Spring Has Sprung!

Happy Spring!

I hope for some of you today brought sunshine and flowers, because for us here on Flathead Lake, MT it marked the beginning of windy rainstorm season. Mother Nature definitely didn't disappoint. The morning was grey and uneventful but sometime mid-afternoon the temperature got up to 55 degrees and a huge grey cloud was headed straight for us. I was cooking dinner when it reached us with winds and heavy rain. It must have been Bomber's first rainstorm because he curled up at my feet, shaking, as I chopped potatoes for spicy fish and potato soup. In less than half an hour the storm had passed and everything was back to normal.

Since I knew I wasn't spending today outside, I decided to start canning season off early! Asparagus was super cheap at the store, that never happens, so I bought at least 5 pounds of it. I froze most and decided to pickle the rest. I used the Pickled Asparagus recipe in Canning For A New Generation as a loose reference for liquid amounts because I didn't have an interest in making pickling spice.

I started out with 1 pound, 6oz of asparagus with the ends cut off, but not quite short enough yet to go in our jars. I mixed a brine using the liquid measurements that the book suggested for 1 pound of asparagus (forgetting I had 1.5 times that much) and ended up only having enough for half of my jars. Whoops! I had to scramble to whip up another batch of brine for the remaining jars. If I had mixed it all as one batch here is what I would have had:

1 cup rice vinegar
4 cups white vinegar (because I didn't have enough of the rice vinegar)
2 tbsp sugar
1 1/3 tbsp salt
2 tsp dill seed
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 garlic clove per jar

2 jars have a half rice vinegar/half white vinegar brine and 2 jars have an all white vinegar brine. There was 1 jar that overlapped the two different brines.

Boil the brine, pack the jars, fill the jars with enough brine to cover the spears. Process as you would any other pickled veggie (I did these in a hot water bath for 10 minutes).

Throughout this whole process I couldn't help but think of an asparagus roll hors d'oeuvres recipe that I used to help my grandmother make when I was a child for her bridge club. They had a strong curry flavor so the entire time I was canning I kept getting the urge to put curry in the jars. I decided to do it in the one jar of overlapping brine, I'll be sure to let you know how they turn out.

Manna's Asparagus Rolls

1 can green asparagus spears, well drained
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp chutney
1 loaf this sliced white sandwich bread with crusts removed (Wonder Bread!)

Use a rolling pin to roll each slice of bread lightly. Spread with dressing and seasoning. Place asparagus spear at one end of bread slice and roll up (leave edge down so it will stay rolled). Cut into halves or thirds. Cover with a damp towel or place in a tight plastic container until serving time. Makes approximately 3-41/2 dozen depending on how you cut them.

I think I need to find an excuse to make this recipe again...

Day to Day Life on the Farm

So..... the to do list didn't really go as planned. Brian went hunting and I just didn't feel like tackling it myself. Brian is now on a work trip and the list has been left nearly untouched.

I've been chipping away at our box of apples, slowly but surely. Lately I've had a couple of batches of jelly that didn't gel, so I read an article on Fixing Canning Mistakes and I'm trying them again.

The other night I made Roasted Garlic and Butternut Squash Cassoulet and it was really incredible. The leftovers are lasting us quite a while too. I used the whole head of roasted garlic instead of half. You can never have to much garlic, right?

The other day this large bird flew into our window (the sun catchers don't seem to be working). I've seen them around the farm before but they never stop long enough for me to get a picture. Does anyone know what it is? When it flew away it caught Bomber's attention. He kept running around looking for it- is that a good sign of his future bird hunting abilities?

The List

Lately my motivation to get things done hasn't really been high. I'm not sure if it's the dreary weather or the fact that my knitting projects seem much more appealing than chores but I really need to light a fire under my ass and get things done. I feel so much better once things are done, it's just a matter of getting my butt off the couch and doing them.

Brian has 3 days off this weekend and I'm sure he'd appreciate a motivated and productive wife while he's around. The best way I know how to overwhelm myself with the To Dos is by writing them down. That way I can't ignore them. Here is this weekends To Do list. I think I'll need to make a lot of coffee this weekend...

