"Smokehouse" may be a strange name for a building, and, perhaps other families called theirs something else, but that's what we called ours. I'll explain later. And by the way, the smokehouse wasn't a place where you went to smoke cigarettes nor to roll tobacco for them. Nor was it a place where smoke "signals" were set off. City folks, unless they lived in the "old country," haven't the faintest idea what a smokehouse is.

   

I used Mara Des Bois strawberries to make this decadent jam. Waiting until peak season, you get a jam that is dark red and canned at the perfect time. Can't get that from any store bought kind. Enjoy!

Makes 9 pint jars.
7 cups sugar
5 cups thawed, blended strawberries (about 8 cups whole)
4 Tbls. Fresh squeezed lemon
1 package powdered fruit pectin

1. Run sink full of HOT water (you can even boil water and add to the sinks hot water). Bath your jars in the hot water. Leave them in there till they are ready to be filled.
2. Place lids not rings in small sauce pan with water. Put on stove low-medium heat. Do not boil. Keep on low- medium heat until ready to use.
3. Measure sugar, set aside in separate bowl.
4. Wash and hull strawberries (if you buy frozen from grocery store, this part is done for you). Place into a blender and blend to your liking. I personally do not like big chunks in my jam.
5. Transfer 5 cups crushed or blended berries into a large stainless steal saucepan. Start a large pot of boiling water.
6. Add lemon juice to strawberries. Whisk in pectin until dissolved. Bring to a full boil stir often. Add pre-measured sugar. Stir stir stir. Return to a full boil that you cannot stir down. Boil hard 1 minute. Remove from heat, skim off top foam. Keep this. It is awesome to use right away on a piece of toast etc.
7. Remove jars from hot water in the sink- do not dry. Fill jars 1/2" from the top. Take the lids from the hot water saucepan and place on top of each jar. Lightly tighten ring around lid. Lower jars into large pot of boiling water with canning tongs. Bring back to a boil- time 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, take off heat. Wait 5 minutes. Take out of hot water bath. Place on the counter and let set for 24 hours before use. Store and enjoy throughout the year!

 I am fortunate enough to live in a family that has kept a lot of old family memorabilia. There are times when it’s over whelming and you wonder what to do with it all. And to be honest some of it is just junk. But my dad made an interesting discovery a couple of weeks ago. It is a journal that his grandmother, known as Mom Hill to the family, kept during 1924 and parts of 1925 and 1926. In 1924 she was married to her first husband Victor and had four little boys Ralph, Donald, Louis (my grandpa) and Eugene. 

Hubby and I just got done watching Ken Burns’ Dust Bowl on Oregon Public Broadcasting. I knew that my grandpa came from Kansas to Oregon (via Idaho) in a wagon at the age of three in 1921. I had always assumed that they came as part of the great migration as a result of the Dust Bowl – the dates don’t quite follow that train of thought. So we’re not really sure why the family came, but one thing Mom Hill mentions is that her sister sold the place in Kansas, and there was no hope of going back (obviously she had harbored that very hope for three years). Seeing what the poor souls on the plains endured I think they were fortunate to sell when they did.  

As I read through her year starting in August I marvel at the stamina of this woman to spend the day picking and canning fruit and vegetables, feed her family and then help her husband plow and sack potatoes, cut firewood or slash and burn brush piles in the evening.  

By the end of the fall I am plum tuckered out by the canning, preserving and freezing of bounty for the winter. But this woman puts me to shame. The last page of the journal lists her canning for the year. I’ve copied it below. May we all be so industrious.  

Fruit and Vegetables canned in 1924  

27 qts prunes                                                                       40 qts butter  

32 qts peaches                                                                    08 peach             

42 qts pears                                                                          12 pear  

6 ½ qts strawberries                                                         11 blackberries  

32 qts blackberries                                                            05 plum  

04 qts pickles                                                                       07 apple  

08 qts corn  

49 qts tomatoes  

70 qts vegetable in all                                                                      17 ½ qts jell  

5 qts piccili                                                                             6 qts apple  

6 qts pumpkin                                                                     4 ½ qts plum  

6 qts apples                                                                          1 qt strawberrie preserves  

                                                                                                  6 qts blackberries  

                                                                                                  3 qts apple jelly  

Fruit [and] vegetables canned in 1925  

19 qts peaches                                                                    14 qts beef  

50 qts blackberries                                                            3 qts pears  

35 qts pears                                                                          3 qts strawberries  

12 qts plums  

24 qts beans  

16 qts corn  

4 qts beets  

40 qts tomatoes  

    qts quinces  

 

  

 

by Lisa at Fresh Eggs Daily 

My grandmother was a great lady. She kept chickens, knew how to knit AND crochet, and purportedly once beat a rabid raccoon off with a baseball bat. She also made her own mint jelly.

I remember as a child sitting in the garden with her, choosing which leaves we would pick to bring back to the house to magically transform into mint jelly over the course the afternoon.

Sadly, my grandmother died last year. She was just shy of her 100th birthday. Of course her mint jelly recipe wasn't written down anywhere, but I think this recipe comes pretty darn close to the mint jelly she used to make. This was my first year making my own jelly. I don't know why I hadn't tried making it before, because it's so easy and beats the store bought version by a mile.  Our pantry is now graced with several canning jars of mint jelly and I can almost feel my grandmother smiling down.

Mint Jelly from the Garden
(yields four 1/2 pint jars)

1-1/2 Cups fresh mint leaves
3-1/4 Cups water
1/2 teaspoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
1.75 ounces pectin
3-1/2 Cups sugar

Rough chop the mint leaves and measure, packing tightly. Add to the water in a saucepan and bring to a rapid boil, then cover and let stand for ten minutes.

Strain and measure out three cups of liquid, and pour back into the saucepan. Add the lemon juice and whisk in the pectin. Bring back to a boil and then whisk in the sugar, a little at a time.

Once the mixture reaches a rapid boil, cook for an additional minute or two and then pour into sterilized canning jars and process for ten minutes.  Store sealed jars in a cool, dark place.

 

Join me at Fresh Eggs Daily on Facebook and my Blog for more recipes, DIY crafts, tips, tricks and advice to raising happy, healthy chickens as naturally as possible.
 

 

Some of my fondest growing up memories of late summer and early fall are of preserving food. Whether it was making jam, drying fruit or canning, I remember standing next to my mom, her on one side of the sink and I on the other, washing, peeling, pitting and slicing.  I started out as the berry smasher. Then I worked up to slicer. Then I did all of the fruit preparation while she boiled jars, prepared syrups and handled hot jars.  

Canning is hard work. In the heat of the summer it can turn into downright drudgery. My problem is that my eyes get too big for my canner. And my freezer. And my jars. And my shelves. Last year I bought six boxes of peaches. Really. There are three of us. We cannot eat six boxes of peaches in one winter. Not even if we eat them every day. I know. We still have twenty quarts left.  

This year I had a plan. I took inventory of my freezer, my empty jars and my shelves of canned fruit. Then I made a list: quantities, type of fruit and what I was going to do with it. It looked like this:  

2 flats blueberries – freeze  

2 flats strawberries – 1 batch jam, freeze rest  

2-3 flats raspberries – 2 batches jam, freeze rest  

1 box cherries – dry  

Can 24 quarts peaches  

Freeze 2 gallons peaches  

Can 24 quarts applesauce  

12 pints bread and butter pickles  

Grape juice  

So here’s the problem with planning for fruit, the sun, rain and plants don’t necessarily follow along with my plans.  It started with the plums. A family friend was on vacation when their plums were ripe. My uncle picked them, gave some to my mom and my mom gave some to me. Now some might not sound bad – unless it’s a box. Little man ate plums for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack and dinner. And I still had some leftover – so I made jam and froze it.   

My blueberry patch closed. So I had to find a new one. The first place I went was terrible, but lucky for me blueberries grow well here. I picked my two flats and froze them just like the plan instructed. The strawberries and raspberries also went just as planned. So did the cherries.  

 

Then came the cauliflower. I tasted some pickled and loved it. But why on earth would I buy pickled cauliflower when I could make it myself much cheaper? I went off to my favorite farm market and bought two heads of cauliflower and pickled 10 pints. I continued the pickling process and did my bread and butter pickles. Hubby came home and requested dills. I couldn’t tell him “no” now could I?  

I had a reprieve for awhile. Let me restate that. I had a reprieve from fruit. We spent the month of August working on a trail at Smith Rock State Park. When I returned home, I found the two bottom drawers of my fridge full of pears, plus a box of them on the lower shelf. Pears? I didn’t plan for pears! There were no pears on my list. Mom was “storing” them in my fridge to delay their ripening because her fridge was full and she had stacks of boxes of ripe ones.  Of course she wasn’t delaying the ripening for herself, she was delaying the ripening until I got home and could do something with them. So I dried them and canned them. And then Hubby requested pear butter. And Little Man requested pear sauce. And I couldn’t tell them “no” could I?  

  

I was ready for apples. My parents have an old orchard with varieties that we don’t know. There is one yellow apple tree and then there are the “Connine apples.” The yellow one ripens first and I got my 24 quarts of applesauce. Of course there were extras so I dried some and then some more. At some point during the apples I realized I had forgotten to put tomatoes on my list. I canned 16 quarts of chili sauce and dried a few. Then Mom showed up with a box of prunes. Of course those needed to be dried. And then I declared canning season over. I was worn out and done with any kind of fruit or vegetable.  

But the apples weren’t done with me. My brother picked apples until he ran out of boxes. He asked me to bring boxes over and when I arrived with six he looked at me with reproach and said “That’s all you have. That won’t even be a drop in the bucket.” I walked into Dad’s shop and there were stacks of boxes, buckets, bowls and enamelware pans. Anything that could hold apples had been recruited to do so. Everywhere I looked there were apples.   

We made cider for two days. I made more applesauce. I dried more apples. I made apple bread. I fed rotting ones to my chickens. I made apple cake. I froze apples. We ate apples. I made Apple Dumpling Mess. I fed rotting ones to my sheep. I ran out of jars. I ran out of cupboard space. I ran out of freezer space and still I had two boxes of apples on the floor of my dining room.  

We had lunch at Mom and Dad’s yesterday. Dad was still eating apples. I’m really, really hoping that canning season is over. But I will not be foolish enough to declare it so – we haven’t made grape juice yet.  

Fall is always a busy time of year. I think I have canned everything but the kitchen sink. I was counting jars the other day and have went through over 400. I am still not done. I have tomatoes ripening on my dining room table, small potatoes in buckets throughout the kitchen, 16 pints of chicken, and 10 qts of stew meat to can.

Most canning books have the same basic instructions. If you use an older resource, make sure you double check it to the new standards. One example is raw packet tomatoes. Old rule was 40 minutes in boiling water bath and it is now 85 minutes, so to prevent bacteria growth. It is also recommended adding lemon juice to tomatoes to increase acidity. The new strains of tomatoes are low acid and may have a higher incident in spoilage. I only grow heirlooms but stuck with adding the lemon juice to make sure I was safe. It didn’t change the flavor of the tomatoes. I have utilized a number of resources in my canning, but my four favorite and well used sources are listed below in the reference list. Jackie Clay’s book was been an invaluable asset. I used it for my meats, tomatoes, beans, corn, and canned whole meals in a jar using her book. I did get my Strawberry Jalapeno Jam recipe (its awesome!!) from www.allrecipes.com .

I have picked up a couple tricks of the trade from various people. When canning meat, use a vinegar based solution to wipe the jar rims before putting on the lids. It removes the animal fat from the rim so to make a better seal. When making jam or jelly, add ½ tsp of butter or margarine to the mix to prevent foam. It also works to prevent foaming on other boiling things too. I used it when I was making tomato soup with success. My newest canning gadget was a magnetic lid grabber. I made fun of it at first, but found it to be invaluable. It is quick, easy and prevented my fingers from getting burned.

I gave up on peeling my tomatoes and just run them through the food processor to get the texture I need. Leaving the peels on not only cuts down on the time, but adds nutrients. It also leaves the seeds, but no one have seemed to mind. The peels also added a little more color to my tomato preserves, which are awesome on toast with a bit of peanut butter. Tomato preserve recipe was my Grandma Edna’s. My cousin and I took her recipes after she passed away and published a cookbook so all the family can share them.

