Busy Busy

I have been busy. Perhaps a bit too busy. I tend to overwhelm myself. Last week we went to Larriland Farm and picked the last of the season's peaches and tomatoes. A few days went by and I finally canned the peaches in a spiced honey syrup (YUM!). I had a lot of syrup left over, so the next day I reduced the honey syrup a bit and canned the rest of it to use for other things.

Finally, today, I cut up the tomatoes and boiled them. When they cool down I'll run them through my food mill, boil them down a little more and then make it into salsa. I know. It'll be a thin, non-chunky salsa, which suits me just fine! I am not a fan of chunks. I might add a few cans of diced tomatoes for more texture and to make my husband happy. He likes the chunks. Why go to all this trouble? Because I didn't want to skin the stinkin' tomatoes! It was too overwhelming to think about and because of that the tomatoes just sat there with a few of them rotting in the mean time. So I did what I could cope with and I just cut them up and boiled them. Aaah! I feel so much better! I need to finish it today. I don't want to be canning on my birthday tomorrow!

I've also been busy working on a Regency corset so I can get started on making some dresses. You can read all about it over at my history blog.

My garden is overrun with weeds, but I have 6 watermelons growing about about 3 pumpkins! I've been planting some perennial flowers and some spring bulbs (not daffodils, thank you very much!) so it doesn't look so bare around here. It's slowly starting to look fairly presentable! I have visions of a well established herb and flower garden in the same tradition of well established, old-fashioned kitchen gardens like you see at historical homes. It'll take some time to get there, but it'll be a beautiful goal to achieve!

The Natural Canning Resources Book

I just learned about this book, Natural Canning Resources Book, through the Cultures for Health website and I just had to take a look! I'm fascinated with food preservation and enjoy eating the fruits of my canning labors (though the process itself is not as fun, especially doing it all by yourself!).

Just one look inside and I could tell that this book is special. It's hard to tell, but I believe there are recipes. What struck me about this book though, was that it has information not usually found in the standard Ball Blue Book like how to replace conventional sugar and corn syrup with healthier alternatives in canning like honey or maple syrup, the nutrient changes in canned food, an explanation of the PH scale, and the science of what lies behind the USDA's regulations for canning. It also has information on unsafe canning methods and things that do not have safe home canning guidelines.

Here is what it says about the book on Cultures for Health:

Details

Lisa Rayner, 2010, softcover

The local foods movement has made home canning popular once again! Farmer’s markets, Community Supported Agriculture projects, urban foraging collectives, permaculture guilds and community gardens are popping up like mushrooms. People who never learned how to preserve food growing up are teaching themselves and learning from old-timers how to can in boiling water baths and pressure canners.

The Natural Canning Resource Book fills a major gap in the canning literature.  Most published canning recipes require the use of non-organic, refined ingredients like distilled while vinegar, white sugar, corn syrup or commercial pectin containing chemical preservatives.  This book explains the science behind USDA canning guidelines and explores how to can foods using healthy, natural ingredients you'll find at your local farmer's mart, CSA, natural foods grocery, buying club or cooperative.

Learn how to:

• Can fruit & pickles without sugar or sweetened with raw honey, agave syrup, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, barley malt, evaporated cane juice or other unrefined cane sugars.
• Pickle vegetables with organic, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar or homemade vinegar.
• Can wild and tropical fruits like Oregon grape, Juneberries, elderberries, paw paw & guava.
• Gel jams and jellies with homemade pectin extracted from locally grown fruit.
• Create your own jam, jelly, fruit butter, pickle, relish, chutney & salsa recipes.
• Can foods using a solar cooker.
• Create a community canning project or start a community kitchen.
• Save money & energy with home canning.
• Use European-style canning jars with glass lids & rubber gaskets.
• Sell your canned goods at your local farmer’s market or CSA.

This looks like an exciting book, especially if you enjoy or depend on canning to fill your cupboards!

Maslin Pan

Oh, this baby is on my wish list for sure! I recently went to a canning workshop where the woman teaching had one of these. I asked her what it was called and where to get one, but she said it had been a gift and she thought it was for cooking jam. I did an image search and finally found it! (It wasn't easy.) It's called a "Maslin Pan". I love that it has a spout, a tipping handle, an over-the-top handle, and a measuring guide inside. And it's angled. How cool is that?! It would make cooking so much easier! (And more fun, don't you think?)

