The Things You Find In Your Freezer

**I wanted to put in a quick plug for my other blog where I'm writing for the next few days on what it is like growing up in the extremely Civil War town of Gettysburg. This is the 147th anniversary of the battle which happened July 1-3. You may now resume with your regular blog reading**

We've recently had a windfall of things falling from the sky and into our laps with no strings attached. I mean, a LOT of things from different places. It is very strange, and it always makes me feel uncomfortable when things like this happen because I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, or for the pendulum to swing the other way. But, I don't think that's going to happen in this case.
One thing we've gotten is a new-to-us refrigerator. It is slightly bigger, different style, and has an ice maker. For some reason, we waited until after I got home from work on Saturday at 8:30 to start moving stuff from the old one to the new one and move it.

I don't know why but things like this often turn into the beginnings of possible divorce proceedings. How difficult is it to decide to keep or pitch a container of salad dressing???? WHY do these things always get ugly? It is so stupid! Now, looking back, it is funny. But at the time, I was tired and hungry, he was tired and hot, and it was about 98* outside even that late at night.

So. We did get everything moved or pitched as necessary. We freed up a lot of space, too, by doing refrigerator triage. The freezer was the most interesting by far. I found things in there I had forgotten about and things I had been looking for. One thing I did realize is I need to be a bit more specific when labeling and I shouldn't write something whimsical and funny on the container thinking that I'll just automatically *know* what is in it by looking at the contents or that I will hopefully remember the funny, hahahahaha time I had when I wrote it.

Case in point:

WHAT???? What was I thinking? What is actually in the bag??? I have no idea and while I KNOW it really isn't what it says it is, I didn't have the courage to open it up and sniff. Nor did I thaw it to take a better look. Meatballs? In sauce? I pitched it. I have no idea what it was. And you should have seen Matt's face when he pulled it out of the freezer! It was hilarious.

So, yeah, a better job at labeling this year.

Lactofermentation and Garlic Harvest

Lots going on right now but here's a teaser:
We went over to D's house (of 'Bramble' fame) and she had a jar of fermented pickles on the counter. We talked about it, she gave me the recipe and instructions....so now I also have fermented pickles on the counter!

Also, take a look at this mother:
Yup, garlic harvest has begun....at least 3 weeks early! So far, I've dug two varieties that are fairly early varieties anyway (chinese pink and shantung purple), and are very pleased with the size, etc.

Morel Season 2010

For the past 4 years now we have waited with baited breath for....morel season. Morels. *sigh* How we adore you!
And how hard you are to find! OK, I have more trouble than the average person. I can be standing literally within INCHES of these things and still not see them.Last year was a horrible year for them around here. This year? Fantastic! So far, Matt has gathered at least 2lb.
Yes, Matt has. He can spot them yards away. Yards! Seriously, he's a morel-spotting savant. So impressed. I actually have yet to step into the woods this year to search. Why? I can't find them anyway. And I can be at home, making Rosemary Flower Jelly instead.

Most of our haul we've been dehydrating for later use.

However, the first batch had a special purpose. We'd been waiting on the first batch to make Sauteed Morels with Cream (above). I've had morels with eggs (ick), morels fried in butter and served over steak (just ok). After having this classic French cream sauce with toast, I truly cannot think of any reason to have morels any other way. This recipe can be found on The Great Morel recipe site, and I HIGHLY recommend it.

Sautéed Morels with Cream

15-20 fresh morels or reconstituted dried, cut in half if large
1 large shallot chopped fine
1 large clove garlic chopped fine
2 TBS butter (best with unsalted)
2 TBS olive oil
3/4 cup chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

Put olive oil in heated pan over medium heat. Add garlic and shallots, stir and sauté until softened but not brown. Add butter until melted then add morels. Stir and cook until mushrooms start to brown, about 4 min. Add chicken stock and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add cream and cook on low until reduced and thickened. Classically served on toast, but the best on grilled New York Strip steaks.

