Zacuscă

Before each trip to Craiova, we eat all of the fruits and vegetables in the kitchen so we don't return home to bunch of spoiled food. Since the south of the country grows especially tasty produce, on the drive back home we stop at the roadside stands to replenish. Normally that means a few kg of tomatoes and a melon but right now, in full harvest season, the produce is abundant so we took advantage of it.
And by take advantage, what I really mean is that Mihai decided to make zacuscă and went completely overboard.

Zacuscă is a vegetable spread made from roasted eggplant, roasted bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, and garlic that get stewed down together and jarred for winter eating. You'll find zacuscă, or variations of it, all over Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean region.
In Romania, the traditional time to make zacuscă is in the late summer/early fall when tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are abundant—abundant being the key word for this post.
We arrived home with 15 kg of eggplant, 25 kg of tomatoes, 20 kg of bell peppers, 10 kg of onion and a long braid of garlic.

The thing about fresh produce is that it can't be held in suspended animation for a few days while you rest, which meant that although we were tired from spending several very long days cleaning Silviu's kitchen (we spent a collective total of 22 hours to get the countertops and refrigerator in decent shape) we had to get straight to work.
The eggplant and peppers had to be roasted and peeled...

...the onions and garlic had to be diced, and the tomatoes needed to be blanched and put through the food mill...

...and then everything got cooked down into a wonderful stew and then jarred.

As if that wasn't enough work, we also brought home about 5 kg of figs we picked from Silviu's trees and since figs have an even shorter shelf life than tomatoes, we had to quickly process them into jam.

As if that wasn't enough, we also had 10 kg of red peppers which we had to make into gogoșar which is a kind of sweet/tart pickled red pepper.

I have no photos of the fig and gogoșar processing because at that point I was really running out of steam. But this is the end result:

Everyone who has canned food knows that even though the initial work is hot and arduous, the pay-off is worth it. One day in January you will open those jars of late summer produce and you'll thank your past self for the hours you stood dicing and stirring. Opening a jar of zacuscă in January means tasting the warmth of the August sun in the middle of winter.

I imagine many of you readers have at some time in your lives preserved food in some way. In fact, maybe this week some of you are busy chopping and simmering and boiling jars. Whether it's a current project, or something you've done in the past, I would love to hear what kinds of foods you or your family have canned, jarred, or otherwise preserved. Please share in the comments if you feel inclined to do so.

Thank you for reading.
Be well.