Sunday Worship

 

Tomatoes - Part Deux

Yeah - about that little numero dos in the title. The first round of tomatoes was completed with absolutely NO fanfare whatsoever. Saturday (9-13) marked batch 2's debut. (lol)

I actually was able to have my Nana help me with making applesauce on 8-30-14, then on 9-6-14 she was able to lend her wealth of canning experience to me and my mom for making a type of tomato juice cocktail which my dad highly enjoys. (He likens the juice to V8, but with less salt.)

 And yes - the recipe again comes from this gem of a book.
Early bird to the market catches the canning tomatoes. But going home was an adventure! My car's muffler decided to finish breaking and drag when I got onto the road back to the house. I am so thankful for AAA - they saved my bacon once again! Originally, they told me it would be an hour, but within 5 minutes called back to say it would be just over 30 minutes for the tow truck to arrive. He showed up before then!
Once home and with 45 lbs tomatoes. (20 for juicing, the rest for puree that will make Tomato batch #3) I quartered 8 onions and cut (about) 5 stalks celery. Mom seeded and cut 2 bell peppers, and just to add a dash of difference - 3/4 of a jalapeno. We plopped 'em in the pot. Then per Nana's directions from the last time, added water; and got them cooking.

(Why? Well, those 3 veggies take longer to cook than tomatoes.)

Midway thru cooking

One mistake I made this time was not stirring it enough. Dad and I had an awful time fishing burned stuff out of the cooked, un-pureed vegetables when we started putting it through the Victorio. Our kettle, despite a decent bottom, is just really prone to sticking in the middle of the bottom of the pot.  :(

Set up on the stove.

 While Dad was checking out 3 jobs during the morning, I cooked it, then because I didn't know how to put Dad's old Victorio strainer together, I let everything wait till he got back.

The Victorio goes to work once again!

Mom and I actually had to move a table that's been in the living room for several years into the kitchen so we could use the strainer. The tables in the kitchen were either curve edged or too thin.

Dad and I proceeded to make a glorious mess on the table. In the back is the kettle full of cooked tomatoes. In front and to  the right is the Victorio clamped to the table with a wide, shallow bowl under the spout to catch the good stuff. There's another smaller bowl to be "back up" to the big one. The white pail on the left is almost full of tomato-y goodness and down in the left hand corner of the picture is another stainless steel container for the juice that's still in the pot.

The above was the set up for putting the hot juice into jars for canning. Mom and I moved the table so we stood in front of the longer side. On the right of the picture is the kettle of juice, then a small plate with a Pyrex measure cup on it. To the left of that is a doubled small towel with the jar, the lifter; then on the butcher block on the far left of the picture is a small pot of hot water with the flat lids for canning. Behind the jar of tomato juice is the kettle of water for heating the jars before I fill them.

Final heating of finished product

All told (with the time of my adventure with my car) 8:30 a.m to about 5 p.m. was my work time. (Including the hour or so of wait time for Dad to get home in the afternoon)

12 quarts of goodness!

There was a 13th can that ended up in the fridge because it was only 3/4ths full.

1/2" x 1 & 3/4" address labels are my new jar labeling system

hehe

Yeah - so happy about my new labeling "system". Cheap? Yep - 800 labels for $4.99. Effective - you betcha!

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Sunday Worship

Sunday Worship

Adventures In Canning Part 2

  Saturday, 8/16, it was time to dip my toes into pickling. There's a first time for everything! My DAd was initially going to help me, but ended up having to work.
I decided on 2 recipes.....
 Sweet Pickle Relish - Food.com was recommended by a friend who was also kind enough to lend me her food processor and a julienne slicer. (Thank you so much A. D. - they came in very handy!)
 And also bread and butter pickles from the;

which is the cookbook my beloved Nana uses and has gifted both my mother and myself with. (I love it! Old fashioned? Yes. Effective - definitely!)

First up - relish. You had to let the cut veggies marinate in the salt and cold water for 2 hours.