Food Security

A couple years ago, Angie and I went to an Earth Day event at the local agrihousing development/commune (or whatever you’d like to call it) Hundredfold Farm. It was a fun event, a little cold, but still. I attended several talks (including one at their greenhouse/wastewater treatment plant that was wonderful) but the most interesting one I sat in on was called ‘Food Security.’

Going in, I wasn’t sure what exactly they were going to be talking about, but being colored by my day job I thought it might be security of the nation’s food supply, as in national security.

Nope. It was security of your personal food supply. Specifically he was discussing the problem that is Global Agribusiness, GMOs, and the rise and fall of oil prices and what it will do to the grocery store. He was calling us all to protect ourselves and our families against the downfall of the current ‘cheap food’ method of eating. It was very interesting and funny, believe it or not, and I wish I had a tape of it.

So….fast forward to Spring 2010. Two years since that talk. Since then I have expanded my garden. I don’t think we’re headed for a world war. I don’t think we’re headed for communism (or OMG Socialism!!!) or anything like that. I do think we are headed for some serious economic problems that will affect how we live (and I’m a bleeding-heart liberal, by the way). I don’t think cheap food is going to be cheap forever. It can’t sustain itself.

Since the talk, the economy has tanked, a lot of people are out of jobs….and a lot more people are keeping chickens and tending home gardens, etc. Hm.

Last fall, I was worried about my job due to our contract being up. Matt and I talked and were very happy that….we had our garden’s bounty preserved in the basement. We were happy that…..he knew how to hunt. It turned out to be ok, I’m still working. But there it is. It was very interesting to realize this.

This spring, rumor was flying of layoffs at Matt’s workplace. We were coming out of heating season, it was the time to do it. So, we sat and talked again. And you know what? We were both glad that I had already ordered and received the seeds for this year’s garden (in addition to the saved/traded seeds from last year), and several tomato plants were on order and paid for. It was already planned. It was taken care of. We would, just barely, be ok if he lost his job.

We dodged a bullet. Two other people were let go at his workplace and Matt’s job is secure.

For now.

The talk I saw 2 years ago hit home. After the first panicked “What will happen?” went away, the first thing we both found ourselves thinking was…..thank goodness we canned all those veggies.

Preserved 2009

What I preserved through March 31, 2010

11 quarts beans
7 pints beans
12 pints bourbon peaches
13 pints beets
8 pints raspberry chipotle sauce
8 4oz jars mustard
4.5lb shelled peas frozen
6 half-pints mango chutney
14 jars violet jelly
5 quarts peach pie filling
6 pints carrots
3 quarts carrots
4 pints orange-glazed carrots
1 pint getty sauce
7 quarts getty sauce
2 quarts preserved lemons
10 half-pints pickled beets
3 half-pints green tomato chutney
6 quarts Greek potatoes
11 jars cherry tomato cinnamon jam
5 4oz jars lemon chutney
12 half-pints salsa
6 half-pints salsa verde
6 things frozen shredded zuch
6 things frozen roasted tomatoes
7 pints dilled green tomatoes
16 pints applesauce
7 quarts apple slices
1 quart dried apples
5 things frozen pumpkin puree
4 bags frozen squash chunks
3 bags of broccoli
10 pints parnips
Various dried fruits

Bad News From the Bees

Yahoo posted this story yesterday:

Bees in more trouble than ever after bad winter

The not so great highlights include:

• One-third of those surveyed had trouble finding enough hives to pollinate California's blossoming nut trees, which grow the bulk of the world's almonds.

• "There were a lot of beekeepers scrambling to fill their orders and that implies that mortality was high," said Penn State University bee researcher Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who worked on the USDA snapshot survey.

• The losses were extreme, three times higher than the previous year.

• EPA officials said they are aware of problems involving pesticides and bees and the agency is "very seriously concerned."

