And yet more canning

More canning:
8/21, 4 pints Sweet Pepper Jam, Put 'Em Up
8/21, 4 quarter-pints Spicy Tomato Aspic, Put 'Em Up
9/11, 7 pints Quartered Tomatoes/raw pack, uga.edu
9/11, 5? pints Zesty Salsa, Put 'Em Up
9/19, 7 pints Apple Preserves
9/21, 8 pints stewed tomatoes, BBB
10/1, 7 quarts applesauce, BBB...for and with Sarah AJ, using her apples, and using Sara M's Kitchen Aid food grinder and fruit/veg strainer attachments (awesome!)
10/3, 8 pints Snap Beans, fresh, with salt, hot pack, pressure canner (using our fall crop of green and yellow beans; first time canning green beans other than dilly beans)
10/4, 8 pints applesauce, BBB

I mostly record only shelf-stable canned items, but I'm so excited about making things using Sara's KA attachments, plus the ease of freezing things using our new upright freezer, that I'll brag about this too:
10/3 3 pints + 4 half-pints Pear Sauce, frozen, pickyourown.org
10/10 3 pints pumpkin puree, frozen

We are getting a nice stash of food collected in our freezer...berries, green beans, corn, grassfed beef, and the venison Brian bagged during bow hunting season in Buffalo County.

One would think I should be done preserving veggies and fruits by now, but I am making applesauce again today (we picked apples - 3rd time this season - on Tuesday) and if the stars align right, possibly green tomato salsa and/or dilly beans this weekend.

Tomato Time

My tomatoes seem to be at their peak.  I have a crazy mish-mash of tomato varieties growing this year, thanks to my shopping at the UWGB heirloom plant sale and the UW-Extension sale, plus my desire to find ideal canning tomatoes:  

• a cherry tomato (good for snacking on;  I have limited myself to one plant/year and that is perfect)
• 2 (or 3?) stupice (a salad tomato;  too many plants for me...don't bother next year)
• a brandywine (love the gorgeous pink color and huge size, though it wasn't a great producer for me) *
• a green zebra (for fun...it's pretty and a yummy slicing tomato)
• a striped Roman (another one for fun;  it's a paste tomato so it's good for canning but not as large as my other paste tomatoes)
• a Hillbilly (not a great producer for me, but they are large fruits)
• 3 Polish linguisa (a plum tomato...definitely a keeper for next year...firm flesh, great for canning and oven-drying) *
• an Opalka (another great plum tomato with firm flesh) *

*definite keepers for 2011

As you can see, it's the canning (plum/paste) tomatoes that I'm really excited about.  Also, the hot new trend seems to be oven-roasted tomatoes (like this recipe).  It seems like everywhere I turn, someone else is talking/blogging about these.  I made up two baking sheets of them last week and am doing the same again tonight.  They turn out rich and sweet and are great for putting into sandwiches and pasta. 

Yesterday a friend and I canned some tomatoes.  Here's what we did:

9/4/10 7 pints crushed tomatoes, uga.edu recipe
9/4/10  6 half-pints heirloom tomato salsa, Put 'Em Up recipe (added the optional 1 tsp. cumin)

Lessons learned:

• Replace canning rack:  it's not meant for jars that are smaller than pints;  smaller sizes fall through and it's quite annoying.  I've known this for years but just haven't broken down and replaced it.  
• Don't crush the tomatoes to make juice.  The tomatoes cook down enough to make their own juice anyhow.  My crushed tomatoes turn out too watery for my taste...though really it doesn't matter a great deal.  They generally go into chili and soup and their consistency is not all that critical.  I probably could use a recipe for half or whole tomatoes to get the results I want with a bit less effort. 

August 22, 2010

Last week our new freezer arrived:  21 cu ft upright chest freezer, manual defrost.  It is amazing!  It is HUGE!  We are slowly filling it up.  Yesterday we purchased 10 lbs of blueberries at the farmer's market.  Most will be flash frozen individually on cookie sheets, but I'm also excited about trying my hand at fruit leather and jam. 

A couple weeks ago I purchased a new canning book:  Put 'Em Up by Sherri Brooks Vinton.  While we were at camp, I drooled over her recipes, most of which are small-batch and encourage local eating.  It's fun to have something other than the old standby of the Ball Blue Book as a food preservation resource, and the book lists recipes in sections based on the main ingredient, so it's handy to turn to, say, the berry section and find all kinds of options. 

