly. Scoop into jars and seal.

6. Set jars on a clean towel and do not touch or move them until they are completely cool. If you're using canning jars, listen for the slurpy sucking pop of the jars vacuum-sealing. Sealed jars will keep up to 1 year in a cool, dry place. If jar isn't sealed, store in fridge and eat within 2-3 weeks.