Tomato Preserves

2 lbs tomatoes (4 c. chopped)
1 lemon sliced into thin rounds
6 ½ c. sugar
1 box Sure Jell
1 tsp. margarine

Cook tomatoes with lemon slices. Add Sure Jell and margarine. Cook until it reaches a full rolling boil (cannot be stirred down). Add sugar. Boil 1 minute. Pour into jars and process in hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Yields: 8 cups

Bibliography: 

Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. 2006. Robert
Rose Inc.

Borella, Anne. The How To Book: Canning, Freezing and
Drying.  1976. The Benjamin Company.

Clay, Jackie. Growing and Canning Your Own Food.
2012. Backwoods Home.

Niles, Malisa. From the Loving Kitchen of Edna Mae
O’Banion. 2009. Heritage Cookbooks.

Preserving Summer’s Bounty. 1995. Rodale Press.

As I mentioned last week, I was inspired to keep writing in this blog, but I never fleshed out what I might be writing about. A short list of items includes homesteading, harvesting, unschooling and urban foraging.  

One of the sessions I attended at the Mother Earth News Fair talked about all the food she had within reach of her backyard, or on the roads she travels to and from work. Living in Maine, she had an abundant supply of wild blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. But she also found that the plants in her own garden, so often ripped out as weeds, were very edible and sometimes more nutritious than the very veggies she was trying to protect. 

In our home, we have already known from our time at Foxwood Farm that pigweed, purslane and lamb's quarter were very delicious and hardy weeds. The kids make a regular snack out of the purslane we keep in our backyard garden this year, pulling it between bike rides and the tree swing. They love the idea of foraging for food, even in this small way. Sometimes they'll bring me a stalk or leaf and ask if its food? After careful identification, I give them the thumbs up or down. Since I am so inexperienced in what herbs and plants can be consumed, most of the time it's been a thumbs down. 

Well, no more. I endeavor to learn every plant we can eat on our 1/2 acre lot we rent here in Oshkosh. 

An easy one to start with is our city garden. 

I suppose this can't be considered foraging as we intentionally dug up the ground and planted it with peppers and tomatoes. However, seeing as the spirit of foraging (especially in the city) is to be more self sufficient, the garden is our number one supplier of free* food. 

* We paid $30 at the beginning of the season for all the started plants and $15 for some makeshift fencing.  

In June, when I was holed away in an office for 12 hours per day, Andy took on more than most Stay At Home Dads (SAHD) do. He kept the kids wrangled and dug up a garden from sod that hadn't moved in well over a century. At first he did it by hand, spending three hours moving sod from a 6 x 3 foot patch of lawn. 

  

Then my father graciously offered the industrial sized rototiller we had used when we gardened at the farm. There is a setting on the tiller specifically made to uproot grasses and this made the work much more expedient, though still exhausting. 

  

We decided to make four rows, three feet across and about forty feet long, with three foot stretches of grass in between the rows. 

  

This was a good start for the garden. Good for this year. Next year we will likely expand it just as many rows. As it is, the plants we bought completely filled in the rows and we had no room for anything but tomatoes and peppers. We have some large stuffing peppers, but mostly hot banana peppers, which we think was a labeling error on the part of the gardener we bought from, as we never had a need for that many hot peppers. The tomatoes are two varieties; the classic red heirloom Brandywine and a new (for us) long-storing red tomato called Mountain Mist. You can easily tell the two apart both in appearance and flavor. It's nice to have a small variety; we usually have about 15 different tomatoes, but in the end, they all get boiled and canned and look about the same, even the colorful ones. 

Very late in June, shortly after my temp job ended, we planted the tomatoes and peppers in the fresh farm compost my father had driven over in the pickup truck. Since it came from several composting sites on Foxwood Farm, there was a rich variety of nutrients and compost age. A lovely black earth, Andy took the same tiller and worked it in with the hard, poor soil the sod had been hiding. At last, he used a hiller function on the tiller and gave us "raised beds." Not the fancy ones held in by gleaming white pine boards but certainly enough to keep the plants from drowning in case of a flood. (Little did we know in June that this would be a record breaking year of drought for not only Wisconsin, but over half of the United States. Drowning...not really a concern this year.) 

  
In the process of planting, we discovered lots of bones in the compost. Some were small. Some were large. Now before you get the willys, remember that this came from when Andy and I were still on the farm. Do you remember us talking about those sheep we purchased from a Craigslist ad? We had been told they were wormed before we got them, but shortly after their transition to Foxwood Farm, we lost three ewes in as many days. On a farm, all flesh is grass and they went into the newly formed compost pile to aid in fertilizing our fields in the coming years.  

We really didn't think about that very much after we left the farm. We had a nice little reminder of our time as shepherds and thanked the sheep for their contribution (however untimely) to our new garden here in Oshkosh. At the time of their death, could we have ever known how that compost would be used? It served as a simple reminder of how God works things out in much more perfect and complicated ways than we ever could.   

After the tomatoes were planted, we headed out west and came home to find an amazing growth spurt in both the tomatoes, but also the weeds. In fact, before we even put our luggage back in the house, Andy and the kids and I spent two hours weeding compulsively, before dusk and hunger pains shooed us indoors.   

 
Above, before mowing the walkways. Below, after. Isn't it beautiful? This of course, before the great tomato take over in about a month! 

   

After that, we kept the garden watered during July and August to preserve the parched plants. Our lawn was brown, but our garden was gorgeous. As the farm market vendors began to showcase their Early Girls and Cherry Tomatoes, we were beginning to get restless for our own brood to hatch. Plenty of green globes danced about the ever-expanding vines but nothing even hinted at ripeness. We bought our tomatoes from a vendor friend instead and dreamed of the first sun-warmed red fruit that would sit triumphantly on our kitchen counter, proclaiming to anyone who cared, "I'm as local as they get!" 

We didn't have to wait long. Early September came and we were getting a steady sprinkle of red maters  hanging out on our counter, waiting for bruschetta or BLTs or a simple slice and rock salt. Then...we didn't look for a few days. We got a heat wave followed by a steady rain for three days.   When the thunder clouds cleared, our own homegrown downpour had only just begun. As Ethan excitedly proclaimed, "It's tomato season everybody!" 

  

And we set to work. Since we didn't get the tomato plants staked in time, they literally took over the garden and even finding our grassy walkways was a tall order. All the super ripe fruits begin at the bottom, so much of the work is gently and firmly lifting a plant to find it's hidden treasures below. It's exhausting work for a normal person, but with my belly expanding daily and heat tolerance near zero, harvesting became quite the chore.   

Thankfully, I had two excellent helpers in Elly and Ethan...and Liam was just amusing to have around as he eagerly picked all the tiny green "balls" he could find. I found out that while Elly has an eye for the very ripe ones, Ethan was fearless, burying his small 3 year old body deep in the monstrous tomato plants for the red globes underneath. 

  

Over the course of the month, Ethan has been my best and most eager helper in the garden. As a middle child, it's sometimes hard for him to have a niche in the family. I want him to know that his help has been irreplaceable and of great value to his Mommy and Daddy.   

 
Once the harvest is in, the time comes for processing. This is where Andy takes over and shines as his personality must find the most efficient and effective ways to can food. Putting eager kids to work never hurts and much of canning is very kid friendly.  

 
One Sunday about two weeks ago, I had some pressing freelance work that needed to be completed by Monday morning. The tomatoes were just as dire. So beginning right after church, Andy began the long day of processing what we guessed to be 120 lbs of tomatoes.  

  

  

It was a long day indeed. Hours after the kids were in bed, he was still boiling water and slicing stems and peeling skins. Hours after I was in bed, he was cleaning the kitchen and making sure the last jars sealed. In all, he worked for 14 hours. We are now blessed with 50 quarts of stewed tomatoes and sauce. When I asked Andy if that would supply us for the winter, he laughed and said, "Maybe til Christmas!"   

It's a good thing that when I began harvesting tomatoes again this morning, we got 90 lbs in boxes and I still have 2/3 of the garden to pick.     

  

Our neighbors in our small block think we're nuts. Some even have gardens, but only enough to supply them for the fresh season. An older lady saw us weeding in July and asked if were had planted a truck garden. For those of you who may not know, truck gardeners were the equivalent of the farm market vendors of today; people who planted huge gardens with the intent to truck the produce into the nearby towns and cities to sell. No, we assured her, this was not our intent. We explained that we just liked to make our own food and her eyes brightened immediately. She told us a story of her own mother, canning away in the kitchen and how she had to help put the food by. We promised to share our harvest with her when the time came and she seemed delighted. "Can't beat homegrown tomatoes and how I do love to slice them and eat them fresh!"     

We love how a garden brings people in a small community together. The rag tag family down the alley comes by often and offers to pull weeds from time to time. The divorced hairdresser across the street checks up on the progress regularly as she has a green thumb for landscaping. The blended family two houses down has a little girl about Elly's age and after a few get-togethers, we gave the mother several tomatoes and hot peppers. Just yesterday her daughter came over with a homemade cake for us.  Just three days ago, we got a note in our mailbox from a handicapped woman who walks through our alleyway regularly. She asked for some of the green tomatoes for fried green tomatoes. She offered to pay for them, but we'll just give her a bag to enjoy. We'll certainly have enough! 

As the canning season winds to a close in the next two weeks (our first hard frost often lands in the first week of October), we will turn to other means of foraging and winter prep. As I'm actively learning, there's a lot of food out there if only we are willing to work for it.   

  

This brings me to the country garden.     

A few days ago, we headed about fifteen miles due west to the farm (formerly known as Foxwood Farm). My brother and his family live there now, keeping up the house and front yard quite beautifully. My father continues to raise crops and beef cows on the rest of the acreage while the fate of the family farm seems more securely in generational hands than when we first exited two years ago.     

One of the projects they are diligently working on is repainting the house and garage, no small task as they are doing it without help of a contractor. My parents and brother and sister-in-law have been working for the last month, prepping and priming and painting the wooden siding and sills. When Andy and I pulled in the driveway late in the afternoon, the house fairly glowed with fresh white paint. Ever the classic midwest farmhouse, she is doing well under new management. Having spent about 75% of my life in that home, I am pleased with the care being given.     

Our purpose, however, was not to supervise any home improvements that might be brewing. Today we came for pumpkins and potatoes.   

A joint project between my parents and my brother's family, a large field garden was planted with rows of sweet corn, pumpkins and potatoes. What used to be sheep and cattle pasture is now commercial corn. The temporary fences long taken down, the lane between fields offered ample access for a small strip of garden. Here is where the sweet corn and pumpkins grew. Across the lane, a small triangle of land with very sandy black soil holds the two long rows of potatoes.   

Last week the farm experienced an early frost, killing the family garden and causing the field garden to die down as well. My family harvested the pumpkins and brought them to the front lawn in hopes of selling a few to passersby. Mom and Dad have been involved in a year long fundraiser to build a well in sun-parched Uganda and decided that half the proceeds from pumpkin sales will go towards that cause. We thought it would be nice to see the operation and get a few orange cucurbits ourselves. 

  

I had hoped to help with the harvest, but they had to grab them last week when I was in PA, so we got to benefit from the season's labor by just walking amongst the beauties and choosing what we'd take home. Since we had no hand in helping grow the pumpkins and yet were invited to take some home free of charge, we chose sparingly.   

  

I was a bit surprised when the kids gravitated towards the smallest pumpkins in the group, but pleased that they could carry their prizes to the car all by themselves. It also gave them a sense of accomplishment, I'm sure. Even wee Liam managed to grunt a pumpkin over to Daddy before thumping it at his feet! 

And of course, the obligatory kids in the pumpkin patch photos ensued. :-) 

  

Elly with her new hat from Grampa Steve. 

   

Ethan, with his exuberance flowing through even a static photo. 

  

Liam, more than displeased to have been deposited in between these cold, slippery lumps of orange, attempting a fast get-away.   

After we chose our pumpkins, we drove down the dusty lane and began our subterranean search for potatoes. Again, beneficiaries of my family's hard work, we were thankful for the homegrown goodies that lay in wait of our digging fork. 