I really need to get going today on some of those things, namely the canning, since I know Brian is going to want to work outside this weekend. I've made 2 batches of apple butter this week but we still have at least 30 pounds of apples that need to be dealt with. My goal is 2 batches of red onion marmalade, 2 batches of Green Apple Pectin Stock for Champagne and Rose/Lavender jellies, apple sauce, and mint jelly.

To the left is how I'm hoping my afternoon will go, although now that it's getting later in the day I'm not sure I'll have the time for applesauce.



The kitchen is all prepped for a Rainy Day Canning Day

Autumn Harvest

The past week has been filled with more play than work while my mom and uncle were here for a visit. But during their visit we had our first frosty weather with night temperatures in the hight 20s. I forgot to harvest our last red tomatoes and when my mom and I went out one morning all we found were frozen marbles. We harvested them all and I promptly got to work on a batch of chili.

We have a pear tree on our property and we have been waiting for the fruit to ripen. We purchased the property after the tree had flowered so we didn't have time to thin the flowers so that the tree would produce less, but bigger, fruit. We ended up with a tree COVERED in tiny pears.

We heard that pear don't do the best here in our part of Montana because they take so long to ripen and the first frost comes early. Well, we had our first frost and I rushed out to make sure the pears hadn't frozen. They hadn't, thankfully, but they still aren't even close to ripe.

I decided to take the advice of an article from Oregon State University Extension Services about How to Ripen Pears. I learned so much about pears! According to the article pears don't ripen to our liking on the tree, if they ripen on the tree they develop a course and gritty texture. They ripen best off the tree, at cold temperatures. They recommended picking the pears and putting them in a paper bag with a ripe banana or apple.

I have decided to experiment. I picked a basket full of pears and did what the article recommended. There are still lots and lots of pears on the tree. In a week or so, I will go pick more (assuming they haven't frozen and rotted) and see if leaving them in the cold, with the autumn midday warm sun will make any difference in the ripening process. I am determined to make some Pear and Ginger preserves from the Canning for a New Generation book, so I really hope this works! Wish me luck!

Big Storage in a Tiny Space

The biggest challenge with doing lots of canning throughout the year is finding a place to put it all. We don't have a pantry in our kitchen, but we are fortunate enough to have a closet under the stairs in the basement. Instead of leaving everything in boxes on the floor we wanted to create shelving, but the space is very narrow so shelving options were limited to narrow shelves on both sides, or a deep shelf on one.

I've been hoping to find a use for some old drawers I took out of an upstairs room. They are strong and sturdy and seemed much to useful to take to the dump or stick in the burn pile.

The drawers were absolutely perfect for this project. Brian bolted them all together and then to the wall. We decided how to arrange the shelves based on the size jars we had, and we had a built in storage system in no time flat. The only problem is, we plan to can more, and we used up almost all of the shelves we installed. I guess we'll just have to build a few more farther back in the closet, and it will just involve a little crouching to get things out.

Click on the picture below to enlarge it.

Chicken and Duck Stock

Making your own chicken stock is really easy and it's a great way to get a little more use out of that roasted chicken. The entire process from raw bird to stock is really easy and fairly inexpensive. We went down to the farmers market and bought a chicken from the Pondera Hutterite Colony for $7.50. We bought a bag of carrots, head of celery, and 2 onions (we were able to use half for the chicken and half for the duck a week later). Roasting the chicken took about 2 hours. The chicken provided us with 3-4 meals and plenty of doggie treats for the pups.

The stock was even easier, Simply Canning has a great recipe and a tip I hadn't considered: save up your scraps over time in the freezer until you have enough to make stock, that way you don't have to buy it all at once.

For the stock we put the chicken bones, skin, and leftover bits we didn't want to eat in a large pot with some chopped up celery, carrots and onion (it's not an exact science, use what you have on hand) and let it simmer for several hours, the longer the better. I think we ended up simmering it for 4-6 hours. Then we strained out the chicken pieces, bones, and vegetables. Use the pressure canner method to can the stock. Easy!

