Canning

Yesterday i managed to complete my first canning session.  All by myself.

I had 8# of tomatoes collected up. Which seemed to take forever since everything is ripening so slowly.
I found a good recipe for stewed tomatoes (hubby loves those). I washed, blanched, skinned and chopped them, cooked them in a pot for a few minutes to get things hot. I used my dishwasher to heat the jars and keep them hot.  I packed the jars and put them in the cooker.  I didn't have as much trouble adjusting the lid as i thought i might. By following the directions it was fairly fool proof.  The cooker heated and pressurized faster than i had expected- not in a bad way, but i had imagined waiting forever for the water to boil---  as if it were a full stock pot.  But it turned out to be pretty efficient.  I vented it for 10 minutes- used my digital timer and kept an eye on the gauge and the jiggly weight.  When the time was up i shut everything off and let it depressurize, which also happened faster than i had imagined it would.
The lid came off the cooker pretty easily and i used the can lifter thingie to remove the jars to a soft towel on the counter top.
The can contents bubbled for much longer than i expected, so that was interesting.
I did have a few cans that puked out some contents inside the pressure cooker, this made the inside of the aluminum discolor unfortunately- but its cosmetic i guess.
This morning it looks as if the cans are all tightly sealed. Maybe i lucked out.  I think i didn't do a good job removing any air pockets when i packed the jars. Also my tomatoes were pretty dry.  I have planted romas before, but this year was not ideal growing conditions being so dry in the last few weeks. I think there were a lot of internal air pockets within the flesh and pulp.
I do have a few jars whose contents are lower than the others.  I don't have enough experience to know whether or not if this is caused by the cans puking during processing or from the contents softening and losing volume.
So that is how my first try went.
I unscrewed a few rings to test the seals, they all seem very tight so far.

I think i need to reorganize the pantry. Its a flipping mess.

I asked over here at Fresh Preserving Forum  if i could try canning carrots with sugar to make an easier "Candied carrot" dish. Canning the carrots in a light syrup should allow me to simply add butter to the drained and heated carrots and serve them.  There's the matter of safety though, carrots are low acid, but i have a pressure canner so it should be possible, somehow.  But i'm making sure.  They are pretty helpful over there. If it might be risky, i will be told without any beating around the bush. Heh.

I might not get much of anything more out of my garden for canning, but i'm sure i'll get plenty of practice with apples. We go to a local orchard every year and always come back with too much. We have so much fun picking that we get carried away. We buy a good deal of apple sauce so making it at home won't be a waste. I'm also interested in making canned apple pie filling.

I have been enjoying the scent of orange blossom for the last few days. My venous orange has developed its flowers better and they have a scent now.  Only one at a time though, so i don't think any self pollinating is going on.  I'd like to see fruit, but i don't expect any. I love the smell, its not strong enough to float through the air from just one bloom, but getting in close and braving the little spikes is rewarding.

I'm having a watermelon dilemma. I have no idea how to tell if they are ripe.  I read that thunking them can work, smelling them, the patch on the bottom should be a certain color...   I can't decipher the thunk,  i can't get down far enough to sniff, and there is no patch on the bottom.  I'm sort of going by the one cantaloupe melon i have. Its netting is still green so i know it isn't ripe, i imagine if it is not, the others aren't either...?

The overnight weather has been too cool for much more growing to go on, the herb seeds have begun to germinate and we had some good rain last night and yesterday.  Its been needed. The rest of the week is supposed to be sunny and in the high 80's. So i'll be watering again soon.

I have gotten a few more ears of corn. Most are still small, but i have gotten one or two really good sized ears.I'm told the flavor is excellent.  So far the "Incredible"  has won for flavor.  There are a few small corn borers in them occasionally, they aren't too big so far but they will get bigger. I think its too late to do much about them since they are inside the ears no pesticides will reach them. I may just grab all the ears i can right now, clean out the bugs and serve the corn.


I was able to order my Excalibur dehydrator yesterday as well.  I can't wait for it to arrive. Between my Food Saver and the dehydrator i should be able to put together some instant meals without preservatives. 
I think this should conclude the kitchen collection.  I can't think of anything else i might want at this point.
Supplies are all i need.
I found a website called WebStaurant that sells vacuum bags that should work with my FoodSaver, they are a thicker mil number than what Tammy at Dehydrate2Store suggests. They might be even cheaper than the inferior generic bags at WalMart. I think i will try the oxygen packs that Tammy uses,  i'm not looking for doomsday level storage, but where i might not be confident that i have gotten my foods to the proper state of  dessication, the oxygen packs will add a level to my peace of mind. Honeyville seems to have the best price and the most fair shipping rates. Especially since it is the only thing i should need from them $5 shipping is great.  I found other places that carry the oxygen packs, but the prices are nothing special and the shipping is ridiculous.