At five and three, Ethan and Elly have been two full years removed from the last potato harvest we undertook. I knew they wouldn't remember that potatoes grow underground. I asked Elly as we stepped out of the car where she thought the taters were. She looked around and guessed at the remains of the pumpkin patch across the pathway.   

Nope, we told her. You've got to look under the ground. She thought we were crazy and when I explained that a potato was part of the root of the potato plant, it didn't really help her dismay. The best way was to just show her. Andy and I had good fun playing up the digging experience. What could have been a sweat-inducing, mundane task became a veritable hunt for treasure as our children squealed in delight at the sight of each colorful tater emerging from the black earth. 

  

Here, Elly grabs handfuls of a red variety in which the name presently escapes me.   

  

Ethan and Elly work together to find the "baby ones" and add them to our grocery bag.   

  

Finding a particularly large potato caused ripples of excitement. 

  

Below, Ethan shows off his "Swimming Cow" potato which he dug himself. As I found in the tomatoes, Ethan was again our best helper, sticking with Andy as he dug for the duration of the hunt. Elly lost interest and began exploring the fields with Liam, which was fine. However, our Little Man here never lost focus. 

  

Before we knew it, we were joined by three of our nieces, who walked the 1/8th mile from the white farmhouse to join in the potato dig. They had come from digging potatoes with their own parents not one hour earlier, but enthusiastically helped us up and down the rows by finding the biggest and most unusual looking taters to add to our bag. In no time at all, we filled the bag much past our initial intent and had to call the search party to a close. With 6 pairs of helping hands, the abundance of food will last us a solid few months. 

  

Again, I am thankful for the generosity of our family in sharing the feast without any help from us during the season. We were able to share a 30 pound box of tomatoes which mutually helped us out. 

We intended to eat potato soup that evening for supper but by the time we were back in Oshkosh it was already 6pm and the kids were clawing at the windows for food. Poor planning, Mom and Dad! We stopped for pizza at Papa Murphy's instead. I know I know! We're not perfect by any means and we do love a good pizza... 

We had warm potato cheese soup for lunch the next day instead. :-)   

I have been so busy canning that when I sleep I actually dream that I am canning. Even now I am waiting up for the chicken broth, dark meat  and bones to cool so I can filter them and start making the chicken soup. I am planning on canning the soup tomorrow morning.  I started off this whole experience with a lug (17 lbs) of peaches, some strawberries, and a few green beans. I went to a pick your own patch in Brookings SD for the strawberries. I came home with 25 lbs. I made 6 pints of jelly, and then froze the rest  rather than heat the house up.  The daily temperatures average 100 degrees and we don’t have air conditioning so I didn’t want to add any heat. By the time I purchased the peaches, we had broken the heat wave and had settled in the 80s. I put up 12 pints of jelly, 24 pints of sliced peaches and 4 pints of spirited peaches. It was fun. I enjoyed working with peaches and plan on finding some more. Peaches don’t grow well here. South Dakotans usually purchase Colorado peaches at road side stands this time of year.  

I have been learning how to pressure can. I have canned with a hot water bath canner before but never a pressure canner.  My husband, Rick, had bought me a 12 qt. pressure canner at a rummage sale several years ago, but I had never enough guts to use a pressure canner. Using one is a little overwhelming at first, the whole possibility of exploding and all. I got brave Monday night and attempted to can chicken. It ended up with the steam escaping out the seal and the chicken in the fridge. I did a little problem solving, purchased a new seal and was off and running again. I tried using again with corn. It worked!! But I lost a little fluid out of the jars. After canning about 30 quarts and 40 pints, I exhausted all my options in what could have been wrong.  I re-read my canner directions and found that my canner did not use the rule of allowing stream to escape for 10 minutes before putting on the selective control petcock I have only had the opportunity to not do the rule twice, once I lot fluid and once not. The first time was a batch of corn and the second was chicken breasts. However, on the second run I had a lid buckle up. Everyone I have asked had never heard of a lid buckling. I was told to contact the Georgia Extension for any canning questions.   

We have been blessed with so many wonderful gifts from friends. Some of the melon growers allow me to glean their fields for feed for my animals. It has reduced our feed bill by 75%. I try to return the favor by dropping off cleaned chickens and peach jelly.  I keep offering supper but have not been called to it yet. Another friend has given us sweet corn. Our own field has been ravaged by the drought and the free range chickens. I set up a husking station on the back deck. I soon attracted the chickens, and  dog. It was quite amusing to watch the dog chase a chicken across the yard, not to catch the chicken but to get the discarded corn cob.  I have canned __ qts and __ pts. Rick brought another 55 gallon barrel full of corn again last night, so I will continue to be busy.   

  

We butchered the last of our broilers Saturday. Well, all but 1 who it managed to hid out (been calling it Lucky.) A friend brought 25+ roosters to butcher. We did their roosters in the morning and our chickens in the afternoon.  I have been working on canning the 40 chickens. I canned 7 qts each with the breasts of 2 chickens. I then tossed the rest in 2 roasters to cook and that’s why I am waiting up for them to cool so I can filter the meat and bones out so all can cool the broth and remove the fat. I have learned to cook the chickens before I can them for the sake of my sanity, it saves time.  

 

   

This past weekend, we canned tomatoes for the very first time. And not only that, they were tomatoes we grew ourselves, and from heirloom seeds!!

  

 

 

Aren't all those fresh veggies gorgeous?!!  (In the second picture, Two Socks is a kitty that recently adopted us.  She's a great garden helper!)

We were going to attempt this on Saturday, but after taking our three ring circus (aka the three canine furry kids) to the vet - the puppy for the first time (oy vey!) - we were too exhausted to start in the afternoon.

  

It's hard to find good help! 

So on Sunday we dove in. First I washed all the tomatoes and weighed them in batches. I’m REALLY glad I thought to do that. Since we've never done this before, I realized that would be a good way to help us track how many jars we will need in future endeavors. It’s tough to gauge that when you’re a newbie. While I had plenty of jars washed and ready to go, I didn’t want to heat more of the dome lids that we would need. Maybe they’d be fine, but I just have this thing in my head that I don’t want to repeatedly heat the lids before they actually get used in the full canning process.

We ended up with 30.5 pounds of tomatoes! And that's not counting all I’ve been eating in the last week or so. They are so gorgeous and I’d forgotten how INCREDIBLE a homegrown tomato tastes. They actually have flavor, unlike those you buy at the grocery store.

Next, we boiled a pot of water on the stove to blanch the tomatoes for about 30 seconds. The skins on these are a little thick, so sometimes it took maybe 15 seconds more. We did this in small batches.

We had a cooler of ice water ready and once the tomatoes came out of the boiling water, they went immediately into the ice bath. We discovered that if we left them in there a few minutes to really cool them down all the way through the skins really slid off very easily.

I sliced them horizontally and scooped out most of the seeds. I then cut them up into chunks.

Once they were all diced, we put about ¼ of them into our big enamel stock pot and mashed them with a potato masher while bringing them to a boil to create some good juice for the whole batch. Once they came to a boil and the juices were released, we added the rest and brought them to a boil.

Now here’s where we hit a snag. It was 103 degrees plus really high humidity outside…in other words, miserable. We thought about setting up our outdoor cooker at the end of the house covered by trees, but that would also mean carting pans, jars, etc., etc., back and forth. So we started the water bath canner on the stove inside. That just didn’t work. After about 45 minutes, the water still wasn’t boiling! We were getting frustrated. The tomatoes were ready to go and so were the jars and lids. I finally put the lid on the tomatoes and turned the heat off. I didn’t want to turn them into sauce! We gave up and quickly set up the outdoor propane cooker. I swear, in addition to the larger burner/flames, I think the 100+ temps fired that sucker right up and in 10 minutes or less the canner was at a full rolling boil (granted the water was at least very hot from its eternity on the indoor stove). We actually got two pots going and were finally in business! 

So lesson learned, you just can’t beat the little portable propane two burner outdoor cooker when it comes to canning. Someday, we plan to have a nice deck that is covered. Ideally, it would be great to have a covered carport with an outdoor kitchen set up – counters, water, etc. But honestly I’ll take any space that’s covered to keep that brutal sun off our heads.

We ended up with 15 pints of diced tomatoes (in their own juice) and two pints of just juice.

  

One of our favorite parts of canning is hearing the lids “ping” after they come out of the canner and cool down. We always joke that “another jar got its wings”.

In addition, we put 11 pounds of home-grown tomatillos into the freezer in bags of one pound each. Making verde sauce or canning those was just too much to tackle in one day and I had read you can just freeze them whole. I think what I’ll do is thaw them out as
needed and make fresh batches of verde sauce when we need it. I can even make a batch on a weekend and use it for a meal during the week.

With the next batch of tomatoes, I’m planning to make rosemary basil “sun dried” tomatoes in our dehydrator. Tomatoes are quartered (or cut into sixths or eighths, depending on the size of the tomato), then marinated in olive oil, smashed garlic, fresh basil and rosemary and salt and then dehydrated. Don’t those sound DIVINE?! Stay tuned…I’ll let you know how those turn out.

Until next time, worms rock.

Like us on Facebook at KC Farms: http://www.facebook.com/KCFarms 

June marks the beginning of our sixth month in urban gardening and general homesteading shenanigans. Happy half-birthday to us! Hubs and I have learned some hard lessons (watermelons will overtake everythingif you’re not careful; without thinning, peach trees drop their fruit; and the dogs will poop in the garden boxes given the slightest opportunity), and I don’t doubt the next six months will continue keeping our egos in check.

Some of the lessons have been absolutely necessary, namely: patience. Though we both have country in our background, we’re city folk these days. And although our particular city prides itself on a laid-back, casual lifestyle (we named a downtown street after Willie Nelson, my friends) we are guilty of getting swept away in the flurry of work, volunteer obligations, birthdays, baby showers, and everything in between. Growing our own food has required –demanded– us to slow down. We pay attention to the details: the weather patterns, the birds and insects on our property, and does that Ancho Gigantea look a little droopy? And we wait, wait, wait, until just the right time to plant those seeds or thin that row. Nowhere has anticipation been more painful than waiting for harvest, as my mouth practically waters everyday I see our tomatoes on the vine. I’m this close to pulling them off, green, and frying them in a pan.

But not all lessons have been so difficult. One in particular has been delightful: sharing. In our excitement to garden Hubs and I maybe –okay, absolutely– overdid it with our summer vegetable sowing. Hear me now, believe me later: no two people need four watermelon plants, six okra, eight squash, or seven cucumber (I believe wholeheartedly we need four tomato plants). While I’m giddy at the prospect of learning to can, our pantry space might not support my new hobby. So. Giving away it is.

A few weeks ago, we were hosting a cookout and after a couple glasses of wine, I gave a giggly tour of our newest garden addition– the front yard rows. Star of David okra, Lebanese squash, Yellow Crookneck squash, and Pencil Pod beans were barely peeking out of the soil. I beamed with pride as our friends oohed and aahed. Exactly seven days later, they had more than quadrupled in size and were becoming proper young plants. I was thrilled. We again had friends over for dinner. One in particular praised the new veggies and wished she had her own. While everyone finished dessert I snuck out to the front yard, gently dug up a few plants and put them in small pots with soil. I loaded them into her arms on her way out.

Okra seedlings turn out to be a great gift.  

I prized those veggies. I carefully nurtured them to life, protected them from the elements and helped them grow. I couldn’t wait to eat the fruits of my labor. But more than that, I realized, I wanted someone else to feel the same quiet satisfaction of growing something good. That day, our rows were a little bit thinner but our hearts a little bit lighter. The cherry on top? Getting a message the next week from our friend, glowing about her new plants and how much they perked up her backyard. She, too, is excited for the harvest. 

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, tells us “kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”

I have a feeling our garden will be creating a lot of love in the coming months.  

It is mid-November and here in East Tennessee it’s getting cool. We’ve had a couple of light frosts at night, but the day-time temperatures still get up into the high 60’s and low 70’s, so much of the garden is still growing – it’s just not doing so as enthusiastically as it did earlier in the year. The weather guessers have issued a warning of our first real freeze: over-night temperatures in the mid 20’s. The carrots, onions, lettuce, spinach, chard, and herbs will be fine but the tomatoes and peppers will likely be ruined. So I go out and harvest all the green and semi-ripe tomatoes, sweet peppers and hot banana peppers. But what do I do with all these green tomatoes?