Among some of the interesting comments to this article:

Einstein said, that from the death of the bees, we had no more than 4 years, until we all died. Thanks Monsanto, for making this verification test possible....3 years, 250 days, and counting...Tick...Tick...Tick...

Interestingly, the following got mostly negative reviews. It's true, though; I don't know why it pissed people off:

European honey bees are an introduced, invasive species responsible for more human deaths every year than snake bites and lightening strikes. It's unfortunate that they have displaced so many North America's native pollinators. Perhaps this will allow those to re-populate and refill their niche.

And....lastly:

The good news is that there are bee raising methods that seem to be working, if they are practiced on a small scale. I know of several keepers in NY whose colonies have remained intact through the crisis. it's too early to tell, but let's hope that is still the case. We've really, as a society, got to start rethinking our love affair with the perfect lawn. The pesticide use, runoff and loss of habitat is a major drive behind many ecological ills. If we lose the bees, folks, we are down to hiring people to do hand-pollination. Wonder what that will do to food prices and availability? Anyone with an interest in this topic should research the small-scale beekeeping methods that are working, and modify practices to help preserve them.

Pineapple in Brown Sugar Rum Sauce

Oh, yeah.

This is the second time I've made this recipe. Now, pineapple isn't exactly 'local' in Pennsylvania, I know. But. This is great over vanilla ice cream. This is fantastic when a ham steak soaks in it and is baked. And I'm sure it's great by itself, but honestly it's never made it that far.
The recipe is in the thin Ball Blue Book that Matt's grandmother gave me:

• 2 ripe pineapples
• 2 cups water
• 1.5 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cups rum

The first time I did the recipe I diced the pineapple in about 1/4 chunks. Very small, this time we did them larger (Matt helped). I also used dark brown sugar this time, hence the nice, dark color:
Take the water and brown sugar, boil it, then reduce it to a simmer for 5 minutes. Add the pineapple until it is heated through, place into 1/2 pint or pint jars and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Nothing to it!

Oranges, part 2

After canning the clementines, I had a lot of orange peel.

Did I mention I had a lot of orange peel? A lot. I cut it mostly into strips:
I had so much I wound up boiling them in two batches. The first batch I boiled in two water baths and I changed the water once. They boiled for 2o minutes each, and I thought the first batch was really mushy. The second batch I only boiled once for 20 minutes. They were tough. Note to self: two water baths of 10 minutes each are fine for orange peel (3 @ 20min each are good for grapefruit peel, usually).

After everything is boiled to death, you mix an equal amount of sugar to what you have of orange peel (2 cups orange peel=2 cups sugar). Mix in a little (NOT much, like 1/4-1/2 cup) water and add the orange peel. Stir until it spins a thread.

Well, that's what the directions say. I don't know what that means, so I just stir until it seems things have been absorbed well.

Then, dump them out on a parchment/wax paper-lined cookie sheet to dry. Try to separate them out pretty well or else they will take days to dry like mine did. Ahem.

I also didn't use wax paper and, as you can see above, had to chip them off the cookie sheet. A little spray of water helped with this.
Some of them were destined for the chocolate dip. nyum.

Oh Muh Darlin' Clemintine!

I found this recipe for canning clementine oranges recently and as we LOVE them I decided to try to save some so we'd have some decent citrus options over the summer. I bought 15lb of clementines. I know, I know. 5lb was for eating, though, and I knew some would be a little funky, and they were. So, that's about 10lb for canning.
Since I have fingernails and Matt doesn't, I peeled while he took all the segments apart. It actually didn't take too long.

What took the longest was getting the water to boil. I waited on that FOREVER.
Very light syrup, 10min in a boiling water bath (eventually), and tada! Very little siphoning this time, and only one of the quarts didn't seal.
So, ten pounds of clementines got me 3 quarts and 6 pints. And a huge pile of peel....soon to be candied (stay tuned)...