Curing and Canning Your Own Bacon

Are you as surprised and thrilled as I am to find out you can cure and can your own bacon??
I love bacon. A lot. But to get the good kind without junk in it like MSG is kind of difficult unless you live near a health food store that sells bacon or Trader Joe's. And it's expensive! It's actually one of my dreams to raise my own free-range hog for our very own endless supply of bacon. Oh yeah!

Nature's Harmony Farm over at Farm Dreams just posted how to cure and can your own bacon.

Here's how you cure your own bacon - without a smokehouse mind you! (Not that I'd mind a smokehouse...)
http://www.naturesharmonyfarm.com/georgia-slow-food-recipes/post/1018272

And here's how you can it!



Aren't you excited!!!???



*Image from http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Love-Bacon/630034

Busy, Busy, Busy

After the panicked peach pitting party (don't you love alliterations?!), I've gotten the canning bug again. Thank goodness! The peak of the season is in full swing and will soon be waning.

And I've been a busy little bee. I was doing the buying for my produce co-op and the produce company had a great deal on local pickling cucumbers. So, I got together with 2 other ladies from church and we bought 2 bushels. Yes. 2 BUSHELS. That was really silly. I guess I really had no idea how BIG a bushel was! Haha! So, we had a ton of cucumbers. And cucumbers are delicate little things and must not be bumped about, be chilled (dry) and then canned right away. Something we learned: water + cucumbers = slime.

So I had my first ever canning bee yesterday. The three of us got together and from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm we canned as much as we could, which wasn't much with one electric stove. I came home and canned the rest of my pickles. I've got spears and chips, and today I'm planning on using the rest of my cukes for relish.

Let me tell you something. There is just something about seeing home-canned pickles in a jar that makes me so ticklishly happy. Maybe it's because they're not neon green. Maybe it's because with all the garlic and dill floating in the brine they look so fancy gourmet and upscale. Maybe it's because when you twirl the jar back and forth the spears look like octopus legs and the dill looks like seaweed and the garlic looks like little white fishes...

Don't believe me?!?

Seaweed.

Little white fish garlics swimming around the octopus legs.

Seriously, I am not crazy. Just imaginative!

A beautiful demure green, don't you think? 

I added peppercorns to a few. :-) How many neon green jars have those?

None.

Beautiful pickles. 

My pickle-loving son sure is happy!

A Few Projects

Two rows done in this picture

My quilt is coming along. I've almost got all the rows sewed together. Then I'll need to find some fabric for the back and get some light batting as it's going to be our spring quilt. (I'm borrowing the idea from my friend Holly to have a different quilt for every season. Doesn't that just sound so happy?) :-)

Our container garden is coming along nicely. Most of my plants are looking happy. I think watering them every morning has been the biggest difference over last year's garden attempt. I was so inconsistent in the watering back then and my poor plants suffered. I'm really trying hard to do better this year. I've been harvesting cherry tomatoes and my lettuce needs to be picked. The problem is, that we keep getting lettuce from our produce co-op and we can't eat it fast enough! What a wonderful problem to have!

I was also reading over at the Chickens in the Road blog and she mentioned canning her soups, stews, and chilis for the days that she's too busy to cook. I just thought - that's brilliant! Why don't I ever think of doing things like that? I make all that stuff from scratch as it is, but it's a pain when I'm in a hurry. Well, okay, I do know the reason why I haven't canned that stuff yet. I still haven't conquered my intimidation of my pressure canner. It's quite silly really! So, I've been reading on pickyourown.org where they have step-by-step instructions for canning everything. I've had great success using their recipes for jams and pie fillings when Ball Blue Book's recipes failed me. Here is their page on pressure canning. I am determined to conquer the pressure canner this year! What a lovely dream... to open a quart of my own homemade beef stew in the dead of winter made from carrots and potatoes and onions that I harvested myself! Mmm! Let's hope it becomes a reality!

A Book To Recommend: Put 'Em Up!

Put 'Em Up: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook was another awesome find at the Mother Earth News Fair. Yes, it's a canning book, but it's nothing like your average Ball Blue Book. The book is filled with beautiful photos of canned food with endearing hand-labeled tags. And the recipes are interesting and unique. Vinton covers the canning basics at the beginning of the book and then launches into the recipes. The book is organized by ingredient in alphabetical order. This is a unique way of organizing a recipe book, but it makes sense to me! You can choose whatever ingredient is in season and try all her recipes. For example: for beets she has Pickled Beets with Cumin and Cloves, Pickled Beets with Dill, Beet Relish. Vinton also has a simple picture key that shows at a quick glance the various ways an ingredient can be preserved.