I hope this method works for me. I'm tired of freezer-flavored veggies. The bags they come in from the store are no good for preventing flavor leaching and freezer burn. I use frozen veggies for soups the most, so drying them will be the best way to keep them for this use.

I found another planting guide chart. The type that help gardeners plant according to feeding a family of determined size. It looks good, but it shows me just how small my garden really is. Even with intensive methods i don't think i could get my plot to produce on this scale.  But it does great as a supplemental, hobby  or snacking garden.

The recently seeded grass enjoyed the recent rain, looks almost ready to mow

On Wednesday i found a caterpillar.  I was hoping to attract one of these by planting carrots-  its a swallowtail caterpillar, maybe a black swallowtail, but i'm not certain. They like things in the carrot family, dill, parsley, fennel etc.
It was getting ready to pupate when i found it, so it attached itself to the side of the jar i put it in almost immediately.

Its hard to get pictures of something inside a glass jar....

When i woke up this morning, it was the same as last night (above picture) by the time i had mad my first cup of coffee, fed all  the animals and looked at the caterpillar again, it had pupated:

I forget how long it takes these guys to metamorph...  so i have to do some research. If it looks like it will be too late in the year for this one, i should be able to refrigerate the chrysalis  and then let it warm up again in the spring to be released.

So, that is what has been going on around here! :o)

Its almost August?!!!

Summer is going by fast. 
The garden is good, we've gotten some nice rains in the last week.  I have blanched, vac-packed and froze 4 pounds of green beans and 2 pounds of  summer squash.

I love my new Foodsaver.  It is so easy to use compared to my old one.  Now the old one wasn't bad, but it was like driving a stick-shift compared to driving an automatic with cruise control.  They both work fine, but one is way more comfortable to drive.
My new Foodsaver has settings that the other one didn't. It has a 'gentle' setting so it won't smash things like blanched summer squash, and it has a setting for 'wet' foods- also like blanched summer squash.  This means that it won't vacuum so hard that it sucks out the water and ruins itself.  Any water remaining in the blanched foods did not become a vacuuming issue even with the heat seal- which i noticed is almost 2x as wide on this machine as my old one.
I'm sure part of the difference in the way they work is because of the brand name bags.
I had been using the generic food storage bags that i could get for about $1 less at WalMart.  It had been so long since i had used real Foodsaver bags that i didn't notice there is a difference in them.  The new Foodsaver came with a roll of bags and a whole packet of pre-cut bags.  The brand name plastic has a different texture, almost rubbery. 
I had tried using the generic bags to store things like pet food and dehydrated apple rings, but those items had sharp edges that broke the bags so the air leaked back in after a few days.  I bet the brand name bags would work better if i try that again.

The reason i tried vacuum packing cat food was because my cat eats Solid Gold brand cat food.  Its not a cheap food and we normally buy it in 5# bags.  When i worked at the same pet store we bought the food at it was easy to buy 3 bags at a time and my employee discount made it a better value anyway.  After the accident and since i don't always feel up to a trip out to get pet supplies hubby took over most of  the grocery shopping duties. He thought we'd save a few dollars and a trip or two if we bought the big bag of Solid Gold.
Problem is that we have one cat.  By the time he eats the whole bag the last half is stale.  He also likes his dry food to be cold. I have always stored his food bag in the fridge, (one main reason for that is because we had ants that were attracted to the meaty smell and the fats that are in it) so he is used to a fresh bowl of food having a different temperature.
Anyway, you can't fit a 20# bag in the fridge.  So i tried measuring out and vac-packing 2 week portions in the generic bags.  I figured i could probably clean and reuse the bags on more cat food a few times if it worked.  But it didn't because the food punctured the bags.  Since the bags were ruined and could not be reused, what we saved on the bigger bag of cat food was lost in trying to keep it fresh until it was eaten. 
I don't know if i would ever bother trying to use it for cat food again (unless i think it may have some emergency food storage applications like a Bug Out Bag for natural disaster evacuations- which are almost unheard of around here- but you never know!), but i do think i will be trying the brand name bags for foods that are dried to a crisp.
Now that i can compare the bags side by side, i don't like the generics very much at all,  I'll pay the extra for the real ones.