Bourbon Pickled Peaches

Oh, yeah, you know you read that title and thought "Ooooohhhhh that sounds REALLY good." And they are...they are....read on....This recipe is much more than just peaches floating in bourbon. Oh, no, this is actually a glorified pickled peach recipe, and glory it is. The brine is truly a gorgeous color, and smells divine.
I don't think I have every done anything so messy or sticky as peeling, cutting, and then pitting peaches. What a mess. I was hoping to get them halved fairly easily while maintaining their form but, no, they were not cooperating so I went from pretty, unblemished whole peaches (above) to messy, dented ratty peach halves (below).

In the long run, though, it doesn't matter, because they will soften up and get poached in the brine anyway:
And the finished product, looking just gorgeous in these Ball Elite pint jars despite their ratty appearance earlier:

And the recipe, which comes from the files of the Melting_Pot, the sister Yahoo! group of the Home_Canning group, to which I belong. I highly recommend joining if only for the recipes.

Bourbon-Preserved Peaches

These sweet-tart fruits are a spiked cousin of Southern pickled peaches. They are traditionally served alongside roast meats, but their slightly sour note and thick syrup means they are heavenly with vanilla ice cream. The same preparation can be applied using apricots and brandy, and Amaretto also works nicely. If you abstain from alcohol, omit it and increase the vinegar to 2 cups.

6 lbs small, firm peaches
2 lbs (4 cups) sugar
1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup bourbon, divided use
4 cinnamon sticks
1 pinch cloves
1 tablespoon chopped crystallized ginger
4 wide-mouth quart canning jars

1. Before you begin, assess the size of your peaches to see how many you'll want to cut in half to fit snuggly into the jars. Set a very large pot of water to boil.
Sanitize the jars by immersing them and their lids in the boiling water for a minute, remove with tongs and set aside. Leave the water boiling, and prepare a bowl full of ice water.

2. Blanch the peaches. Submerge a few peaches in the boiling water, let boil for 1-2 minutes, then immediately transfer the peaches to the ice water. Let the peaches sit in the ice water for a minute, then remove and immediately peel the skin from the peaches and place in a clean bowl. Repeat until all the peaches are peeled. Working over the bowl to catch any juices, halve and pit as many peaches as necessary (I usually halve about half the peaches).

3. Drain the pot, rinse it, and return it to the stove. Combine sugar, vinegar, 1/2 cup of bourbon, 1 cinnamon stick broken in half, the cloves and ginger. Add any juice from the bowl of peaches. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Turn the heat down and let the syrup simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until the syrup is concentrated and slightly thickened (the syrup will be slightly golden, but it should not darken in color).

4. Add about one third of the peaches to syrup, raise the heat slightly, and poach for about six minutes, turning peaches to coat. (It will seem like you don't have enough syrup, don't worry). Transfer peaches to a jar, packing the whole peaches with the peach halves as closely as possible. Continue poaching the peaches and filling the jars in two more batches. (I usually end up with three full jars plus a half jar, depending on the size of the peaches). Turn the heat off the syrup, let cool slightly, and then stir in the remaining 1/2 cup bourbon. Carefully ladle the syrup into the jars, filling to within 1/2 inch of the rim. Insert a cinnamon stick into each jar. Run a knife or small spatula on the inside of the jars to release any air bubbles, wipe the rims of the jars clean. Place the lids on the jar and screw on caps so that they are finger-tight.

5. If you are canning the jars, prepare a large batch of boiling water again. Submerge the closed jars in the boiling water for 15 minutes. Remove with tongs or rubber mitts, set aside the jars to cool to room temperature. If you don't want to process the jars, the peaches will keep for four weeks in the refrigerator.

Treats Sweet & Sauer

I'm not a big soda drinker. I got out of the miniscule habit I did have last year, when I was trying to lose weight. However, I sometimes have a hankering for a Sarsaparilla from Kutztown Soda Works and last week it was really bad.
So bad, in fact, that I bought two bottles of Sarsaparilla and a tub of vanilla ice cream and after dinner made a float. And the next day, I made another float. And the day after that....well, you get the picture.