We did the same thing with the duck, but that was a special treat since the bird was $16. We won't be doing that every week, but it sure was tasty and it makes a really rich and fatty stock. Now we have about 20 pints and 4 quarts of homemade stock to use. I love adding a little stock when I'm cooking rice or barley, it adds a really nice flavor to it.

Here are the chicken and duck stocks side by side:

Holy Tomato!

We can never have enough tomato products in our house. I cook with them whenever I can. Pizza, pasta, burritos, tacos, rice and beans, curry- we eat them all, and I slather on the tomatoes. We ran out of last years canning supply months ago, and it has been so hard to buy canned tomatoes since then. This year we decided to "Go Big, or Go Home.".

We started with 4 boxes from the farmers market- 112 pounds. You may that's insane, so brace yourself when I tell you that the next week we got two more boxes, for a total of 168 pounds of tomatoes.

We started with Brian's favorite recipe, Tomato Jam, from Food in Jars. I thought the recipe sounded strange when Brian wanted to make it last year. Tomato jam? What could we use if for? Once I tasted how yummy it was, I found uses for it. We use it on burgers, meatloaf, sandwiches, and with crackers and cream cheese. It's a great alternative to ketchup, in fact, we don't even buy ketchup anymore.

Brian wanted to make it less spicy this time, but forgot. I'm glad he did because I love how spicy it is, and sweet it is. It's perfect. This year we got 13 half pints from the recipe.

After that we started in on the salsa, tomato sauce, and canned tomatoes. My step-mom Karen came up for a visit on our second day of canning tomatoes and things went a lot faster with another set of hands. I still got to chop all 168 pounds of tomatoes, but she helped blanch and peel the tomatoes and chop up all the other peppers, onion, garlic etc that went into the salsa and sauce. It was a big help. She even brought up a huge bag of fresh basil from her garden to go into the sauce. Yummy!

Most tomato recipes are the same. They all come from the USDA Tomato Canning Guide because there really is a specific way that tomatoes need to be canned to preserve them properly. We used their guide for all of our products, only varying slightly in spice and seasonings.

We made 2 batches of salsa. For the first batch we used the "Tomato Salsa using Slicing Tomatoes" recipe on page 3-24. We added in some super hot peppers for spice. It turned out OK. It was a big watery, but the flavor was good and fresh. We made a larger batch and got 12 pints.

For the second batch we wanted a thicker salsa so we tried the "Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa" recipe on page 3-25. It wasn't nearly spicy enough so we added some chiles in adobo sauce and red pepper flakes for a smokey/spicy flavor. It didn't have the fresh taste of batch 1, but it was much thicker. I actually think mixing the two salsas together would be perfect, and that's what I do if I have 2 jars open. We got 10 pints of the second batch

Here you can see Batch 1 and 2 of Salsa next to each other:

For the tomato sauce we used the "Spaghetti Sauce without Meat" recipe on page 3-13. We made 2 batches of sauce; one with large slicing tomatoes and we forgot to add in the basil, the second batch we used roma tomatoes and remembered the basil. For both we added in extra red pepper flakes and italian seasonings.

I'm not really sure why the recipe said it would yield 9 pints. We followed the recipe to a T for the amount of tomatoes and other large ingredients. We simmered it for hours, reduced it almost by half (until it was the thickness we liked), and we got 20 pints with the first batch!

We haven't tasted batch 2, but batch 1 was definitely a success:

There isn't much to say about canning plain tomatoes- chop them up, put in 2 tablespoons of lemon juice per quart, pack it up, can it. Done. We used the "Tomatoes-Whole or Halved (packed raw without added liquid) recipe on page 3-11, and we made a lot of them, enough to use 1 jar per week. Don't they look pretty?

So that's tomatoes. Next up: chicken stock made after roasting a yummy chicken we got from the Pondera Hutterite Colony. It's cooling in the kitchen right now and smells amazing.

Dilly Veggies

We don't do a lot of pickling in our house, I'm not really sure why. We love dilly beans, but I think it's easy to forget that we have them when they aren't really a staple food in our diet. My husband also isn't a fan of pickles so I didn't feel like I could justify making a huge batch just for me.

We've been making dilly beans for a couple of years now because we do love them, and love to give them as gifts. The Food in Jars Recipe is pretty close to what we do, although we do use dill weed instead of seed.