Last year we sliced, breaded and fried a batch of green tomatoes and very much enjoyed eating them fixed this way. This year the tomatoes are too small to slice and fry. Much of what I harvested are cherry tomatoes, the rest are red or yellow tomatoes that just did not get any larger than two to three inches in diameter. Others in this late crop that were able to ripen before I picked them tasted fine but did not get any larger. What I have now are still quite green. I decided to try making some green tomato relish.

Relish is a useful and tasty side dish or condiment that can be enjoyed in a variety of ways. I found a recipe put out on the web by Linda McDaniel that calls for green tomatoes, red bell peppers, green bell peppers, onions, celery seed, mustard seed, salt, sugar and cider vinegar. I used Linda’s recipe as a starting point. I wanted to use  up what I have on hand. Her recipe called for 24 large green tomatoes. I didn’t have large tomatoes so I fudged it by guessing that this dish-full of small tomatoes approximated one large tomato. Using this, I determined that I had an equivalent of 8 large tomatoes to work with. Eight is 1/3 of 24, so I reduced the recipe accordingly.

She calls for 12 large onions. I like spicy relish, but didn’t want to go out and buy onions, so I used the hot banana peppers I do have. Some of those are ripe and have a nice red color. I’ll use the small bell peppers and sweet banana peppers as well. So the first step is to clean the peppers to remove the seeds and webbing.

  Then I drop an assortment of tomatoes and peppers into the food processor and use the pulse button to chop them. I quickly learn that the peppers are tougher than the tomatoes. To chop the peppers to the size I want means almost pureeing the tomatoes. Adjust tactic: chop the tomatoes and peppers separately.

  The chopping process is done in batches, then emptied into a colander. When all are chopped this colander will sit for an hour to let the excess liquid drain off. Being green, the tomatoes are fairly solid and do not contain very much liquid at all, but the semi-ripe tomatoes do.

 While that is draining, I set up my canner and sterilize enough jars to hold the batch. I have an assortment of small jars (half-pint) that are attractive, cut glass and will make nice gifts for friends and family (and I want to use up these small jars so this is a perfect project for that). Boil the jars and lids for 10 minutes plus one minute for every 1000 feet above sea level of your location. 13 minutes for me.

 While those are boiling (and the maters are draining) combine the vinegar, sugar, and spices in a stainless steel or enamel pan. Do NOT use an aluminum or copper pan as these will react with the vinegar and bad things will happen.

When the tomato/pepper mixture is drained, add it to the vinegar/spice mixture and heat it over medium heat. You want to bring this just to a simmer, and keep it there for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

When the jars and lids are sterilized, use tongs to pour the water from the jars back into the canner and set them mouth down on a clean towel to drain. Use the magnetic lid lifter thingie from your canning tool kit (you DO have a canning tool kit don’t you?) to lift the lids from the canner and place them atop the jars. Remember, these are sterile now, treat them as such and be careful how you handle them. Using a clean paper towel, wipe the rubber seals of the lids clean of any calcium scale left from the boiling process.

Now fill your jars. A wide mouth funnel (from the aforementioned tool kit) is a great asset in this process. I also use a cookie sheet or cake pan as a work area – this can get kind of sloppy. Using the pan means less scrubbing of the stove later on. Fill the jars to the rim – no headspace required. Place the lid in place, handling it by the edges only, and secure it with the screw on ring, but tighten it only to finger tight. Exhibiting your manhood by cranking it down tight will only serve to thwart the canning process.

 The jars are still pretty warm from having been boiled, the relish you ladled into them was boiling hot (even just a simmer is still pretty darn hot). Use the jar lifter (from that famous canning tool kit) to set the filled jar into the canner again. Go ahead and turn the heat up under the canner so the water will be heading for a boil. Fill all the jars and put them in the canner, don’t let them touch one another or the canner. If you end up with a partial jar, put that one in the fridge and plan to enjoy it first. Make sure the other jars are covered with water by at least an inch, two is better if your canner is deep enough. If not, keep an eye on it during processing and add hot water as needed to make sure the jars stay well covered. This is a hot water bath canning process; a pressure cooker is not required. Bring the canner to a rolling boil and keep it there for 30 minutes plus the elevation adjustment.

When the processing time has elapsed, turn off the heat and let the whole shebang cool a bit before disturbing the jars. When you do pull them out (using the oh-so handy jar lifter) try not to jostle them or tip them. Set the jars on a cloth with at least an inch of air space between the jars and let them cool. After a few minutes you should start hearing the lids go “plink” as the contents cool, contract, and form a vacuum inside the jar, drawing the little blister on the lid down indicating that the jar is properly sealed. After the jars have cooled, test the seals by pressing down on the center of each lid; if there is any “give” it did not seal, refrigerate that one and plan to use it before opening the other jars.

Now you may wipe off any calcium residue left from the canning process and label the lid with the contents and date. Canned foods should be good for one year. I remember as a child looking through the massive array of canned goods stored in my Grandmother’s basement and noticing that some of them had been there for many years. None of us ever died from eating those, so I guess you can get away with it, but the food safety folks strongly recommend using them within a year.

Also, be sure you’re using lids with a white coating on the inside for anything containing vinegar; plain steel lids can be eaten away by the mild acidic property of vinegar. Even a tiny pinhole in the lid can admit bacteria that will cause food poisoning. Store your canned goods in a cool place out of direct sunlight. A basement is great, if you have one.

I’ll let these jars of spicy green tomato relish marinade for a couple of weeks before opening up the first one, but if the spoonfuls of left-over raw product Marie and I tasted after I filled the jars are any indication, this is going to be good stuff -- and a great way to salvage the last of our tomato and pepper crop!

Original recipe by Linda McDaniel: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/green-tomato-relish/detail.aspx 

Things that flow from one thing to another.

What I mean is … a relative had white grapes and had left over white grape juice. My husband asked if I wanted to make jelly. Sure. So, I came home from work early, and thriftily turned her left-over grape juice into jelly. Of course, I had to buy pectin. Which sort of makes it less thrifty. But at least it wasn’t the way it was earlier, when I had to purchase jars also. My first year in graduate school, I was enrolled in a poetry writing course. Trust me, I’m no poet, but I wrote a poem about the free tomatoes my husband brought home.

The Tyranny of the Tomato 

"Do you want some tomatoes?" 
The Man asks me.  

"Sure," I foolishly reply. 

That evening, he returns 
Armed with four grocery bags full; 
I know he thinks he’s being kind. 

Tomatoes are free from a friend. 

They won't last. 

To town I go for all I need for salsa – Jalapenos, onions, habanero peppers, green chilies. $20.  

But the tomatoes are free. 

A day spent – Washing, cutting, cooking tomatoes; 
Roasting, peeling, seeding peppers; 
Boiling canning water. 
Electricity, water, jars, lids, bands – 
Not studying.  

But the tomatoes are free. 

 

I’m not sure I can say more than this …

More things I didn’t know about the farm. You realize this could be an endless list, but I’ll start with just a few things:

• Straw. I had no idea where straw comes from. None what-so-ever. Then, my husband said something about “wheat straw” and the light came on over my head. For some reason, I knew that corn stalks were ground for insulage, but I just never thought about straw.
• I couldn’t figure out why when they sprayed the soy-beans that they didn’t die along with the weeds. Then, he said the phrase “Round-Up Ready soy beans” and once again, the light dawned.
• I keep calling the steers cows. Now to me, all of those bovine things are cows. Just one stinking cow after another. (Cows and I are not friends - more on that later.) We are selling shares of the critters for slaughter and I told him that I was talking to people about the cows. “Steers” he corrected me. “I have to get you to stop that, people will be thinking only of hamburger.” (Apparently, cows are mainly good for hamburger, while the steers are for the better cuts of meat.) I thought of the city people I’m dealing with, and I’ll bet they have no idea, either, between cows and steers. But I promised to do better.
• I was fortunate in that I knew how to can such things as jelly and salsa. But what surprised me was the volume of work from gardens. I’ve had a small garden, or would go and pick a few fruits from the farms pick-your-own farms in New Jersey. But my husband comes home with tubs of beets or dozens of sweet corn from family members. Or last year, for example, we had buckets of sour cherries that had to be dealt with immediately. The work was a bit overwhelming, and I discovered things like you really can’t double a recipe for canning cherry jam. I ended up with many, many jars of unset cherry jam when I didn’t boil it long enough, out of sheer exhaustion. But, I’m making a virtue out of necessity, and using the semi-solid jelly for pancake syrup. I should claim that I did it on purpose.

 

This year I planted a whole passel of peppers: bell peppers that can be harvested as green peppers or allowed to ripen and become red, yellow or orange bell peppers, jalapeno peppers that can be harvested green as standard jalapenos or allowed to ripen to bright red and become hot chilies, cayenne peppers, hot banana peppers, sweet banana peppers, and chocolate bell peppers.  But, we can eat only so many peppers as they come in from the garden; especially the hot peppers – a little of those goes a long way!  So I needed to find ways to preserve the excess for use later in the year.  Here’s what I came up with.

NOTE: When working with hot peppers, wear rubber gloves and be careful not to touch your eyes, mouth or other sensitive parts of your body.  The capsaicin in the peppers that gives them their hot flavor is an oily substance that does not wash off your hands and will cause serious discomfort if rubbed into a sensitive area.  Even regular skin like your arm or leg can become irritated if you scratch an itch while working with hot peppers.  Take care in cleaning up your counters and utensils because the oil can transfer from one item to another or back onto your hands.

When washing your peppers for processing and storage, using a bath of 3 parts water and 1 part white vinegar to soak peppers (or most any vegetable for that matter) for ten minutes will kill 98% of the bacteria on them.  Rinse with tap water before processing.  This will also extend the time fresh vegetables can be stored in the fridge before they begin getting that slimy feel as a result of bacteria growing on them.

Red vs Green Jalapenos

According to The Peppermaster, (and many others who I checked with) green jalapenos do indeed turn red when left on the plant long enough (this came as quite a shock to me when mine did this).  Normally the jalapenos are picked while green, smooth and waxy in appearance for appearances sake.  But if you want heat… let them mature.  When the brown striations appear heat is building.  When they mature into red chilies they take on the most heat.  I think they also develop a sweeter taste.  The Peppermaster says the red jalapenos are also higher in Vitamin C than the green peppers.

Freezing Peppers

Peppers are really easy to freeze because you don’t need to bother with blanching or pealing them first, just cut the peppers up into manageable pieces, remove the webbing and seeds, lay them on a cookie sheet, and place in the freezer.  When they are frozen, quickly transfer to a zippered freezer bag, squeeze out as much air as you can and pop them back into the freezer.  To prevent freezer burn even more, using a vacuum packing machine to remove all the air greatly extends the life of the frozen peppers.

When vacuum packing I like to package them in portion sized packs; what we would typically use to make a pot of soup or casserole because the vacuum bags don’t reseal.  Peppers for short term storage in zippered freezer bags can be larger amounts and we’ll just pull out what we need and put the rest back in the freezer.  This is the advantage of freezing the pieces individually before bagging.  If you toss the raw peppers into a bag and freeze them, they tend to freeze together into a lump that must be thawed and used en-masse.

Freezing peppers will cause the skins of some peppers to get tough and fibrous, but their skins will slip off easily when they thaw, just don’t dice these peppers.  Naturally, when you thaw the peppers they will not be as crisp as the raw peppers, but they will still have all the flavor and can be well used in cooking or sandwiches – they’re just not all that great in salads.

Drying Peppers

Dehydrating peppers is also easily done and has the advantage of taking up far less space than the frozen variety because they will shrivel considerably as their water content is removed.  Once dried, most peppers can be reconstituted by soaking them in hot water and used in cooked dishes, but they will be even squishier than the frozen peppers.  Crushed up dried peppers can be used as a spice to add flavor to your cooking.  I have not tried this with sweet peppers, but doubt that the flavor would be the same.  Adding heat to your meals with crushed, dried hot peppers works very well.