Kutztown makes great sodas. They also do root beer, birch beer, red cream, black cherry, and a few others I can't remember right now. They are not caffinated, and they only use cane sugar as a sweetener. And their descriptions always have some bit of interesting Pennsylvania Dutch lingo, as seen above. Kutztown sodas aren't carried many places, but the grocery store in the town where I work has most of them. Thank god. (You can buy online, too!*)

(*I just noticed something I must have: they have a tshirt that has the logo on the front and on the back says "Got Sass?" That is so going to be mine.)

Continuing on with the Pennsylvania Dutch theme, I recently tried my hand at making good, old fashioned sauerkraut. It seemed easy, right?

This is a picture of the first batch, which looks infinitly better in this picture than it did when I pitched it in the compost bin a week or so later. It had gotten a milky look to it and had started to brown and dry at the top. Not enough water, it was grocery store cabbage and was very dry.
I started a second batch with 2 farmer market cabbages and 2-weeks in it looks and smells much better, and tastes great. I hope to do this with my own cabbage eventually.

Makin' Booze

One of my former coworkers, Danuta, got Matthew and I into making our own fruit cordials. We've kind of been working at it half-assed for a few years now, but I decided to make a few things this year that I know we will use:

The ratafia, above, is a really easy thing to make and now is a good time to start. Get a food-grade sealable jar, the larger the better, and just start layering various cut-up fruit in it, followed by a layer of sugar. Pour in some cheap vodka to cover (don't use Absolut for this). Then when you have some add more fruit, more sugar, and more vodka. Repeat. Repeat.

Once the jar is filled, let it sit for at least a month in a coolish, dryish, darkish spot, then filter it out through some cheese cloth or, if you have a lot of time, a coffee filter. Let the resulting liquid sit for at least another 2 months.

The above jar has (I think) blackberries, an apple, a peach, and a couple plums in it.

A few tips: don't go heavy on the citrus. A little goes a long way. Also, this is a great way to use up fruit that is just that side of being too ripe to eat or something that is getting a bit soft or otherwise funky. Not rotten, mind. Just funky. And you can reuse the fruit after you strain the liquid out, just add another cup of sugar, let it sit for a day, then add vodka again. Oh, and I would stay away from bananas.

I've been keeping my stuff behind the fire log set. I currently have the strained ratafia, another batch of ratafia soaking, two batches of blackberry brandy, and a batch of mint julep liquor (bourbon). Oh, and the sauerkraut.

Larnin' from Grandmother YouTube

This year has seen a number of firsts:

• first pressure canning (beans, and beets now, too!)
• first time planting several things (okra, sweet potatoes, leeks, and soon turnips and cabbage)
• first time making sauerkraut

how does one pressure can? I mean, you can read the manual, but I'm a watch-and-learn kinda gal. I would have gone to visit Matt's Grandmother Mary V, but that isn't an option anymore and I don't know anyone who cans. So, what did I do when I wanted to see it happening?

I visited Grandmother YouTube. Yes, YouTube is being used now for instruction on just about anything....including, it seems, pressure canning. See this 9-minute video on canning green beans from Wolfcrik, and also see the other canning videos this user has uploaded.

Ah, now, how do we make sauerkraut? Real, fermented sauerkraut? I didn't know, but I wanted to do it (see an upcoming post about my great great grandmother Amelia). Well, now, I sat down at the foot of Grandmother YouTube again and found three wonderful videos:

• This one, from Kitchen Gardeners International, is about 7 1/2 minutes long and does a really good job with details
• This one from a woman in Alaska also has a nice bit with a cute kid who will gladly eat the cabbage cores. It is about 7 minutes.
• And this one from a homesteader in Alaska shows the process via another method (I must get one of those knives for cutting veggies in the garden!)