I'm not sure why my apple slices dried so crispy though,  the slices i get at the health food store are leathery.  In my dehydrator, the apples were either too soft and obviously not done and then they became crisp...no in between- or i missed it.  I have read books on dehydrating, but i don't remember what i read about apples...  maybe i need to borrow the book from the library again.

On to grapes...

The Frontenac has decided to wake up and show signs of life! It has just unfurled some small leaves.  Of course it would do this after i completely gave up on it and spoke to the company it came from.  They have a pending order to send me a new one in early April 2011.  So i feel weird now.  BUT both Burpee and Stark have unconditional guarantees- "if for any reason you are unsatisfied....refund or exchange will be granted".
I hate to complain,  i might do it a lot in some things but i don't enjoy it.  But i really was unsatisfied with the grapes from Burpee and this one from Stark's.  Everything else met or exceeded my expectations, so maybe i should stop feeling dishonest when i accept my refund/replacements.  Bottom line is that i don't know if these 3 grape plants will even make it through the winter considering how late they began above ground growth.  They may not have time to harden off this Summer's wood. If that is the case, i will be correct on two fronts.  I was shipped plants that not vigorous enough to grow well their first year, this could delay my years till harvest time frame.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and feeling bad for not being happy. I don't like to be ungrateful about anything, even little grape cuttings. I think i need to get off the guilt trip, stop feeling bad about being displeased and let the companies do their job and make it right.  Why is that so hard for me?
But i have decided to do it.  So i will.

My lilies bloomed a few days ago.  These were bought as Stargazers but i remember Stargazers as having more white along the edges.  Maybe its my growing conditions.  They are on the back side  of the house and you don't see them when they open, you smell them.  I planted 2 bulbs about 3 years ago, this year i got to pick them and bring them in the house before the bugs got to them too bad.  The three blooms perfume the whole house.

Yesterday my dad brought over 3 loads of topsoil for us

And then he spread it out with the big tractor.

Today he plans to stop by with the littler tractor and drag a weighted pallet over it to smooth it out better.  Hubby will put down some seed and with luck, we will have a nice lawn to enjoy next summer!

Update on the Koolickles.  They are delicious. Something like a bread and butter pickle but more tart. Not as sweet as a sweet gherkin but maybe its because i used a sugar-free mix.  I can't actually taste 'strawberry' flavor, but it has the tart/tangy/salty/sweet thing going on. I bet adding a hot pepper will make it even more interesting.  Anyway, the flavors don't clash at all like i thought they might. I plan to keep a supply of these going indefinitely. 

I need to update my harvest record on the side bar. I haven't done it in about a week, but the garden is really beginning to supply what i finally feel comfortable as calling a "harvest".  I have been able to give away some produce even.  The tomatoes are not red yet, but there are a lot of green fruit on all of the plants.  The tomatillo has even gotten a husk on it.

I have not done any further work on the flower bed, but the neighbor husband has picked out a few plants they wanted to have (my hubby told them to go ahead if they wanted or they could wait for me to save them some)  he replanted them in their back yard where it looks like they are creating a sort of pocketed terrace on the slope.  It looks like it will turn out pretty neat if they continue to enlarge the beds. I'm glad he felt free to come in and take what he wanted, that way i'm sure they can feel more in control of what they see out their window.

Hubby is now painting the door to the shed.  He has been doing the shed project gradually. It used to be a screenhouse, but we hardly ever used it. The screens let in dust and after a couple rainy summers things started to get moldy. We had a table set out there that got covered in dust and pine pollen, then in the damp it all grew mold. Took an hour to clean it up whenever we wanted to use it a few times a week.  So we stopped using it.  The screens were also disintegrating.  So we decided that we needed a shed more than a screenhouse and hubby got a few sheets of plywood and closed it in and painted it up nicely.  It was a few weeks longer before he could get the door made, but he did and now it needs a coat of paint to finish the job.  He's pretty pleased with himself since he really did it all on his own.  Its a good sort of manly ego boost. :o)

I plan to get more pictures of the garden, i have to keep a visual record so i can compare years against the others.
The pictures from this Spring compared to this Summer are always quite amazing.  I don't know why i forget every year how quickly and large the plants end up growing. Its funny.

