The world of blanks
The watermelon harvest is practically urging me to waste no time and preserve them for the winter. My mother preserved them in slices in three-liter jars, and my grandmother pickled them in wooden tubs. I ate them as a child, but now I don't like them—I don't understand that sweet and sour taste, and straight from the tub they're even gassy! 
We always have a good tomato harvest, with lots of tomatoes in a variety of shapes and sizes, and this year we even planted colorful ones—yellow, orange, and striped. What do we usually do with tomatoes for the winter? We pickle them using my mother's old recipes, make assorted platters, adding cucumbers and other vegetables, and tomatoes in their own juice. We make lecho, eggplant with... 
Tomato juice, aromatic and delicious, we drink a glass a day and maintain our health. As always, a heavy rain fell towards evening. It was brief, but quickly flooded the yard, and rivers raged along the roads. The trip to the dacha was cancelled again; I don't really feel like trudging through the mud. This evening, I planned to feed the berry bushes—currants,... 
We harvested green beans, also known as asparagus beans. Despite a cold, rainy summer, the beans yielded a good harvest. We planted three varieties: Chef, Fiesta, and Zhuravushka. We ended up with two ten-liter buckets of large, beautiful green beans. To preserve this vitamin-rich vegetable for the winter, we decided to freeze them. Freezing preserves almost all the nutrients and vitamins... 
It rained all day on Monday, making it damp and chilly outside. We decided to postpone our trip to the dacha after work and get busy preparing for the winter. On Sunday, we picked a bucket of peppers and tomatoes, and cut the remaining cauliflower; if we leave it in the garden, it will flower. We'll freeze it and eat it in the winter. We decided to make lecho and a few jars of pickled... 
I've been accustomed to preparing winter supplies since childhood. But back when I lived in the village, we used to seal a lot more jars. These days, I just do a little bit at a time, just to try things out. I'll find an interesting recipe and seal a couple of jars. If I like the pickles, I save the recipe and make them again the following season. Oh, I remember 15-20 years ago, when my mom and I would choose... 
Good afternoon. It's harvest time now. I'll show you what I do with "substandard" tomatoes. Recently, after sorting through the harvest, I ended up with this bucket of not-so-great-looking tomatoes. Some were cracked, others were bug-bitten or just small. This year, the cherry tomato bush is producing abundantly. At first, my daughter and her friend ate them with relish. But then...