There are a few other thing I want to try for the first time this year, such as making Greek yogurt and cheese. Grandmother YouTube came through yet again with this wonderfully quick 10-minute video on Greek yogurt. I haven't looked up cheese making (yet) but I'm sure there are some out there.

So many people watch silly videos on YouTube. (I do, too, have you seen the spoof of Total Eclipse of the Heart? Or Sham Wow?) But there are a lot of really good instructional videos on the system, too. Take a look, you may be surprised.

What has Grandmother YouTube taught you recently?

Mango Chutney and Drying Cherries

It looks like I've done something horrible to myself here, but actually I've just been pitting red cherries. My fingernails were stained for days.I don't particularly like Rachael Ray, but I did learn a great way to pit cherries from her show. If you have a percolator coffee pot, use the metal tube thingie from it. It gets the pit out perfectly every time. Do it over a tray, though, it is messy:I have about 4 cups of dried cherries now. I use them in a recipe for Bulgar wheat. Take a cup of water or chicken stock and a pat of butter and bring it all to a boil. Add 1/2 cup of dried bulgar wheat and turn it to a simmer. Let the wheat cook and absorb all the liquid. Put in a handful of dried fruit of your choice and serve. It is really fantastic.I also made the Mango Chutney recipe out of the Ball Jar book of home preserving. It turned out spicy but very good. I have 6 pints in the basement.

Pressure Canner Virgin No More

It was just about a year ago that Matt's grandma Mary V. died very suddenly in a freak carbon monoxide accident (please get and/or check your CO detectors). Mary V. was THE canning queen, she would put up probably all-told a few hundred jars of tomato sauces, pickles, relishes, jams, preserves, and just about everything in between every year, then give most of it away. We hadn't purchased spagetti sauce in 7 years. We had been kicking around the idea of canning for a couple years, but last year we decided to just do it in part to carry on the tradition.


So, earlier this month I bought our pressure canner. It is a 23-quart Presto, I got it on Amazon at about $10 off their regular price. It is aluminum. It has all kinds of dials and vent-things in the lid. It is huge.
I mean, seriously. It is really big. And intimidating. I've been terrified to pressure can anything since we seriously decided to do it last year. And I was thinking about this: Why? Well, two reasons:

1. I don't want the canner to blow up and kill us, and
2. I don't want to kill us with bad or poisoned food.

I think those are pretty good reasons to be freaked out. But, really, the canner has so many automatic releases that it truely can't get to a high enough pressure to go boom. And the second, well, as a nice Youtube video about canning said, I have never known anyone to get sick or die from poorly home-canned food. But I have known people to get sick off stuff they got at the grocery store or restaurant, myself included. And we've all heard about people dying from E. coli and salmonella. So, that made me feel better, too.

(At this point I should say I have the Queen/David Bowie song Under Pressure stuck in my head).

So, I had a nice batch of green beans from the garden and I estimated I could get 4 quarts out of them. I snapped the stem end off (and fed them to the nextdoor neighbor's pheasants), then snapped the beans in 2-3 pieces to better fit in the jars.

The canner needs only a few inches of water in it. I prepped the canner, got some water boiling in a different pot, washed the jars, and started packing them. Some beans were purple, but unfortunately the color cooks out of them. I would have liked the color in the mix, but oh well.

After all four jars were packed and boiling water put in, I placed them in the canner, put the lid on the canner tight and waited for the air to vent out. When it was all steam coming out the vent, I put the weight on, and waited for the pressure to build up to 10 lbs. At this point my sous chef, Max, needed a belly rub:
Pressure is at 10lb!!!! OMG we're really pressure canning!! I was shocked, actually, that the manual for the canner said to keep the burner at 'a fairly high heat' to keep the pressure where it was supposed to be. I kept turning the heat down while the pressure kept going up. By the time it was all said and done, I'd had to vent off some steam to bring the pressure down from 13lb to 11, and the burner was on *2* which seemed incredibly low to me.

