How To Give Yourself a Very Busy Week-end

Buy a half-bushel of apples when you have a meeting at work on Saturday. It took me until 11 

PM last night to get the first batch of apple butter done. Another today and the rest of the apples sliced and either canned or frozen (I'm running low on jars), and the box will be empty sometime tonight.

It has been a rainy week-end, so the urgent digging needed outside has not been done. Looks like it will rain next week, too. Wow! this has been a wet year. Time to work.

Apple Butter On the Way

The dark red, rock hard cooking apples were at the Farmer's market today. You know what that means. Apple Butter Time. Must run. First, a short rant.

I stopped to get some apple juice or cider (storebought, they are the same thing these days) yesterday for the week-end's preserving. All the juice on the main shelf (even the dirt cheap stuff on sale, and the name brands) was from CHINA! We grow tons and tons of apples in this country. What on Earth are we doing getting apple juice from China? I finally bought an "organic" brand that appeared to be American. Aargh. Off to drown my frustrations in a half-bushel of apples. Whew!

Sun and Cooler Weather mean Food Preservation!

And hard work. Here are my plans for the fall, and the associated seeds. I'm canning this week-end. I picked oregano and thyme to dry on the racks yesterday. I'll pick up a box of canning tomatoes tomorrow and make diced tomatoes. We use a lot of those tomatoes over the winter in chili and tomato soup. I'll probably make crushed tomatoes with another box the next week-end. So much to plant, can, dry, etc.! And I spend 8ish to 5ish, Monday thru Friday, at work or traveling to and fro. These are busy times.

I Picked a Peck of Pears

OK,I don't know exactly how many, but it was a lot. I didn't need a ladder,even. With a ladder I would have been able to pick at least a few BUSHELS, and that's way more pears than we eat in a year. These are firm canning or cooking pears, not those for fresh eating. A neighbor has a beautiful pear tree in the front yard, literally dripping with them. We saw pears falling to the ground on our walks last week, so I walked down and  asked if I could harvest some, and they said, "welcome". Wow! Now to put them up... the hard part.

Canning Green Beans

I've gotten a good harvest of green beans this week, more than even we green-bean lovers can eat fresh. What to do? Clean them, take off the ends, string as necessary, break or cut into 1-inch pieces, and blanch for 5 minutes. From there, either plunge into ice water (not yourself, though you will feel like it- the beans) to cool off quickly, then into labeled freezer containers or bags, or can them while hot with enough of their cooking water to cover and leave a head space of one inch. 

One inch? Why? Because beans are low-acid foods, we use a pressure canner to can them, and the food expands at high temperature and pressure. The increased pressure raises the temperature to kill some very interesting bacteria that thrive in low-oxygen conditions and produce deadly toxins. Go to the University of Georgia for the latest safety info from the USDA, and follow the rules exactly, and you'll have green beans this winter even if there is a power outage. It works- there are multiple safety features built into these things now, so nothing blows up, and it seems to expel less heat into the kitchen than an open water-bath canner. If you are good at following instructions, you should try it sometime.

Jams and Jellies are Easy

It is not hard to take 5 or 6 cups of berries (the recipes come in the pectin package! Just fruit, sugar, and pectin) and make 6-8 half-pints of sweet goodness. Then you can spend the rest of the evening listening for the satisfying "pop!" of a jar well-sealed, and licking all the utensils. You will lick them, and your hands. You will turn the kitchen into a sauna, and come out delightfully steamed. You can even freeze the berries now, and use them later when that heat is welcome, and you want to give the sweet spreads as Christmas gifts. The making of jams and jellies was something I wanted to learn this year, after the apple butter last year was such a ringing success, so it turned out pretty well. All the jars sealed properly, so we'll have more than just apple butter for sandwiches in the next year. Lunch just got a little more diverse.

Preparing for Summer Food Preservation

How to do it if you are a novice? The USDA and the state/county agricultural extension offices offer the newest, scientifically-based information on how to can, dry, or freeze food. DO NOT go with the 100-year-old books here. They did not know about all the germs we know about now, or how hard some of them are to kill. Here are some trustworthy Internet sites:

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/ is the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia. They even offer a free, self-paced online course about food preservation. Good stuff.

http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/ is another good one. New Mexico State University has a more Southwestern flair, with information about canning green chilies and salsas.

http://foodsafety.cas.psu.edu/lets_preserve.html has information about snap beans, sweet corn, and fruit from Penn State.

Even the canner companies, Presto and Mirro, and the jar companies (Ball has the Famous Blue Book) offer information on their websites. You might want to buy the blue book or another NEW book to guide you, but these free resources really have all the information you need. 

Then you need the appropriate canner(s), jars (recycling those mayo jars will NOT do, especially for pressure canning- keep your couscous away from the bugs in those jars by all means, but don't try to form a vacuum seal except on the thick-walled home canning jars), and new lids with clean rings. Cooling racks and jar tongs and a wide-mouth funnel are also nice.

For freezing, you need containers (freezer bags are fine for a few months, bowls with the appropriate head space for longer). For everything, you need good knives, a cutting board, and ways to wash and sterilize things. I haven't dried anything yet, so I don't know about that- though I may be drying some herbs this summer. Have fun!

A Gift EVERYONE seems to enjoy

I never knew apple butter would be so popular. I took it to work, and gingerly asked each of my prospective recipients if they liked it- the Americans of European Ancestry responded with a "Yes!" and a look very similar to the one my brother's one-year-old daughter gave him last Thanksgiving when he was eating pecan pie in front of her. It would take an armless man with a heart of stone to resist that look. When I handed it to them, their grip on the jar was firm, the thanks genuine. "You made this? Yourself?"
I had to explain what apple butter is (slow cooked apples strained and mixed with sugar and cinnamon, cloves, and allspice) to the Indians (from India), but they were pleased with it, too. Vegetarian, no offensive animal products, all natural. Works for everyone except diabetics, and you might find a way to make it with Splenda or agave nectar or something. Homemade means you took time for someone, and people appreciate that.

Reusing Jars

My favorite salsa (Frog Ranch Medium) only has 40 mg sodium per 2 Tbsp serving. That's lower than any other at the grocery store, and probably lower than the recipes I have for home canning. And the ingredient list is short and natural (tomatoes, pickled peppers (peppers, vinegar, salt), onions, cilantro). Another bonus: it comes in a real, thick-walled Mason jar! We reuse those for drinking glasses and canning.
One problem remains: how to get the glue and bits of label off after washing the jar. I have a technique that works for me. First use water and a plastic scraper (I tend to hurt myself with metal) to get the paper off. A lot of sticky goo will remain. Get some cooking oil and rub it over the goo with your hands. DO NOT USE YOUR DISHWASHING SCRUBBIES- will ruin them. Use your hands, and rub pretty hard, like massaging the jar. When the oil clouds up, use undiluted dishwashing liquid to rub off the oil. Some of the goo will come off, but the rest will be transparent. Rinse off cloudy stuff with hot water. Apply more oil with a paper towel. Rub hard, and the remaining goo will come off. Then use dishwashing liquid again to remove the oil. Voila! New (tough) drinking glass or container for growing-time goodness!

An Evening's Labour

When you've worked as hard as that, you want to spell it with extra letters! Older, more expert canners would probably pity my exhaustion, but 9 pints of apple butter was WORK for me- especially doing it alone. But it is worth it to hear those lids go "chink" as they cool.

Wanted to show my mom- these tomatoes on the windowsill were harvested in the past 3 days. The plants are pumping them out! I'm saving seed. It has been an amazing year for tomatoes.