Cayenne peppers can be dried by stringing them, spaced an inch or two apart, on fishing line or light string tied to the green stem part and hanging or by laying the peppers on a paper towel on a cookie sheet and turning them daily.  Store the peppers in a relatively cool, dry place while drying.  Either method takes several weeks to dry the peppers.

Drying peppers in an oven set at 135° (door propped open a little to let moisture out) or a food dehydrator makes faster work of it and works for all peppers.  The fleshier peppers tend to mold before they dry at room temperature.  Cut the caps off small peppers to allow the warm air to circulate inside and leave them mostly whole if you like (the seeds and webbing contain a lot of the heat from hot peppers) or cut the peppers open and remove their “innards”.

Sun drying peppers can be done in areas that get strong sunshine for 8 to 10 hours a day.  Cut the peppers into strips and lay them on cookie sheets or plastic wrap covered pieces of plywood.  This may take a few days; plan to refrigerate them between sun sessions.

Canning Peppers

Any fleshy pepper (this would exclude Cayenne’s) can be canned.  Again, the cooking process will make the resulting peppers softer than the raw peppers, and canning can take away some of the flavor.  Canned peppers are good for use in soups, stews, casseroles, and on sandwiches.

Cayenne peppers can be added to canned foods to impart flavor, but will need to be fished out and disposed of when the product is opened.

Peppers can be canned as pickled peppers in a vinegar based brine, or packed in water if you don’t care for pickles.  However, if you go the water-packed route you MUST use a pressure canner.  Only a pressure canner can heat the contents to the 240° that is necessary to kill the Botulism bacteria that are present in the food and would grow in the anaerobic environment of canned foods to cause serious illness or death.  The vinegar used in the pickled versions is acidic enough to kill botulism at the 212° degrees reached with a hot water bath canner.

Canned foods are perfectly safe as long as you are careful to process them correctly, prevent contamination, and get a good, tight seal between lid and jar.  If you don’t have one already, get a good canning cookbook as reference on how to process various foods.

Smaller peppers can be canned whole, but be sure to poke three or four holes or small slits in the pepper to allow air to escape and brine or water to enter while processing.  Also note that some pepper recipes require the peppers must be HOT when packing the jars and filling with brine; you will want to be boiling up your brine or water while blanching the peppers.  Read that recipe carefully before starting!

According to www.JalapenoMadness.com, canning will also cause jalapeno & chili pepper skins to get tough.  To remove the skins, roast or blister the peppers before processing.  Roasting your peppers on a grill over hickory or apple wood chips adds a delightful smoky flavor to the peppers.  Use tongs to turn the peppers frequently just until the skins are blackened evenly (unless you’ve cleaned the peppers already, then leave them skin side down).  Don’t overcook them.  Remove from grill and cool enough to handle.  The skins will now peel right off.  Similarly, you can blister the peppers under the broiler of your oven or in a skillet with the burner set on medium high, but you won’t get that roasted pepper flavor.  Other recipes for canned peppers did not mention this aspect of jalapenos.  I just canned four pints of assorted hot pepper pickles; I’ll let you know if the jalapenos get tough.  Or if you’ve done it before, you tell me what to expect.

A Few General Notes on Canning:

Be sure you adjust the processing time for either pressure cooked or hot water bath for altitude – higher altitudes need longer processing.  Check your canning cookbook for the charts.

If you don’t like the sharp flavor of pickled foods, add some honey or sugar to mellow the taste without diluting the vinegar.

Always use canning or cooking salt, not table salt.  Table salt often contains anti-caking additives which cloud the brine and iodine which will darken many foods, including peppers.

Always use bottled 5% vinegar - malt, distilled, wine, cider, spiced all work.  Draught vinegars are not strong enough, and unless you’ve had it tested, home-made vinegar is not certain enough for use in canning.

If you choose to add spices to your canning solution or brine, use whole spices, not powered, as these will make your brine cloudy.

Use unchipped enamel, aluminum or stainless steel pans for boiling brine. Copper, brass and iron pans will react with the vinegar, giving it a bad taste.

The vinegar in pickling brine can react with and corrode plain steel canning jar lids, buy the ones with a white coating inside to prevent this.

Summary:

To preserve your pepper crop through the winter and spring you can dry them, freeze them, can them – or you can do like I’m doing and split up the crop and try some of each method.  Whichever you choose, it is best to process your peppers within a couple of days of picking, this will mean processing in small batches as they come in rather that storing them up for large runs at the end of the season.

If you’re like me and love the flavor of peppers in cooking, plant yourself a pepper patch, use what you want of the fresh peppers then pack a peck of pickled peppers (or frozen peppers) for use year round and enjoy!

Resources:

http://www.jalapenomadness.com/preserve_jalapenos.html
http://www.pickyourown.org/pepperspickled.htm 
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09314.html 
http://www.canningpantry.com/pickling-chili-peppers.html
http://forums.floridasportsman.com/showthread.php?1610-Canning-Sweet-Peppers 
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art5044.asp 

 

Here at the Bear Cave, we like our food spicy. During the summer and early fall, we love to overdo on fresh peppers in spicy salsa, pimento and cheese sandwiches, stuffed bell peppers and many other pepper dishes. Once in a while, when the poblanos are big enough, Barbara treats us to a great dish of chili relleno, peppers stuffed with a great cheese, breaded, and fried in hot neutral oil. I can’t resist them and have to say it’s a good thing she makes them on special occasions only.

By the way, anchos and poblanos are the same pepper.  Down here in the southwest, we refer to the Capsicum annuum as a poblano when it’s fresh and an ancho when its dried.

    

We've grown four kinds of peppers this year at the Bear Cave: bells, jalapenos, anchos/poblanos, and pimentos. We find that the sweet, heavy bells and pimentos are delicious if we allow them to ripen, then roast and pickle them. Many cooks recommend roasting peppers under the broiler or over the direct flame of a gas range in the kitchen, but around here it's still WAY too hot for that. We prefer to keep the heat outside by using the gas barbecue. The peppers acquire a rich, smoky flavor and the kitchen stays cool.

    
 

So it's pepper harvest and time to crank up the barbecue and roast those babies! Some peppers, especially pimentos and red bells, are perfect candidates for this treatment. They are thick-walled and sturdy, which makes them easy to peel once they're roasted. Besides being much easier to peel prior to pickling when roasted, we enjoy the flavor of a smoky pepper.

The process is simple. Turn all the bbq's burners on high (Our unit has three, and we roast up to a dozen peppers at a time.) and place the whole peppers over the hottest part of the grill. Protect your hands from the heat with oven mitts or heavy gloves, and use long bbq tongs to turn the peppers from time to time as they char. You want to end up with the peppers black all over, the skin completely charred.

    
 

Once the peppers are well blackened, they are put in a sealed container. We use an oven-proof casserole dish with a lid and place the peppers directly in the sealed container to steam after roasting. Peeling is a breeze. We then pickle the roasted peppers in the same way we pickle fresh jalapenos which we describe below.

           
 

Jalapeno peppers are easy to preserve. Just rinse, halve, and remove the stems and seeds. Wear gloves to protect your hands from the hot pepper juice, which can sting skin.

Note: Do not handle these peppers with your bare hands and then rub your eyes or any other sensitive part of your body. Some serious discomfort will be the consequence. But with some care, the very chemical, capsaicin, that can sting will make a great eating experience.

       
 

Barbara is very good about removing the seeds and inner tissue from the peppers. They are milder and still very flavorful with the seeds removed. I admit that when making salsa or pico de gallo, I leave the seeds in the mix. I enjoy the contrast between muchopicante jalapenos and the garlicky frijoles that I make up in a cast iron skillet and then roll in a tortilla with my HOT jalapeno salsa.

Note: If you are experimenting with these fresh peppers and feel like your mouth is on fire, have some milk handy. It is the best fire extinguisher I know for a picante capsaicin overload.

      
 

Because we preserve smaller batches of peppers, we don’t use our big canning kettle. Any covered kettle will serve for canning as long as you place an insert of some kind in the bottom to prevent the jar bottoms from contacting the bottom of the kettle. We use the insert from our pressure cooker.
 

Pack the pepper halves into clean pint-size canning jars which have been heated in boiling water. Then cover them with a mixture of 2 cups distilled vinegar, 1 cup water, and 1 teaspoon salt, heated to boiling. Leave 1/4 inch between the top of the liquid and the rim of the jar, apply the lids, and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes. More detailed information is on our web site, www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com. Check the drying and pickling pages.

         
 

The pickling process is nearly the same for pimentos or other roasted peppers. Roast them according to the process we've described above, remove the stems and seeds, peel and pack them into clean, heated pint jars, fill with the pickling mixture to within 1/4 inch of the rim of the jar, and process for 15 minutes.

Pickled jalapenos can add zip to spaghetti sauce, chili, or salsa. Pickled roasted peppers are marvelous on sandwiches or in dips. We hope you enjoy these ways of preserving the bounty of your summer garden!

 

Above, Liam sits and exudes joy for everyone. He's a good kitchen mate. It's a good thing, too. The family spent a good deal of time in the kitchen on Saturday. We had half a bushel of very ripe tomatoes needing to be processed and in our minds, there was only ONE THING we could do with them.

Lacto-fermented salsa. It's probably our most favorite home-preserved product out of everything we've ever tried canning.

We discovered this technique while reading a book called Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon. In a sentence, this book changed the course of our very lives. Click the link. Buy it. Be forever changed...for the better!

Tonight, I'm going to give you our recipe, which is built for a sliding scale of quantities based on the harvest you are bringing in. The first time we made lacto-fermented salsa, we had our dining room table full of ripe, heirloom tomatoes and about two, 5 gallon buckets full of bell peppers.

 

Above, this was taken in September of 2009. 2 year old Elly is standing on our 7 foot long couch behind the table, four leaves in place and both ends extended, with tomatoes piled two deep. It was overwhelming and awesome and blessed all at once. Obviously, we couldn't have given quantities for this amount of tomatoes. All I know is that by the end of the LONG night, we had sealed 55 quarts of salsa. Enough for one quart a week for a whole year. Isn't that what harvesting your own food is all about, though? Making it through the winter?

So, let's begin. This recipe is adapted from one in the Nourishing Traditions cookbook to fit our taste. You can adapt ours as well to fit what's sitting on your counter top. Got some summer squashes with no home? They work great in salsa. Sweet corn? Great! Not sure how to use kohlrabi? It's got a place in your salsa. (just peel it first).

There are four great things about this homemade salsa that I want to emphasize.
1. It's not cooked, so it saves on energy and spares you a hot kitchen in an already hot season.
2. It's not cooked, so all the natural enzymes and probiotic activity are still present in 6 hours and in 6 months.
3. It tastes and looks fresher than fresh when you open it. No mushy salsa here!
4. It's carbonated! Yes, naturally fizzy, which takes some getting used to, but makes for a great side dish or topping this way (as well as the obvious).

Ingredients

(all organic, of course! It's not homemade for the pesticide load)
1/2 bushel ripe tomatoes
10 bell peppers (green, red, yellow, whatever)
1 large onion (the kind that resemble softballs)
1 head garlic
2 bunches cilantro

In the canning jars
1 TBSP sea salt per quart jar (halve it for pint jars, etc)
4 TBSP raw whey per quart jar  

Now let me just stop you right there. This is not the whey you would find in the body-builder section of Target (if there is such a place). That stuff is processed and powdered and won't have active enzymatic activity. In fact, I don't know of anyone selling what we need to make this salsa complete. Lacto-fermentation is the process by which the micro-organisms that are on everything are allowed to flourish and make war and have an otherwise territorial battle for supremacy on your food. While doing that, they kill off any bad bacteria and leave only the beneficial bacteria. Think of it; probiotics all over your food, and it's whole, uncooked and ready to sit on your shelf for months. And all you had to do was add a little whey to a jar and screw the top on.

But whey-t! (I couldn't resist!). How does one acquire this amazing whey? Well, remember Miss Muffet? Her favorite food was curds and whey. Curds of what? MILK! Properly soured milk will divide itself and create two components: soured cream curds and yellowish whey. Both have a lot of good uses, but today we'll just talk about the one that gets us lacto-fermemented salsa.