Since you kinda need to babysit the canner, I did the dishes:

And, 25 minutes (and an additional 30min cooling time) later, the pressure came down, the lid came off to find still-boiling jars:
And here they are, resting comfortably for the next 24 hours. I checked them this morning, the lids had sealed. When I get home I'll label them and off to the basement they'll go.
I am feeling much better about this now. I already have plans to do beets, Greek lemon potatoes, more beans, maybe orange glazed carrots. I added 2-3 canning links in the 'I Read Food Blogs' section, they all have really neat recipes. There is also a great Yahoo! group on home canning, and I have found the ladies (and gents?) on the list to be an invaluable resource for questions.

A Number of Recent Purchases

1) I recently bought two books that I'm having a wonderful time with.

First, Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. I cannot rave enough about this book. I can't put it down, either, choosing it over the novel-of-the-week for lunchtime reading. To try to put this in a nutshell, Coleman and his wife live in Maine and have been on the search for the best way to keep crops going through the winters. They have done very well with it, and in this revised edition they even added in a trip to France and drove through the country following the 44th Parallel (which is the same Parallel they live on in Maine) to see how the French do winter gardening. And they learned a lot. And they share it, and great stories and tips and tricks and information galore, in this wonderful book.

Second, Root Cellaring by the Bubels. Haven't really gotten into this one yet, but skimming it shows that it will be invaluable to me as well.

I've been trying to cut down my book purchases in recent years, getting only things I know I want to have handy and getting other books at the library. These were two I had to have handy.

2) I bought a few seeds for fall planting from Territorial Seeds. These include the adorable, small Dazzle romaine lettuce, the plant in the fall and let winter over Purple Sprouting broccoli, Flat of Egypt red beets (I haven't grown red beets before, only golden), and one I can't wait to meet in person: Filderkraut cabbage. Can you believe this cabbage??? I had to get it.

3) We started getting serious about this garden with the intent on preserving as much as we could for the rest of the year, and that included canning. I started canning last year, but only did boiling water canning which limited me to fruit and tomato products. In order to get serious and can our veggies, we needed a pressure canner.

This past weekend, I ordered a Presto 22Qt. pressure canner via Amazon. They'd dropped the price $10 between the time I left work on Friday and when I got home, so I bought it. I'm still a little nervous about using it, but there are good directions all over the place and I have guidance from a few people, so I'm sure I'll get the hang of it quickly.

Shy Violet Jelly

I recently joined a Yahoo! Group that is all about canning and preserving food. One of the women was talking about making a beautiful jelly out of the wild violets in her yard and I was so intrigued that I looked up the recipe. It seemed simple, and I have a horde of violets in the yard right now, so I thought...why not?

The recipe calls for two cups of violet flowers and of COURSE I forgot to take a picture of what that looks like, but it was very pretty.



Then, you pour two cups of boiling water over the flowers and let them sit. This extracts the delicate flavor and the beautiful color from the flowers. Here is what that looked like: drowned flowers.


You let that sit all day (or all night), then strain the flowers out and keep the water. You should still have close to 2 cups. Make sure to press as much water as you can out of the flowers. It comes out the most beautiful blue color.


You need to add some acid to make it OK to can it in a hot water bath. Add 1/4 cup of lemon juice which, unfortunately, turns it this purple color. While pretty, I much preferred the blue.


Have ready a boiling water bath with your canning jars in it, sterilizing. I wound up using 3 half-pint jars and 3 4oz jars, and still had a little left over. Be sure to also sterilize the lids (you don't need to sterilize the rings).


Put the extract in a medium saucepan on high. Add four cups of sugar and bring it to a boil. Add one packet of liquid pectin and boil for one minute.


Take it off the heat and (working quickly) pull jars one at a time out of their bath and start filling. Take care not to touch the rims, and leave 1/2 inch of headroom.