The only downside is that there aren't enough recipes per ingredient. Only 3 recipes for beets! I'd love to see more of what can be done in canning some of these things. Below is what you can find inside:

Table of Contents

Part One: Techniques

-Food Preparation Methods

-Food Preservation Methods

-Working in Groups

- Things That Will Get You Into Trouble

- Things That Look Bad But Aren't Dangerous

Part Two: Recipes

- Apples

- Asparagus

- Beans

- Beets

- Berries

- Cabbage

- Cantaloupe

- Carrots

- Cauliflower

- Cherries

- Chilies

- Citrus

- Corn

- Cucumber

- Fennel

- Figs

- Garlic

- Grapes

- Herbs

- Mushrooms

- Onions

- Peaches

- Pears

- Plums

- Radishes

- Ramps and Scapes

- Rhubarb

- Strawberries

- Summer Squash and Zucchini

- Sweet Peppers

- Tomatillos and Green Tomatoes

- Tomatoes

- Watermelon

Overall, this book is a great adventure into canning, whether for the beginner or for someone more experienced. You just might find a new favorite recipe!

We Have Salsa Once Again!

About a month ago we ran out of the salsa I canned last year. It made me a little nervous. I didn't want to buy salsa. I wanted my own salsa! And our menu can't survive without it. We don't have a farmers' market anywhere near us, but Larriland Farms said on their website that they had garden tomatoes to pick. So, last Saturday our family went and picked 40 lbs. of tomatoes at $0.49/lb! (Not to mention 50 lbs. of Smokehouse and Honeycrisp apples for applesauce.) It wasn't hard to pick a lot really quickly, as the tomatoes were gigantic! My husband was a sweetie and helped me scald and skin the tomatoes which is half the battle. Then, yesterday I canned 9 quarts of salsa. And that's only half of the tomatoes. Whew!

When I make salsa it's quite the ordeal, mainly because I don't have a big enough pot for the whole batch. A little frustrating! So, my entire stove top was taken up with my largest pot, two medium pots and the large pressure cooker I use for a water bath canner. Let's just say that it made for a very hot kitchen!

Here's my recipe for salsa. I love this stuff. You can make it as mild or spicy as you want.

Salsa

40 tomatoes, chunked and skinned (you can blend some up in the food processor too if the tomatoes are really firm)
3-6 onions, chopped (I only use 3)
2-4 large green bell peppers, chopped
5-10 hot peppers, chopped (I used 10 jalapeños with only a dozen seeds. You can adjust what kind and how many peppers and seeds for level of heat. At least I think that's how it works!)
6 Tbsp. salt
4 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 Tbsp. oregano
1 cup vinegar
6 small cans tomato paste
1/4 c. sugar (oops! I totally forgot to add this to my batch...)

Chop the peppers and onions in a food processor, or if you like chunkier salsa, hand chop them. Combine all ingredients in the largest pot you can find (or in my case, many smaller pots). Bring to a simmer and cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hours on very low heat, stirring occasionally as it will scorch easily. Process quarts 20 minutes or pints 10 minutes in a water bath.
Makes about 8 quarts.

Blueberry-Lime Jam

I tried this recipe out of the Ball Blue Book of preserving and was pretty pleased with it. I thought I'd post it for you, but I did a little tweaking when I came across a website that I felt had a better recipe. The blueberries make a semi-thick paste if water isn't added to the recipe, which I felt it needed.

Blueberry-Lime Jam

10 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen) (If using fresh, make sure to pick over the berries, removing stems and soft or unripe berries)
1/4 cup lime juice
2 Tbsp. grated lime peel
1/2 cup water
7 cups sugar (if using No-Sugar pectin, use only 4 1/2 cups sugar)
1 box pectin

Crush blueberries one layer at a time. Mix 1/2 cup sugar with the pectin to help keep it from becoming clumped when added to the blueberries. Combine crushed blueberries, powdered pectin/sugar mixture, water, and lime juice in a large pot. Bring to a full boil (the kind that can't be stirred down.) Add the rest of the sugar (6 1/2 cups for regular pectin, 4 cups for No-Sugar pectin), stirring until dissolved. Stir in grated lime peel. Return to a rolling boil. Boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim foam if necessary. Ladle hot jam into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

Yield: I got 11 half-pints using regular pectin and the 7 cups of sugar. Darn odd number! :-)

Note: If you want just regular blueberry jam, omit the lime juice and lime peel and add 1/4 cup lemon juice where it calls for lime juice.