This year we got a great deal on a giant bag of beans at the farmers market and they also had giant bags of cucumbers. We decided that for $20 we were willing to experiment with pickles. Maybe Brian would like them more if we make them ourselves?

Dilly bean and pickle recipes are very similar. I got recipes from my friend Sue and from Food in Jars and decided to take elements from both.

Follow the Water Bath Canning Method for prepping the jars and canning the goods.

Since we got cucumbers late in the season they were a bit bigger. We decided to keep the smallest ones whole, and experiment with different shapes for the larger ones. Some were quartered and some were sliced. The quartered cucumbers packed best in the jars.

Brine: Some recipes call for cider vinegar, some for white. We decided to experiment with them. We did some with white, some with cider, and some with a mix of both vinegars. The brine is half vinegar and half water with 5 tablespoons of salt for every 8 cups of liquid. We basically just heated batches of the brine until all the jars were full, since we weren't really sure how much we were going to need.

Spices: Some of the dill weed we bought had gone to seed so I spent some time separating out the best dill weed and pulling the seeds off the rest. Instead of crushed red pepper we decided to try using some dried De Arbol Chile peppers that we had in the pantry. Since we used several different jar sizes, here are the ratios of spices we used for each:

Pint Jar:
-1/2 tsp dill seed or 1 spring dill weed
-1 garlic clove
-1/2 tsp pepper corn
-1 dried chile

Quart Jar:
-1 tsp dill seed or 2 springs dill weed
-2 garlic cloves
-1/2 tsp pepper corn
-1 dried chile

1/2 Gallon Jar:
-2 tsps dill seed or 4 springs dill weed
-4 garlic clove
-1 tsp pepper corn
-2 dried chile

Now we get to wait. One month from the canning date we're going to have a tasting to see which vinegar we liked the best. Check back for the reviews!

Jams: Peach/Huckleberry and Apricot

It may sound silly, but one of the things I knew I was going to miss the most about Oregon was blackberry season. It was a huge consideration for me when deciding whether or not to move (that and wild mushrooms and fresh off the boat tuna) Blackberries grow like weeds in the Willamette Valley and we would spend many weekends picking berries to can, freeze, and ferment.

I was very pleased to realize that I didn't have to give up berry picking, rather, I just had to switch which berry I would obsess over. In Montana the berry is huckleberry. They are much smaller than blackberries, grow closer to the ground, and involve slightly more difficult terrain, but they are worth it.

We came home from an hour or so of picking with about 8 cups of berries, plenty to make into jam all by themselves, but we decided that we wanted to save some for other purposes (mainly huckleberry pancakes). We chose to mix them with peaches and used Food in Jars Peach Jam recipe, substituting 3 cups of huckleberries for 3 cups of peaches.

Brian was also invited to pick apricots from a coworkers tree. We were not expecting there to be so much fruit! We came home with enough for two batches of jam.

For the first batch we chose a simple Apricot Jam recipe, but for the second I wanted to be a little more adventurous. I chose Apricot Jam Recipe with Noyaux, Spices and Bourbon. It was very unique and I got to try new things. I'd never cracked open an apricot pit to use the kernels in cooking before and it uses the candy method instead of pectin so I had the pleasure of standing over it and stirring it for what felt like forever. I'm now a huge fan of pectin.

The only changes we made to the recipe was we couldn't find cardamom pods so I used 1/3 tsp ground instead.

I liked the recipe, but I think I'd make a few changes next time. Ours boiled down a bit to much so we only got 5 half pints instead of 8. I think I would use the pectin method next time to save time, and get more jam. The lemon flavor came through a little strong, so I think next time I would use a little less lemon and a little more spices, maybe a little more bourbon too. All in all, it was a great recipe to try.

Jammin'

This past week has been all about canning, and I don't see it slowing down any time soon. My mother in law Gwen has been in town visiting so she and Brian were in the kitchen this time around, but this coming week is my turn. Check back to hear about our adventures with apricot jam, peach/huckleberry jam, dilly beans, and pickles. Right now I've got to get back in the kitchen for a round of apricot jam with bourbon in it. Yum!