Yesterday I made Sweet Pepper Jam, which is from the above-mentioned book.  Yum.  I'm imagining it as a tasty spread on sandwiches, or on crackers paired with a spreadable cheese.  Jams and jellies are such an easy way to can (the recipes are simple and they don't require a long processing time in the water bath) and there are some really unique recipes out there.  There are also some safe ways to experiment with the recipes (not the case with all canned goods).  I'm debating about attempting an herb jelly next, but can't decide what to try...lavendar and fruit juice?  Maybe lemon balm?  Or something savory like sage?  I'm having a hard time imagining the taste of the finished product but I'm excited to try it. 

8/21/10 Sweet Pepper Jam (5 half-pints, 1 quarter-pint, water bath canning, Put 'Em Up)

Another Canning Update

7/19/10:  20 pints of GA peaches, canned in white grape juice;  19 of which sealed (my friend Cori canned along with me while our kids played;  we all had a blast!);  Presto recipe
7/24/10:  3 half-pints of peach-white grape jelly, made with the juice we cooked the peaches in on 7/19 ;  Sure-Gel no-sugar recipe;  I used no sugar at all (you can choose how much to use) and (big shock!) it's quite tart!;  Sure-Gel recipe
8/7/10:  4 pints of dill pickles (2 with garlic;  2 without);  BBB recipe

When Aaron (age 6) saw the pickles spears neatly packed into the wide-mouth jars, he asked, "how'd you do that?!" as though I had turned water into wine, which naturally filled me with pride.  He had been expecting pickle "coins".  

Slow canning month due to travels and a torn-up kitchen (we got new flooring and fridge this week - I'm in heaven!).

I'm eagerly anticipating apple and pear season!  I had also hoped to can some of our raspberries this fall (normally we only freeze them) in the form of jam and pie filling, but I'm not sure we'll have a crop at all due to way too much rain.  :(

Canning Update

More canning:
7/5/10:  5 half-pints of apple-peach jelly (WB, Sure-Gel)
7/12/10:  6 half-pints of apple-peach jelly (WB, Sure-Gel)
7/17/10:  5 pints of dilly beans (WB canned, BBB recipe)

The jellies were made with Sure-Gel pectin, using the leftover juice from canning peaches.  The jelly is delicious, and with four cups of sugar per batch, it oughta be! 

We have green beans coming out of our ears, and a chest freezer full to the brim with the 1/4 cow and six chickens that we purchased last week, so canning is especially a must this year if we are going to preserve things.  I may pressure can some plain green beans as well (a longer process than pickling them), but canning the bushel of peaches we bought yesterday will have to come first.

I am going a little nutty with canning this month in part because August is shaping up to be a jam-packed month for us...we will have family camp, my sister's wedding, and then a number of trainings and meetings prior to heading back to school.

Peachy-Keen

After waiting all week for the big day to arrive, I purchased my bushel of peaches from the Tree-Ripe Citrus Company truck on Friday, July 2nd.  The peaches are sold by the half-bushel, and that's what I had planned to get (one only) but everyone in line was talking about how great they are so I impulsively bought a full bushel instead.  Opening the box up at home; I found that they were rock-hard and I was a little worried about that! However, by Sat. some were already ripening and tasted GREAT and were very juicy!

By Sunday they were all ripe and I canned one pressure canner load (7 jars...would have all been quarts but I miscalculated when peeling/cooking and ended up with 6 qts and 1 pint).  On Monday  I canned a second load, this time using the pressure canner as a water-bath canner.  This time I filled all 7 quart jars but for some reason 2 did not seal!  Sunday's batch took a long 5 hours but Monday's went faster;  I think it was 3.5 hours so it does go faster with more practice (I also had Brian's help blanching the peaches for about 20 minutes; the remainder of the time he was on kid-duty). 

The peach-canning recipes allow the cook to choose what liquid to pack them in...water, apple or grape juice, or any number of sugar syrup recipes ranging from very light to heavy syrup.   I opted to pack the peaches in apple juice, and cooking the peaches in that juice resulted a large quantity of a very delicious apple-peach juice being left over.  It's great for drinking straight, but also looked to be ideal for jelly-making (more on that later).  On Sunday (the 4th), I dutifully used 11 cups of apple juice as the recipe called for, but after cooking the peaches in the juice and then packing the jars, I had a whopping 12+ cups of this yummy apple-peach juice left in my stock pot (like magic, huh?)!  Therefore, I reduced the amount of juice used in Monday's batch down to five cups of apple juice to start out with, and that worked just fine.