How to Make Whey

I need to mention that this recipe for making whey is also found in Nourishing Traditions. Thank you Ms. Fallon! Below, I have a half gallon of fresh, raw milk sitting on my counter. It hasn't been there long, only about a day, so you can't see any separation going on yet.

 

You can see the cream line on top and we've discovered over the years that skimming the cream off is best as it does weird stuff when it sours. Use the cream fresh for whipping cream, in your coffee, alfredo sauce, etc.

After your milk has sat on the counter for about 4 days (less if it's warm outside, more if it's cold), you should notice a split in the milk either in the middle of the jar or on the bottom. In the split will be a clearish, yellowish liquid. This is your whey. The milk has successfully soured and you are ready to divide your curds from your whey.

**DO NOT try this with pasteurized milk. It will not sour. It will rot and be useful to no one.

Find your fine mesh strainer and straddle it across a deep mixing bowl. We find that the bowl of our stand mixer is perfect. Take a super clean tea towel or any fine grain towel and line the strainer evenly with the towel. Next, pour the entire contents of your milk jar into/onto it and the strainer. The curds should look something like this:

 

Our tea towels are packed away right now, so this hand towel did well in its absence. Once the entire curds and whey are out of the jar, you will notice that already the whey is dripping through the towel and strainer. You want as much of the whey out of that milk as possible, so the next step is to carefully pull up the sides of the towel and bring them together in a bundle. Secure the ends with string, rope, zip-ties, or whatever you can find. Be sure not to squeeze the towel as you'll get soured cream pushed through the fiber pores and that's counter-productive.

 

When you lift the towel up, you'll still have a steady stream of whey coming from the bundle. This is good. Move the whole aparatus (bowl and all) to a counter situated below a wall cupboard. You will tie the whole thing to the cupboard and allow the whey to continue to drip for about 4 hours. Don't worry, you'll be so busy you won't even notice the time flying by!

 

The Salsa

While your whey collects in the bowl (leave the strainer in place to reduce splashing), you now turn your attention to the bounty of produce sitting in your kitchen. The recipe above, I want to reiterate, is a starting point for ratios, but use whatever you have on hand. If you want hot peppers, add them. If you want no green peppers, eliminate them. Seriously, as long as you get the salt/whey ratio spot on, you'll be fine.

First dice your onions. Or do them last. Whatever. I'm just showing you the order of our salsa. It all goes in the same bowl.

Andy has a cheater trick for chopping onions. Below you see him slicing lines into a halved onion about a half inch thick. The onion is halved for greater stability. You will do the same thing for the other half soon. The lines he cuts are not through to the other side. Rather, they reach to about a half inch from the other edge of the onion. This keeps the onion together.

 

Next, turn the onion 90˚ and cut similar sized cuts the opposite direction. This time, however, try to follow in a radial pattern, the natural curvature of the onion. As you see below, with minimal cutting and effort, you have perfectly diced onion squares. Notice also the way he holds his hands. The one holding the onion has finger knuckles pushed out and fingertips turned inward, gripping the veggie. His knife slides along his knuckles, the blade securely below where his fingers meet the metal and thereby ensuring a safe cut over and over.

 

One big onion yields quite a bit of diced goodness!

 

Next, the cilantro can be chopped. If you take your bunches and bind them with a rubber band, you can easily chop off the desirable leaves with two quick diagonal cuts. Proceed to chop the leaves several times until you have broken up most of the big areas and are satisfied with the size of the plant. There really is no substitute for cilantro. To me, salsa isn't salsa without it. But you add it only if you like it! Some folks don't.

 

 

Next, take your green peppers. Cut the seed packet out with the stem and dice into squares similar to your onion. Here's another perspective for safe handling of veggies and knives. See how Andy's finger tips are safely pointed away from the blade, even at an angle? The knuckles provide a barrier to the blade and help stabilize it at the same time.

 

Be sure to share the fresh bounty with anyone helping make salsa!

 

Above, the finished product. You'll want to have a large, large mixing bowl set aside for combining all your ingredients. When we processed the tomatoes in 2009, we had to use four sanitized 5 gallon buckets!

Here come the tomatoes. These are probably the most finicky of the group because you want to get the skins off without actually cooking the little beasts. If you are the type of person who does well in an assembly line, this should actually be quite fun.

Get a large pot on the stove and boil some water. You want enough water to cover your largest tomatoes. While that comes to temp, plug your sink and fill half way with icy water. Now, grab your washed tomatoes and carefully core out the stem.

 

Cut out any bad parts and then slice a small "X" on the bottom of the tomato. You don't need to cut deep, just enough to break the skin. This will aid in getting a peeling started later.

 

 

Above, I used a nested colander to put about 8 tomatoes in at a time. Once the water is at a rolling boil, dip the tomatoes in (one by one if you have to with a slotted spoon) and let sit for no more than 5 seconds. This will loosen the skins but isn't long enough to kill off the enzymes. Immediately submerge the hot tomatoes in your ice bath.

 

They'll float and that's fine. You just want to stop any sort of cooking and this will do the trick. Once you have them all par-boiled and dunked, you can begin the skinning process. It doesn't take long if the tomatoes are super ripe. Nearly ripe or tomatoes with some green left on them will need longer than 5 seconds in the boiling water to loosen the skin. Here the "X" comes in handy finding an edge to pull from.

 

Everyone can help with this part of the job as it involved no knives, hot water or exact measurements. (I was referencing Ethan, not me!)

 

 

When the skins are off, you will then de-seed the 'maters. The best way that we've found is to physically shove your thumbs into each quadrant of the tomato and sort of scoop out the seeds. It's not pretty and you'll get full of juice, but the other methods we've tried are no less messy and far less controlled (meaning, seeds shooting all over the place).

 

Andy, in his eternal quest to find the most efficient method in every process, wondered if dicing all these skinless, seedless, slippery globs of tomatoes was the best route. He experimented with a food processor on short bursts of speeds and found the result to be satisfactory. The tomatoes were chopped and runny, but exactly the desired consistency for salsa. This little trick saved us quite a bit of time.

 

Here he pours a batch into the great big mixing bowl, being careful not to lose the blade.

 

Finally, take your head of garlic and remove the papery outside. Separate each clove and smash with the flat side of your knife blade. That's right, press the flat blade against the clove and slam down with the heel of your palm. This will split the clove in about four pieces and allow you to peel it with ease. Mince the cloves and add them to the big bowl.

Now you are ready to mix it up. The best way, really, is to use your hands. They are your best tools after all, and besides, you are so full of veggie goodness at this point...you really won't care.

 

Well, we'd been working together for about 2 hours at this point and Andy got a little punchy.

 

This was nothing compared to the epic canning of 2009, though. Four, five gallon buckets of salsa goop and Andy nearly up to his armpits, stirring the ingredients together. That was a sight to see at 1am! I laugh to think of it now...but I digress.

Find your canning jars. Hopefully you already have them sanitized and tops at the ready. If not, sanitize and get your tops ready.

 

We have so many canning jars in our possession, but very few of them are NOT in the storage unit right now, so we scrambled to find any that would be empty for our use.

Turn your attention back to that dripping towel in the corner. By now it should be an intermittent drip and most of the whey is in your bowl. One half gallon of milk (with cream skimmed off) yields roughly 1 quart of whey. This is more than enough for the quantity we've spelled out here today. The remainder will successfully refrigerate for half a year!

Scoop out 4 tablespoons of whey from the bowl and dump it in your quart jar. If you use pints (we had a smattering of both), then only use 2 tablespoons.

 

Next, take your sea salt (I do mean sea salt; table salt is refined and has a bunch of added yuck to it) and add 1 tablespoon per quart jar. Just dump it on the bottom with the whey. Won't look pretty, but it doesn't have to. Again, half this for pints.

 

Once you have divied out the whey and salt, now is the time to add your salsa. We were missing our trusty canning funnel, so we had to carefully scoop the mixture into each jar, but no matter.

 

Now this is important: Be sure to leave at least one inch of headroom at the top of the jar. Lacto-fermentation builds up enzymatic activity in the exact opposite way that pressure canning reduces it. You literally need that room at the top for all the bacterial parties that will be starting as soon as you screw the lid on. If you fill it too full, you'll know it. The jar will leak. Not the end of the world and you won't lose the salsa. But it's messy in your cupboard or cellar. Below, Andy is scooping some salsa out. We filled it too full.

 

The beauty of filled jars and preserved food never ceases to catch my breath. The best part is, the food will look just this fresh the day you open it again, even if that day happens to be during a blizzard in February and the thought of a ripe tomato is completely foreign to your mind.

 

 

Wipe the tops of your lids clean and dry, then attach the lids and screw them down tight. TIGHT. Let the jars sit in a room temperature area for two full days, out of sunlight. Then place them into cold storage (for us, this meant our basement at the farmhouse, a steady 65˚ and that worked out well).

Within hours, you will see tiny bubbles forming on the sides of the jars. This is the bacteria gathering for their epic battles and you know only good things will come of it. By tomorrow, your jars will have a very distinct bulge on the top. Again, you want it to bulge up; opposite of pressure canning where the delectable "pop!" of no air means success.

 

One more thing to note is there might be a liquid gap on the bottom after a day or so as the vegetables rise to the top and the water/whey sit at the bottom. This is not a problem and a gentle flipping of the jar will mix everything back.

Congratulations! With minimal heat energy and just a couple hours of chopping and mixing, you now have about 6 quarts (give or take) of organic, home-made and fresher than fresh salsa to enjoy the rest of the year through! We like to use it not only for chips but as a topping in salads, over meatloaves, as a side by itself or in stews. The possibilities are vast.

But wait! There's more!

How to Make Sour Cream (or Soured Cream)

Lest we forget the title of this post: how one product becomes three, I shall conclude with a simple wrap up of the curds from the beginning.

If you want to wait until you see your bundle of soured cream dripping no more, you can go for another few hours, or up to about 12 full hours of room temperature hang time. When you have extracted as much whey as you please, carefully remove the towel from your cupboard and untie it on a clean surface.

 

When you open it up, you'll notice that the contents are much much drier than when you first poured them into the strainer. In fact, you wouldn't be able to pour them at all now. Depending on how much whey you extracted, you have soured cream all the way to a soured cream cheese. Above, the soured cream is about the consistency of Philadelphia Cream Cheese spread, just the way we like it. I had the towel hanging for about 6 hours, so right in the middle. After six hours, you won't really get much more whey out, but some folks like it drier for different purposes.

Next you want to store the soured cream in a container in your fridge. DO NOT use plastic! The plastic leaches off flavors into the soured cream and actually causes it to go rancid a lot faster. Glass is best. Ceramic will do as well.

Andy discovered awhile ago that a soup spoon works well to scoop up the soured cream from the towel without pushing too much of it through (and thereby rendering it useless). Cap your zesty creation and refrigerate. It will last a solid month, but you won't have to worry about that; it will be gone long before!

 

Be sure to wash the towel you used as soon as possible. Rinse it in the sink to get any visible cream chunks off and then wash. You may have to designate one towel for such deeds as souring because the odor lasts even through a couple washings.

Homemade soured cream can be used as is, or as an incredible base in dips, spreads and even in baking. Andy makes a sour cream coffee cake that is just divine!

Well, there you go! How one amazing product (raw milk) gives you three life-giving foods all at once. And this is just one lacto-fermentation recipe. Wait til I tell you about lacto-fermented sauerkraut! And your very own lacto-fermented lemonade! But that's a post for another night.

Let me know how your recipes turned out! Comment on here or email me. I'd love to know, and learn from your variations.

Good night!

Traditionally fermented food are super healthy.  It's always nice when you can make something using these methods.  Not only is it quick and easy to make, the end product is healthier than it's more time-consuming processed counterpart.  Pickles are a prime example.  I make one kind of vinegar pickles that are canned.  The rest of the pickles I make are fermented.  Basically you put the pickles in a jar with whatever herbs you want to flavor them and cover them with salt water.  A few weeks later you have a probiotic feast!  Adding fermented pickles to your meals will help with digestion and increase the amount of nutrients you can absorb from what you eat.