I'm really tired today so i hope to spend much of it simply reading and picking away at small household tasks.

Things will need watering....

The forecasters are telling us we may see temps in the 90's before midweek.  High 80's until then. Its going to be dry until Tuesday when they are saying the humidity will be heavy and there is a chance of thunder storms.
I made some "beer fertilizer" a while ago. Its a home made fertilizer i learned about on an exotic houseplant forum a few years ago.


Beer Fertilizer

1 12oz beer (something medium bodied, light beer isn't worth anything)
1/2 cup of household ammonia, non scented
1 cup epsom salts
2 cups of water


Mix one tablespoon per gallon of water.  Its mild enough to not damage leaves.  I think i will feed the garden with it when i do some watering  tomorrow.  I got one of those Miracle Gro feeder-waterer sprayers, so if i put the fertilizer in there it should mix about right, and if its stronger i think it won't be too strong. 


I gave my tomatoes some calcium the other day too,  i read that about 3 capsules per plant is about right. I had a couple bottles of a calcium & magnesium supplement that had expiry dates from 2005, but i didn't want to throw them out because i knew i could use them in the garden some day. I never remember to take supplements and it takes me 5 years to remember to use things i have saved for other purposes.  At any rate, it finally got done the other day.   I simply scratched them into the soil surface at the base of each plant and will let watering and rain take over the rest.  I had enough to put around every plant in the garden.  So calcium should not be a problem in the garden this year.


I tried to go yardsailing today, but i guess i stink at it. We followed a couple posterboard signs around town, but they were small sales. A couple tables full of used Walmart glassware and little wall hangings from the 1980's, you know, the ones that are made to look handmade but are just factory prints from China.. We checked out the local flea market too, but nothing worth paying for there either. A few genuinely interesting things, but sellers wanted too much for what was essentially  dust collecting agents.  Lots of cassette movies and romance novels though. Gag.



Sooo....  we ended up going to Good Will. And i found a a few good things. I got a waffle iron, i have been trying to catch up with one for about a year. Found a good Oster for $4,  its a round one. I can make my low carb waffles in it, the divots make wonderful butter-catchers.
I found a really nice roaster pan with a lift out rack and domed lid.  I have needed one of those for quite a while as well. That was only $15.  I'm tired of trying to cook turkeys and chickens with roasted vegetables on sheet pans.

The really cool thing i picked up was a new Food Saver vacuum sealer that was only $25.  It came with a roll of bags and an unopened stack of pre-cut bags. It was immaculate looking, even still had the permanent freezer marker clipped to the inside of the lid.  I looked it up online and direct from the Foodsaver website it is a $170 machine!  Its really great because yesterday i was using my old, smaller Foodsaver and i was thinking i'd really like to have a new one. It can be finicky and since my hands were feeling terribly achy  that day (from who knows what) it was more difficult to use than it should have been.  I was planning on researching the cost of a new one so i'm glad i found this one right away.  Hubby was even impressed.
This one is all automatic. You put the food in the bag set it in place and push a button. You don't have to press down and lock the lid and it has settings for  wet or dry foods and a gentle setting for stuff you don't want smashed. It will also seal without vacuuming out any air so i can reseal things like potato chip or cereal bags.  I am so thrilled.  I hope to dehydrate a lot of herbs, fruits and greens this year, i really hope that i can use this Foodsaver to seal and store them. 


I also got the beta a new home,  his vase was too small and i didn't like how it looked.  I got him one of those vases that look like a very large brandy snifter.  It holds just under a gallon of water, which is way more fair than the tiny vase he was in, even though i changed his water regularly. I washed it well with vinegar and hot water and he looks much happier in that. He gets more attention now too, i'm sure he appreciates that.

 I got a few other odds and ends, some clothes for the kids, a fascinating little tea bell shaped like a tiny house that i really shouldn't have bought cause i am trying desperately hard to not acquire any more knick-nacks....  It would make a great Christmas ornament with a cotton ball soaked in pine needle extract tucked inside it.

It was a really good day, i am  sore and achy from walking but the sun was out, it was almost too warm, but nothing has raided my garden in the last couple days, things appear to be on the mend or growing well.  The kids are happy and healthy and i had some hot jalapeno cheese for a snack.  Things are good!