My notes:

purchased 1 bushel, $66 (sold by the half-bushel for $33 each)
1/2 bushel = approx 25 lbs
17.5 lbs fresh peaches = 1 pressure canner load
individual peaches averaged 6 oz each, therefore approx 46 fruits made a full pressure canner load of 7 pints

Final yield of canned goods:
13 quarts
1 pint
lots of peaches for eating fresh

Cost:  
$33/half-bushel
$1.32/lb

Side note about the canning process:
Keeping the canning lids warm...I dislike having so many things going on the stove in a tight space, so I've been using the crock pot on the "high" settting to keep my lids warm while filling my jars.  This has turned out to be very handy for me and makes it easier to start heating up the big pressure cooker (or water-bath canner) while finishing up cooking the food, thus making the whole process faster.

Jar Inventory

Today I inventoried my empty canning jars in preparation for canning season.  It's hard to believe it, but canning has already begun!  In the last two weeks, we've made freezer jam and garlic scape pesto for the freezer.  Now we have an opportunity to buy Georgia peaches by the half-bushel beginning on Friday, and I'm salivating at the thought of eating nice, sweet peaches throughout the winter.  Also, I've never made peach jam but that sounds really good as well. 

Anyhow, here's my jar inventory:
1/4 pint:  1
1/2 pint:  24
pint:  52 (33R/19W)
quart:  33 (15R/18W)
R=regular mouth
W=wide mouth

lids:
73 R
8 W

I think I am set for a while;  the only thing I need is wide-mouth lids!  It just happens that I got a tip yesterday that there was a coupon in the Sunday paper for lids (also one for jars as well).  (Thanks, Amanda!)

My plethora of jars reminds me, I once read the blog post of a woman who was bragging about her lovely stash of home-canned food.  She cans food in quantities far, far beyond what I do:  dozens and dozens of pints and quarts of all kinds of fruits and veggies.  Anyhow, she had photos included but stated that in a few days she'd take the photos down from her blog as she was afraid of being burglarized in the event of a large-scale crisis of some sort.  So just in case you have any intention of that, know that MY JARS ARE EMPTY, PEOPLE!   :)

And now for some photos

My pole bean teepee (with scarlet runner beans)

Plain ol' green beans

Tomato plants

Herb garden








Here are a few of the things that are looking good in my garden (note that there is a reason I'm not showing you my peppers, for example). 

We're Off and Running (um...Growing)!

Things are well underway in the Lost Lane Garden.  We've got a little of almost everything growing.  I won't bore you with the whole long list.  One thing I'm determined to succeed at is peppers, something I've never been very good at growing in the past.  We have 11 plants this year (a variety of bells and others).  We are also growing a lot of green beans this year...something I like but usually don't make much space for.  We have a teepee for our scarlet runner beans, and I love how that's looking!  The structure adds a little more interest to the garden.  Some of those vines on it are already almost as tall as me.

I know I've been a terrible blogger this season.  The garden is looking great and is bigger than ever, so it's not for lack of things to talk about!  This year I'm giving myself permission to blog in little blurbs, so you'll be seeing shorter entries this time...which is better than none at all!

Perhaps I take things too literally...AKA: bean soup, anyone???

"Continuous free flow"

"2 1/4 lbs. per quart"

Two pretty simple concepts with obvious meanings, right?  Apparently not, and that fact nearly sent me (and my apprentice-canner friend Sarah A.J.) to the looney bin yesterday.

It all starts several months ago when the news about BPA and its dangers as well as its pervasive presence in many water bottles, commercial cans, baby bottles, and much more, hit the media.  I was disgusted by it, and continue to be so.  It made me question the use of commercially canned foods, something we don't rely all that much, but they do come in handy for some of the basics sometimes.  Anyhow, Brian and I hatched the idea to purchase dried beans, and cook and pressure can them (the only safe way, by the way...dried beans are low-acid and therefore water bath canning is unsafe for them).  My aforementioned friend Sarah shares these same concerns, and as she is a vegetarian, beans are a staple in her diet.

The Ball Blue Book states that 2 1/4 lbs. of dried beans, cooked, will fill a quart canning jar.  My pressure canner will hold 20 pint jars (two layers of 10).  Therefore we (okay, I will take the blame) figured that 22 lbs of dried beans would be just perfect to fill up a canner load.  Trust me, the math works out, I've calculated it at least a half-dozen times.  Oh, and sure, if we happen to have a little left over, we can throw some beans in the freezer.  (HA!) We purchase 10 lbs of garbanzos and 12 lbs of pintos and soak them overnight on Friday.