 

When it comes to making pickles there are a few things you want to consider.  First of all, you don't want the cucumbers to be too large.  The smaller the cucumbers the crisper the end product with be.  You want the cucumbers to have distinct warts or bumps and no yellow on them.  The smaller they are the less developed the seeds will be inside as well.  Freshness also counts, if you can process them the same day you pick them that's best.  If you can't process them right away make sure to put them in the refrigerator to keep them cool and process as soon as possible. The cucumber on the left is perfect for pickling, the one of the right is a little overmature (but you can still use it if you'd like).  You can still use it for pickling, but there will be more seeds and the final product most likely won't be as crisp.  

 

Second you want to make sure you scrub the blossom end of the cucumber well.  It is believed that it can harbor bad bacteria increasing the risks that your batch will not ferment properly.  It is also thought that it can make your pickles not as crisp.  Some people cut the blossom end of the pickle off, I simply scrape it with my nail until I can see the clean end of the cucumber.  You can see the different between a cucumber with the blossom end cleaned (left) and one that hasn't been cleaned enough (right). 

 

Gently wash cucumbers. I usually just wipe with a damp cloth to remove all dirt.  You don't want to scrub them too much as they are delicate and they have beneficial bacteria that aid in fermentation in their skins.  Place cucumbers and spices in a fermenting crock or a glass jar.  Typically I avoid the use of any kind of plastic when pickling as the acidic brine encourages leeching of BPA's and other chemicals from the plastic into the foods being fermented.  I use 1 Gallon Glass Barrel Jars for fermenting pickles and sauerkraut.  Wide mouth half gallon mason jars work quite well also.  Depending on the size of container you use for fermenting you can use small plates, glass jars, or drinking glasses to weigh down the vegetables and keep them submerged in the brine.  

 

I also always put my fermenting jars on a plate that has a lip to contain any brine that spills out of the jar.  This seems to happen most of the time when I'm making pickles, sauerkraut or kimchi.  Do not be alarmed if you see white mold or green mold floating on top of the brine when you're pickling or in the brine that spills out of the jars onto the plate.  This mold is common (some cultures even prefer it) and harmless.  You will want to skim this off of the top of the brine daily, but don't worry about getting all of it as it has a tendency to break up and float away.  Since I use wide mouth pint jars to weigh down the vegetable I usually just push down on the jar, when the brine overflows out of the fermenting jar the white mold usually slides down the side of the jar.  Every few days I add some extra brine if needed to keep the level up.  

 

When fermenting you want to use pickling salt or sea salt.  You do not want to use iodized table salt or any kind of salt that has anticaking agents in it.  Many places will tell you to only use pickling salt, but I prefer to use an unrefined sea salt called Redmond Real Salt with the minerals in it.  I purchase this salt in 25 pound bags directly from their website.  

 

For my recipe, see this post on my blog.  You can certainly change the spices in the recipe above to suit your tastes.  Add some sliced onions and mustard seeds, or perhaps mixed pickling spices instead, some horseradish would be nice as well.  When making more than one batch of pickles, always make sure to label your jar with the type and date started.  I also include the page number that the recipe was on.  If you're interested in learning more about both traditional fermentation and other kinds of pickling I'd highly recommend purchasing The Joy of Pickling: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market. It's full of all kinds of recipes from fermented vegetables to gravlax and so many other interesting things.  

Do you make or enjoy any traditionally fermented foods? 

 
We've had quite a lot of ripe tomatoes harvested this week, and we haven't been able to keep up with the harvest just by having fresh tomatoes. So, I decided to make some SALSA! I wanted to make a recipe that included fresh cilantro, but couldn't get my hands on any. And I haven't come across any cilantro seed either, so I haven't been able to grow my own in the garden.

So... when I was at the grocery store I picked up a little packet of dehydrated salsa ingredients (dried peppers, onions, herbs and seasoning) and used the recipe on the back of the packet along with the fresh tomatoes. The recipe couldn't get any easier ... chopped tomatoes, the ingredients of the packet, and 1/2 cup vinegar. (If you don't have fresh tomatoes on hand, store-bought canned/diced tomatoes can be used.)  I chose to freeze one quart of the salsa to see if we like the result of it being frozen, and then canned the rest of it for longer shelf-life storage.

(Photo from Tattler's website)
I recently got some reusable canning jar lids by Tattler and thought this would be a great time to try them out. I've been using regular metal canning jar lids for our canned goods, but don't like that metal lids are really just a "one time wonder" when it comes to using them for preserving. (I do reuse the metal lids that are in good condition to cap jars that aren't being canned/sealed.)

Something else that's concerning is that I've noticed that metal canning lids are not always available in local stores. There always seems to be a few boxes of jars available, but extra lids aren't always in stock. Last time I bought a box of 12 metal regular sized canning lids (at a big-box store) I paid $1.63, and a box of wide mouth sized lids was $2.27. Investing in some reusable lids seems like a smart thing for me to do.

I like the fact that the Tattler lids are reusable again and again, that they're made with BPA-free materials, and that they're made in the US. I also like that they can be used in water-bath canners, pressure canners, and can even be used for vacuum-sealing!

I don't usually have trouble getting jars to seal, but since this was my first time using the Tattler lids, I kind of expected to have at least one or two seals fail simply due to my inexperience in using them. But I was very pleasantly surprised that every jar sealed up tight as can be! Beautifully! I also used Tattler lids to seal up a couple quart jars of yellow zucchini relish, and they turned out great, too!

Overall I'm pleased with the lids and the results. I opened up one of the salsa jars to test the seal and the salsa, and was impressed with both! Time for me to order up a few more boxes of Tattler lids and seals!

Would you like to try Tattler lids, too? I've arranged for the nice folks at Tattler to send one lucky (randomly selected) winner a box of 12 regular, and a box of 12 wide mouth lids. What a deal!!  Leave me a note on this blog post and you'll be entered into the give-away (this drawing is being hosted at my Sassy & Sweet Notes blog too, if you'd rather comment there). I would like to know what your favorite preserved food is, and what you enjoy preserving for you and your family. I will randomly select one winner on Monday morning, June 27th.

Now, where did that bag of chips go...

As always, you are invited to read more about our life on the farm.

 

The weather outside is frightfully chilly, but like many, I've got gardening on the brain. Along with gardening comes thoughts of food storage. I don't own a pressure cooker, and wonder if it might be time to add one to the kitchen.

We have a glasstop stove, and not all pressure cookers are recommended on glass/smooth top cooking surfaces. Do you have any words of wisdom about pressure canning on a glasstop cook surface?

As usual, I am beginning this blog with a heartfelt apology for not writing sooner. It’s been another month and so much has been going on that it’s hard for me to have the energy and/or time to sit down and put into words all that I’m observing and feeling.

You see, I always have a “blog on my heart” about something or someone here on the farm, but so easily time slips away and there are too many things to take the place of a good, honest blogging session. This time, it’s been the Harvest Season. It has earned capital letters and truth be told, could probably be put into all caps, but writing like that is a pet peeve of Andy’s, so I held back.

Harvest Season. Never in my life have I understood the seasons like I have this year. Living by the seasons and working with nature and God’s design for animals, food and life has never been so real. We began the warm weather (mid-April in Wisconsin) with high hopes and zeal for a bunch of new projects and enterprises. By the time we hit Independence Day, we were in a low spot. Struggles with getting the dairy up and running, getting all the seeds and plants planted, building fences, chasing sheep, new calves, new milk cows, bringing in hay, family stresses and long, long daylight hours combined to bring our spirits low and our zeal down to a minimum. You may recall the “One Step Forward” post that I made on our farm blog.  I concluded that post with a hopeful and positive note that all we were doing was totally worth it in the end. At the time I wrote it, I only half believed my own words.

But August brought a certified dairy, the first bountiful fruits from our garden and the promise of the end of summer. I know that sounds negative, but when you awaken every single day knowing that there are at least 16 hours full of work ahead of you and there’s no weekend to “get to,” those first cold days of September are something of legend.

As we rounded out August and flew into September, I suddenly realized that my summer had, indeed, ended. Now, the days were still warm and balmy, but it struck me one day as I traversed our back garden: the mid-day sun was hitting me at an extreme angle and my shadow extended noticeably to the north. I glanced up and saw that our Sugar Maple had nearly emptied itself of those magnificent red leaves while the Elms were hinting at gold. The lush grasses were a dull shade of green and all around me were tans, golds and browns. The tomatoes were in full swing and so were the peppers, cauliflower, snap beans and herbs. Our apple trees had begun dropping loads of fruit and even our Miracle Pear tree (it’s a wonderful story, please ask us about it) had a few green fruits to be proud of. I was struck with surprise and a tinge of sadness to see it gone so soon. Yet ...

... We had entered Harvest Season. Harvest Season is like a separate part of the end of summer and beginning of autumn. It transcends calendar dates and simply crashes into the shoreline, one crop after another, until a few sparkling frosty mornings call the tide to a halt.

At the beginning, I was so rarin’ to go that I collected all I could and stressed about any single bean left on the bush or any hidden tomato under the foliage. I pushed Bret and Cortnie (our young garden/farm helpers) to get back out there and look for more. We’d collect and pile and stack and bag everything that looked ripe.

Then, we’d share the bounty. Once we had what we needed for each family, we had to step back and see the enormity of the task at hand. How to take all this fresh, organic and BEAUTIFUL blessing of food and keep it until we needed it this winter? So began our legendary days of canning. First, we made Catsup. Our favorite condiment and one so old-fashioned tasty that we had to share the recipe with our friends (via our newsletter). Next we moved on to stewed tomatoes. Such diverse applications in the kitchen and one of the easiest ways to keep those ’maters around. We made a lot of stewed tomatoes. A lot. I mean, A LOT.

Then we had a peck of perfect peppers to deal with. Ok, maybe like 15 pecks! I froze a bunch of them, but you can only use so much thawed pepper over the course of a year, so we turned to our star-player: Lacto-fermented salsa! Thanks to Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation and her cookbook Nourishing Traditions, we have a whole host of alternate preserving techniques at our fingertips. The beauty of this recipe is that you use tomatoes, peppers, salt, garlic, onions and cilantro, like any other salsa recipe.

But then you get a little crazy. Instead of cooking everything to a boil, you cut it all up and mix it in a large bowl (In our case, due to the large amount of ingredients, we mixed in two 5 gallon buckets)! Then, instead of taking your mason jar and pressure cooking it for up to 40 minutes, you add sea salt, whey (the actual by-product of making cheese curds, not the powder power-lifter stuff) and close the mixture in.

You let the food do the work. Over the next two-three days, the good bacteria and the Lactobacilli found in the whey work together to eliminate all the bad, spoilage-producing bacteria. Then, the food begins to ferment. This is always a good thing. Fermentation is a documented age-old way of preserving food. This is a thousands of years old way to keep food around, and since the invention of refrigeration and even heat canning, we have lost this amazing art.

Andy and I are just learning. After a few days of fermenting, the salsa is ready to eat. I trusted this recipe enough to take our first mason jar of it to a bridal shower and serve it as one of the treats. It went over great and people had to ask, what gives it this great color and flavor?

Having never been cooked, the salsa looks just as fresh as the day we harvested it. And indeed, the fermentation causes the mixture to be even healthier than it was as a raw veggie. It’s pretty sweet. But be warned, when opening anything lacto-fermented for the first time, realize that the contents are under a lot of pressure. Both Andy and I had to rush to the sink (me at the bridal shower and he here at home) as the salsa came fizzing and sputtering out like a Coke that just took a turn on the Tilt-a-Whirl.

Yes, the fermented salsa comes out carbonated! (see whitish spots in the freshly sealed jar above) But it’s a natural fizziness, not from carbonated water and is the reason our soda beverages are carbonated in the first place. Did you know that original “soft drinks” were made from lacto-fermented ingredients and so were drank with this natural fizz that we encountered? The original recipes for Root Beer, Haymaker’s Tea, Sassafras Beer and others are also found in Nourishing Traditions. These ancient sodas were actually really good for you and restored a lot of lost nutrients and enzymes. But, I digress.

We made 43 quarts of salsa and cleared out our harvest table of the tomatoes and peppers, only to go picking more the next day. We moved on to tomato soup, chili, red sauce and gardeniera (basically pickled veggies, see below just before heading into the canner).