The grater attachment on the food processor was used to cut the cucumbers. 

cut/grated veggies in salted water.

I modified the relish recipe slightly. Used 6 cups grated cukes instead of 4 but kept ratio of vinegar/sugar mixture the same. Fortunately it worked pretty well. (The recipe reviews said that 4 cups of cucumbers left too much extra juice after ladling everything into jars.) Putting 6 cups of cukes in was a happy accident though!

(I only took 1 picture of the process of the relish.)

Next up were the bread and butter pickles from the Mennonite Community Cookbook. I ended up hand slicing the gallon of cucumbers called for in the recipe. Mom helped me with the onions. : ) 

The plastic jar I used for the pickles is at least 2 gallons 

The big plastic jar was the only thing Mom and I could find to fit the gallon of sliced cukes + salted water called for in the bread and butter pickle recipe! It worked perfectly. : D
You had to let the cukes sit for 3 hours with the salted water - which I did. 

Turmeric is the component of bread and butter pickles that turns the pickle that bright yellowy green. Some utensils (plastic ones) ended up with bright green on them. Didn't come out in the wash either.

pickling liquid heating, jars in the back and canning kettle on the left

Halfway done. (1 batch of relish & the bread'n'butters)

8 pts+1 qt. bread'n'butter pickles on right. 4 pts.+ 7  1/2 pts relish on left and back row

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Adventures in Canning Part 1

I love cooking and preserving. In my search for awesome recipes I came across this one.. Peach Butter. I liked the fact that you didn't need to peel the skins off the peaches. 

Yesterday was Friday and I worked until 4:30. When I got off I raced up to Penzey's Spice Store near my house to pick up the cardamom and nutmeg I knew I didn't have at home. 

Earlier in the week I'd pitted, sliced and pureed 10 (or so) lbs of peaches. (Blessed that my parents own a VitaMix so blending all of that was a snap.) Once the fruit was liquified, I put everything in silicone ice cube trays..... And after I ended up with much more puree than ice cube trays, so I looked around and hit upon...

Yup - muffin pans! I put paper liners in and filled 'em up! (The pans at my place are much more beat up though!) I even used some of those disposable aluminum pans you can get from supermarkets.

Welllll, fast forward to Friday afternoon....................... 

After I got home from the store I quickly started pitting and slicing the rest of the peaches. (I ended up with roughly 15 lbs of the puree. w00ps! Rcipe called for 15 lbs of fruit - before pitting!) I cut way down on the cinnamon in the recipe - only used 1 tablespoon as opposed to 3 in the recipe. I added 1 vanilla bean and roughly 2-2 1/2 cups of cane sugar; neither of which were called for in the recipe.

The frozen peaches were dumped into the pot while I buzzed the freshly cut fruit in the VitaMix and added it.

Canning kettle on 2 left burners, pot with 1/2 pt. jars on back right and fruit right front .

I cooked the butter for an extra hour, as it had taken that long for the frozen puree to fully thaw. Spices were added, per the recipe, at the beginning.

about an hour into simmering

The results below

24 1/2 pint jars + 1 pint. 

Oh yeah - I broke a 25th 1/2 pint jar when I put it into the hot water bath. There's a first time for everything!

Result? Not too sweet fruit butter that is excellent on hot buttered toast.

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Putting up corn

My Mom saw a video similar to this one...

Sweet Corn Cutting 

and showed it to my Dad who was inspired.

So.... 

 This ^ happened last Friday..

Unfortunately, the yield wasn't as great as I had hoped for. We ended up with 14 qt bags plus a partial one after blanching & cooling 100+ ears.

Of course - it would've been slightly more if I hadn't kept nibbling on the kernels I cut the old fashioned way.

Dad and I are both hoping to put up another batch of corn, but first up?

Bread and Butter Pickles

Sweet Pickle Relish

and

Peach Butter - the nutritious way from Nourished Kitchen - Peach Butter

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