The real work began around 9 a.m. on Saturday.  We cook our already-soaked beans.  We remark, "that looks like a lot of beans".  We fill up 20 pint jars of pinto beans.  We notice that we have hardly put a dent in the beans. "Um, should we do another canner load?  No, we've got many canner loads here."   The beans seem to be multiplying, somehow.  Sarah and I exchanged terrified glances from time to time. 

After some deliberation, we finally we decide we're going to have to freeze massive quantities of beans.  My husband and kids arrive home from Aaron's swim class and some errands.  I ask him to go get more pint jars.  Lots more.  How many?  Um, how about 5 cases (one dozen each)...the wide-mouth jars that are freezer-safe.  Meanwhile we continue the process of getting the pressure canner doing its thing.  It needs to be vented, and that requires that it obtain a free flow of  steam and vent continuously for ten minutes.  What does continuously mean to you?  To me, it means without stopping.  At all. The steam gives off long puffs of tunnel-shaped steam (that's a good thing), and just when I'm getting excited, the steam briefly breaks.  So I wait and wait and wait, and I send Sarah home for a while because this is about as exciting as watching paint dry.  That will allow her to relieve her husband for a bit, grab lunch, nurse the babe, etc.  At some point I call my grandma for advice, because it seems that this is never going to happen.  I'm pondering whether the full canner load is too taxing for my gas stove, or if my stove just isn't powerful enough.  Grandma suggests that I can this in two batches of just one layer each, but she does not have experience with two-layer canners so she isn't quite sure what to advise.  She warns me that beans are a low-acid food and that I ought to be very careful, something I've already reminded myself of numerous times.  Okay, her advice seems worth a try.  I open up the canner and there is no water left!  Scary!  I open a jar and taste to ensure that the beans are not scorched, which they are not.  I start the process over...hot water into canner, wait for steam, time 10 minutes, pressurize, and get that half-load canned.  I'm still not entirely convinced that the steam is continuous, but it seems the best it's going to get. 

While canning that load, Sarah comes back, and we, along with my husband and five-year-old, fill up wide-mouthed, freezer-safe pint jars.  All but one!  Yes, 59 pints of beans, in addition to the 20 destined for the canner!  Unbelievable.  Fortunately, Sarah owns a mostly-empty chest freezer.  I save a few pints to freeze, and every remaining one goes into her freezer. 

Aaron's job is to measure and pour a half-teaspoon of salt into each jar, which he does, plus or minus a half-teaspoon, and then he caps each jar.  During this time first half-load comes out (it needs to cook under pressure for 75 minutes and then cool and de-pressurize, so it's not a quick process) and around 5 pm the second load goes in, repeat process above for second half-load, and at 7 pm I turn out the lights and call it a night.  Whew!  Well, actually, my husband and I sink into La-Z-Boys and attempt to watch Food, Inc. on DVD (because apparently I still haven't had enough of food safety for one day!) but I simply cannot keep my eyes open.  What a day!  I actually had difficulty sleeping that night, worried that my canner wasn't working properly and that Sarah, her husband, and two beautiful children might contract botulism!  Death could occur!  How could I live with myself?!

No, you don't need to inform me that this post may make it appear that I need therapy for anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder.  I will consider it, thank you very much.  *sigh*

This morning I called Presto, the maker of my pressure canner, to ask for more specifics on the venting process that has so deeply troubled me.  Naturally, they only are available during business hours, M-F.  The customer service rep who answered the phone indicated that "continuous free flow" means, "if you can see, hear, or feel steam".  You have got to be kidding me.  I think I need to consult a linguist because apparently I don't understand the English language as well as I thought I did. 

Trust me, lesson learned:  I am going to write that down and insert it in my manual so as never to make this mistake again. As for the quantity of beans, well, I guess I learned to use my head and not just read the Ball Blue Book.  Being that it's revered as the foremost authority on canning, I'm really surprised at that one.  Okay, whatever. 

Oh, and by the way...for the first time, one of my jars did not seal.   That one went into the fridge to consume this week.

The day's tally:   
19 pints canned pintos, PC, Presto instruction manual
1 pint refrigerated pintos
59 pints frozen (some garbanzos, some pintos)

Photo of the hard-won canned pintos:

I have decided that canning is much like childbirth.  The process is never exactly what you expect; quite frankly, it's excruciatingly difficult, but afterward you forget the pain entirely (almost).  And best of all, the results are sooooo worth it!