We froze corn, beans, cabbage, cauliflower and peppers. We ground up pears and apples and made Prapple Sauce. Our canning took place in the evenings, mostly after the little ones went to bed so that we both could devote time to putting the harvest up.

So began our late night canning sessions with Nora Jones crooning in the background, and the two of us enjoying a beer or a glass of milk and getting punchy late into the night. Then I hit upon rigging up the lappy as a sort of movie machine and we watched movies while we canned. We watched Hitch and a couple others before one night, when we knew it would be a long one, we popped in the first DVD of The Lord of the Rings. We have the Super Duper Special Extra Long, Director’s Cut Collector’s Edition which means each 3 hour movie turns into a 4 hour movie. In the course of two long nights, we finished the first two movies. We have been working on The Return of the King over the last week or so as our long canning nights have not been so long, or so frequent.

But I must say, I thought I would begin to dread those long nights. When you have small children as we do, there is no such thing as sleeping in. They go down relatively early in the night (between 6-8pm, depending), but they always arise at the same time: 5:30-6:30am. Nothing keeps them from that magical hour. So when you finally rest your tired body on your scrumptious bed at midnight thirty, it is a bittersweet peace. You know darn well that you’ll be up in 5 short hours!

And yet, I did not dread the long nights. In fact, as we fell into a preserving food routine, I began to look forward to it. A few nights into it, and I realized why: Andy and I, for the first time since Elly was born, were getting dates! Now, we’ve been out together here and there, but to know that you will be with your mate one on one for a lengthy period of time, enjoying one another’s presence and mutually bettering the family ... well, that’s priceless.

I will cherish our canning nights. We aren’t done, mind you. As I type, we are silently enduring another late night; Andy making chicken stock from our freshly butchered chickens, me creating this blog and looking forward to the last of the garden harvest the rest of the week. But in a few days, it will all be taken care of. Our lacto-fermented sauerkraut will be stored away, our chicken stock will be canned up, our herbs will be hanging to dry in the basement.

And then we turn inward. Our chores lessen and our home grows warmer. The temperatures plummet and our family time soars. Rain gives way to flakes. Dew turns into frost. Color fades into brown and grey.

And it will come to me, about a month from now, or maybe two. I’ll rush down to the cellar and grab a few items for dinner. It will already be dark, and the wind will be whiping outside. In the kitchen however, the sweet smells of apple cider, slow-cooking roast and mashed potatoes will greet my return. I’ll twist open the jar of Prapple sauce in my hand and all the loveliness of summer will again flow over me. The memories of late nights with my beloved, the hard days of harvest and the wonderful sense of accomplishment placing that single jar onto our cellar shelves had brought me will overwhelm me.

What a wonderful priviledge we have to toil long and hard right up to the end of ourselves. How much greater it is to have another to share that with. What beautiful seasons we have indeed.

That is what Harvest means to me.

Photo Essay: Our September Garden

A family heirloom, this cast iron, hand-crank apple peeler comes from my great grandparents. The base is labeled with the company and the patent date of 1896. I’m not sure it’s actually that old, but I tell ya, this thing does the trick and it’s way fun to use.

I had to show off the plethora of colors and variety of goods that came from our blessed soil.

The kids, enjoying the Sugar Maple leaves (while the rest of the world claims that it’s still summer)!

Just to give you perspective, my mom and Elly stand next to our Harvest Table. The My Little Pony also gives size relevance. No, not really. Elly just insisted that her pony need to go into its “tomato house” and close the door right before I took the photo. Mom is looking for a suitable tomato to be the door. The couch you see behind the table is long enough for a grown man to stretch out on without hanging over. We filled this table three times like this.

Heirlooms galore!

Here’s Elly wearing her “Pepper Cape.” After cutting up 50-60 giant bell peppers, I got a little crazy. Of course, that’s not crazy to a 2 year old. Wearing a pepper clipped on with office clips is totally fun!

One of our new bullcalves, T-Bone. Poor guy, marked from birth!

What you see here are three eggs from our hens. The one on the left is classified as “Large.” The one in the middle would just fit into a “Jumbo” egg carton. The egg on the right would be placed in one of the cartons labeled “Our Hens Can’t Actually Walk Anymore.”

Ethan, after helping me harvest cauliflower one day.

A change of clothes and a flowering cauliflower. Ethan is there for size reference, and for his tactile pleasure.

Both our babes, enjoying a misting morning and an apple and pear for each. Elly actually picked them out for her and Ethan, and another for Daddy and Momma. It’s an understated blessing to have her be so involved in her food.

Thank you Lord, for everything you’ve given us. It’s taken this blog posting for me to truly see the magnificent scope of your blessings.

Busy time of year in Michigan for gardening – bringing all the vegetables and putting them up. What ever the means you use to preserve your harvest – drying, canning, or freezing your garden vegetables. It’s time to get it done. The garden has helped so much over the years making our grocery dollar last longer while providing us with healthy vegetables in the winter.

Canning, as a means of preserving, has been around for a long time. As city kids we loved going to Arkansas to visit my grandparents in the country and I remember Grandma’s big vegetable garden. Grandma spent many hours canning all the produce she harvested out of the garden. I remember a story my Mom tells of grandma leaving grandpa in charge of the canner full of peas while she was busy elsewhere. Grandpa forgot about them and the lid blew off leaving grandpa with pea sized burns on over his face and hands. Of course, this was many years ago and since then canners are much more reliable.

So far this year I’ve canned beans, salsa, vegetable soup, strawberry jam, dried shuck beans, and I’ve also dried corn for the first time.

My husband Bat comes from Kentucky, and shuck beans are one of our favorite ways to fix green beans. You can dry shuck beans in a couple of ways – after stringing them and breaking them up you can take needle and thread and go through each bean then hang to dry; or you can try the method we use, which is to spread them out on a sheet and put them in the sun to dry, making sure to bring them in at night so the dew won’t get on them.

You can also dry corn without the use of a dehydrator. After cutting the corn off the cob, spread evenly on a cookie sheet and dry for 12 hours at 150 degrees.

I’m still getting produce out of my garden even though it flooded twice this summer. Yesterday I picked a half bushel of tomatoes, and today I will can quart jars full of vine ripe tomatoes that will be good for chili and soup on a cold Michigan winter’s day.

What my garden has not been able to provide us with we have bought from local farmers. I bought some peaches this last weekend at the peach festival in Romeo, Michigan, and yesterday I bought 50 pounds of unclassified potatoes and a half bushel of yellow delicious apples. Now, what to do with all those apples, there’s … pie filling, applesauce, fried apples…

This year after two floods – second one happened in July with 4 inches of rain – I can’t believe my garden is producing this well. So far I’ve managed to get 3 dozen ears of corn, some peppers, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, and potatoes. Sadly, it’s those precious heirloom beans that didn’t quite make it through the second flood. I managed to pick one mess, so we had a medley of sorts for dinner with white-half runner, rattlesnake, and goose beans. It was soo good. I think I will just leave the rest on the vine and save them for seed for next year.

So, it was a nice surprise one day when some good friends called and said to come out to their country garden and pick beans. Well we couldn’t pass that up and we jumped in our truck and drove 40 minutes out to their garden that day. They received the same amount of rain as we did but their garden sits on a hill – so they still have a bountiful garden.

We picked a bushel that day and I canned 14 quarts – there is nothing like good friends.

This year I’ve become used to all the weeds, bugs, floods, and frosts. It’s when something quite out of the ordinary happened (like floods are ordinary) that I just threw up my hands, laughed, and thought, What next? Quite unenexpectedly one day while working in the garden, I heard big paws thumping on the ground, and then I heard someone holler, “TANNER!” I should have realized he was coming after me, his favorite neighbor, but it was too late. The neighbor’s big, brown, 120-pound Lab, Tanner, dashed through the vegetable garden stomping on plants as he ran to greet me, with his big tongue hanging out. He loves me what can I say. Except now the onions are not standing up so pretty and straight, and the poor corn plant on the end... Oh well, I straightened them up the best I could – they’ll grow.

It’s that time of year, time to store away all those wonderful garden goodies to be used this winter. No matter if you freeze, dry, or can your food, it’s a great feeling to be able to go to the pantry or freezer and pull out your own stuff.

Although I’ve been canning and freezing right along, the past couple of weeks have been especially busy for me. I am up to my armpits in tomatoes! I’ve been canning pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, and salsa. My family especially likes the salsa. We like to eat it with so many things. This is how I do the salsa dance!

First, I wash and core a sink full of tomatoes.

While I am doing this, I have my large stockpot filled with water on the stove, bringing it to a boil. When the water has come to a rolling boil, I dump it on my cleaned and cored tomatoes in the sink to soak.

Don’t forget to have the stopper in the bottom of the sink, or you will be calling yourself all kinds of things because you now have to wait for more water to boil!! The boiling water splits the tomato skins and makes it very easy to pull the skins right off of the tomatoes.

While the tomatoes are soaking in the very HOT water, I do a little chopping. I chop up the onions and peppers that I am going to add to my salsa.

Chop as little or as much as you like for the amount of tomatoes you have. I should say here, that I am not much for following exact recipes for something like this. I very much make it according to taste. If you don’t like a lot of onions, then by all means, cut back on the onions!

Make it according to what you and your family like. My family does not like sweet sauce, so I never add sugar to my sauce when I make it. Don’t be afraid to change things up to suit you and your family. After all, you are the ones who will be eating it!

Now, back to the salsa! When I can see the skins have split and pulled back somewhat on the tomatoes, I take them from the HOT water and put them in very cold water. DO NOT use your hands to do this! Use tongs or a large slotted spoon. Be advised, the little buggers can be very slippery at this stage! Let them soak in the cold water for a few minutes. This cools them down so they can be handled safely. Now, carefully check to make sure they have cooled down. If they have, get your hands in there, and start removing skins. You will be surprised how easily they come off.

Now that you have all the skins removed, on to the next stage. It’s time to cut the tomatoes into chunks. Cut them as big or as little as you like. I make mine about 2 inches, and put them into my large stock pot on the stove at medium to medium-high heat. You don’t need to add any water; the tomatoes will cook down themselves.

Now you have some choices! Don’t you love choices? My family does not mind tomato seeds, so I do not take the seeds out of my salsa or sauces. If you would like to take them out, it isn’t difficult, but you will need a food mill to do this. Simply cook your tomato chunks till they become very mushy and watery. At that point you would put them through your food mill to remove the seeds. After the seeds are removed, put the tomatoes that will be like juice at this point, back into your stockpot and proceed. I skip this step, so I’m going with the chunks of cut up tomato on medium-high heat.

Now is the time to add all the good stuff. Add your onions, peppers, and any spices that you like. I add some vinegar, oregano, basil, salt, pepper, and any other spices I see in my spice cabinet that looks good to me. If you like your salsa with some kick, add hot peppers, or some hot sauce. Taste test as you go. I warn you, your house will smell like a pizzeria, and your family will be hungry when they come in and smell it! After everything is added, bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat a bit and simmer. If you want your salsa to be a little thicker, you can add some tomato paste at this point. I let mine simmer for about 10 minutes.

Now it is ready to put into containers to freeze, or into jars to be canned in a boiling water bath. I can mine, so I will go on with that.

Fill your clean jars with your salsa, leaving a half inch headspace at the top. Boil your flats to soften and sterilize the rubbers. Wipe the tops of your jars to clean off any drips. Put the hot flats on the jars, rubber side down, and turn on rings. Tighten them by hand so they are snug. Submerge the jars in water in your canner. Bring to a boil, and process, (just let them boil) for 35 minutes.

When they are finished, turn off your burner and be very careful taking the lid off of your canner. There will be lots of steam. Be VERY careful pulling your jars up out of the water. They are extremely hot! I usually let mine set and cool for a minute or two after I have pulled them up out of the water, but before removing from the wire rack in the canner. Now set them somewhere to cool and listen for that magical POPPING sound that indicates your jars have sealed. I love that sound!

Congratulations, you have finished a batch of salsa! Now reward yourself with a cup of coffee and some lovely chocolate chip cookies!