Wipe rims and seal. Leave in a comfortable, non-drafty place for 24 hours to properly seal.


I think these are gorgeous. Taste-wise, they are very slightly floral with a very slightly grapey flavor. Very delicate, I have no idea what I might use them for. This was the first time I've used liquid pectin and I'm really happy, though it did start to gel very quickly.

So, what do you do with....the extra tomatoes?

Matt and I have been talking about trying our hand at canning now for a couple years, and this year we finally took the plunge.

A new virtual friend (YD) told me about the website Pick Your Own and they have a great canning section. I checked it out and immediately honed in on the Ketchup recipe. I just happened to have an abundance of Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes that would be going to waste unless I did something with them, and I had a huge batch of already roasted Greens in the freezer, so I decided to make green Ketchup.

I went by the directions with a few exceptions: since I'd already roasted the frozen sauce with garlic, I didn't add any extra. I also didn't have nearly as many pounds of tomatoes as what they called for, so I winged it with the rest of the ingredients (I wound up putting in too much sugar, but it still tastes ok).

I cooked it down in the crockpot all afternoon and did the actual canning when I got home from work that Sunday night.

The result was 5 pints of green ketchup that tastes great.

So, what do you do with the….Spinach?

Those of you who’ve cooked with fresh spinach probably all know one thing above all else: it doesn’t go far. You go to the grocery store, buy what looks like a huge bunch of beautiful sturdy green leaves. Then you get home and start steaming it up and you’re left with something that would fit in a thimble. It’s amazing, where does it all go?

So I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from my small spinach patch. No, seriously. My veggie patch this year is about 2/3 test garden. I’m trying many different things to see what grows well and how things do for me here. Probably wasn’t a great year to do this what with all the cold and rain, but nonetheless this was my plan, and I’ll probably do it again next year to add data to this, the Year of Clammy Sogginess.

So, spinach. Matt and I had gone to Target the day before and found these nice metal mesh baskets that seemed perfect for veggie collecting because you can spray the veggies in the basket or dunk the basket in water to rinse things off instead of doing things by hand one at a time. Great purchase, we bought 4. They were on clearance. So I stuffed all the spinach root-down into the basket and carried it back down to the house, then placed it in a tub with an inch or so of water in it until I could get to it (after breakfast). This kept the roots wet and the leaves from wilting.

Then, I took a large pot and put it on the stove. I rinsed the leaves and tore them off the stems and put them in the pot. Once the pot was about 2/3 full, I added about a half cup of water and turned the burner on high. I stirred them around until they were pretty well wilted, then I turned off the heat, spooned the cooked spinach into a bowl to cool, and started adding new leaves to the pot.

It took about an hour and three potfulls. I will also mention that most of the leaves had bug munchies on them. I am not as squeamish as most people are about bugs and bug munchies. Did some tiny insects get into the pot with my spinach? Probably. Do I care? Honestly, not really. The food we eat, the flour or sugar we buy, it all has insect or insect poo in it. They can’t get it out. There are actually guidelines with the FDA on how many insects and rodent hairs are allowed in your food (check out this one for chocolate). In the long run, my spinach was checked over leaf for leaf. Do you think Dole can really say that? And it doesn’t have anything sprayed on it, which means a lot to me, too.

Once the spinach was cool, I did two things with it. First, I filled up an ice tray. What? Yes, an ice tray. Matt took one look and said “Eeewwww! Spinach ice cubes!! A kids worst nightmare.” But they’re great for recipes, adding to scrambled eggs or a dip. I can pull out a cube or two and leave the rest. I don't know why the picture is so dark.

The rest I just put in a ziplock bag and froze. After the ice tray there was only enough there for one meal for the two of us, but still I’m happy with that. I know now that I can grow nice spinach, and I already have seeds to plant for the fall crop. So all in all the spinach test was worthwhile.