We Can!

I have been taking an on-line food preservation course.  I'm not done yet, but I have completed enough of it that I am confident there is little chance I will kill us with botulism or other food born illness created by improper canning.  A fear that has kept me from doing any canning in the past.

I will finish the course because I covet the virtual certificate they will e-mail upon completion.

But canning season is NOW and I have no time to finish studying.

Must.  Can.  Now.

Tomatoes came ripe, the rain was forecast and there was no time to waste.  Peter picked them and turned them into sauce and I followed up with the canning following proper procedures.

Some of the tomatoes were turned into sun dried morsels and packed into garlic infused olive oil.

Cucumbers were turned into pickles.

The grapes were another joint project.  Although I started, Peter finished up with the picking, plucking, & washing.

Chardonnay grapes were turned into Chardonnay grape jelly.
Pinot Noir grapes were turned into Pinot Noir jelly.
Cabernet Sauvignon grapes were turned into Cabernet Sauvignon jelly.
Apples were turned into Apple Butter.

We have a field of pumpkin, a patch of butter nut squash, some acorn squash and green peppers still to process and lots more jelly to make.

I am thinking that there has to be a market for wine grape jellies.  Wouldn't you love to get a gift of Chardonnay jelly?  Or Pinot Grigio Jam?  I have been wanting to have a booth at the local farmers market.  The market starts in June but very few vegetables are ready by then.  Jelly should sell well, later in the season I could sell the usual garden fair like potatoes, onions and zucchini - plus maybe hostas and felted bags, fiber and hand spun yarn.  I have ideas.  Lots of them.  One day one of them will actually pay off.

In the mean time, we will be feasting on summer bounty all winter long.  yummmy!

I have Proof!

We got a new oven a month or so ago.  It's a convection oven.  I am having to learn a whole new way to bake and for the most part, everything I've tried to bake on convection has turned out badly.  Coincidentally it just so happens that every loaf of bread I have tried to bake in the last few years has also turned out badly.

Yesterday I noticed a button on my new stove:

Could this be the answer to all my problems??

Although my main focus these days in on the floor, I thought it wouldn't hurt to bake AND strip the floor.  I'm a woman, I can multitask.

So I dug out my mother's 1946 copy of Woman's Home Companion that contains archaic quotes like: "Service with and without a maid, the proper arrangement of silver..." and "Even the sterner sex can bake successfully with the help of the chapter on breads." 

I mean if I don't need a maid, and MEN can bake bread from this book I figure I stood a chance.

 I took this 70 year old recipe and went back to basics.  No bread maker.  No food processor.  No mixer.  I tried to follow this recipe to the letter only running into slight difficulty when looking for the definition of the term "lukewarm."  I really was trying to follow the recipe EXACTLY and I had my thermometer out and on the ready.  I referred to Mirriam Webster and the best I could find was: "not hot, not cold, tepid."  So I looked up tepid and found: "not hot, not cold, lukewarm."  Sigh. So naturally, I tossed my thermometer aside and guessed.  I kneaded the prescribed 10 minutes.  I let it rise for 2 hours. Then another 1/2 hours.  Then another hour.  Allowing it to rise in my new oven on the "proof" setting.  

Now I'm sure you are dying to know what happened aren't you?

I will tell you what happened.  

BREAD happened!!

It's not incredibly pretty (but it's not ugly either).  But it tastes pretty darn good.  I am pleasantly surprised.  Woot!

Now if you are also wondering about the floor.  I made good progress on that too. Although after a week of hard work, my hands are blistered  (one.  I have ONE blister..) they scream in agony when I move them, my shoulders are achy and my back weeps pitifully when I try to stand up straight.  But it's a worthy cause.

I have a new love

I have a new love and my new love is called German Pancakes.

I was hanging out at the second hand store yesterday flipping through cookbooks.  One book had a recipe for German Pancakes.  I considered purchasing the book at the exorbitant price of $1.99 but it was the only thing in the book I wanted, so being frugal as I tend to be, I just memorized the recipe.

Last night, before dinner I whipped up a pancake as an appetizer.  I'm sure that somewhere pancakes make a perfect appetizer.  

It was so good, this morning I made more for breakfast.

They are fun, tasty and quite easy to make.  And I must write the recipe down before my brain purges it to make room for more stolen recipes and other important things like walking, talking and delivering mail.

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  
• Put 2 Tablespoons of butter in a pie pan and put it in the oven while it preheats.  You want the butter melted and the pan hot but be careful not to BURN the butter (I tried that already, it doesn't work so well.)
• Mix together (I used my hand blender) until fluffy:  3 eggs, 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup milk and a pinch of salt.
• Pour the mixture into the hot buttery pie plate and bake for 20 minutes.

(oh man - I just noticed how disgusting the front of my oven is.  please ignore the smears and finger prints!!)

Remove from pie plate (it should slip right out), put on a plate, sprinkle with melted butter and cinnamon sugar, or powdered sugar, maple syrup, warm jam, fresh fruit or any combination.

My Little Pasta Shop??

A few weeks ago a friend wanted to make home made pasta.  Being as I had experience at just such an activity, and I had a spare pasta machine (or two) I volunteered to show her the (spaghetti) ropes.

We had originally planned on having several other women joining us but last minute scheduling conflicts and sick children meant it was just the two of us.  We made basil fettuccine and a bit of angel hair pasta.  She fell in love with the process as well as the finished product and refused to give me my pasta maker back.  Harrumph.  I trust I will get it back when she get's her own.

She enthusiastically told some co workers about her delicious home made pasta and before you know we had a party.

Beth, Linda, Chris, Terry and I joined together to make pasta. Lots of pasta.

Someone piped up and said we should open a pasta shop and quit the post office drudgery.   I'm sure it wasn't the wine talking.

We had so much fun we are planning to get together and make soap in a month or so. I expect our next  idea will be "My Little Soap Shop!"

I'm Pickled Tink!

Our garden is flourishing and bursting with fresh vegetable goodness.  This beckoned to the pioneer woman in me to get busy.  We must not waste any of our precious bounty!

Last year I wanted to make sweet pickles but was dissuaded by Peter.  "How many pickles can we eat anyway?" He asked.  I didn't have an answer and gave in.  This year, I decided to make pickles despite his previous hesitation.  I asked my farm girl friends.  They had no experience with sweet pickles.  Dill pickles, yes, sweet, not so much.  I asked women at the grocery store and women on my mail route.  No one had ever made sweet pickles.  I looked in my oldest cook books and I looked on the internet finding many recipes, no two alike.  No consensus on a good recipe.  Finally I just closed my eyes and picked one.  I didn't know what I was doing but decided to just go for it!  I do like surprises!

Sweet pickles are interesting things.  They are not something you spend an afternoon making.  It's an 8 day process (or 7 day or 12 day - depending on the recipe you blindly pick out of a book).  Each day only takes a few minutes, and the last three days they just sit there.

Wednesday was day 8 and they went from pot to jars.  9 jars to be exact.  The directions stated they should sit a week in jars before they are ready to eat but today I had to try 'em.  They were good and I bet they'll get better in the coming days!

I'm excited and I'm guessing my answer to Peter's question:  "How many pickles can we eat?"  will be "9 jars I think!"

Yummy!

Betty Botta bought some butter

Betty Botta bought some butter;

"But," said she, "this butter's bitter!

If I put it in my batter

It will make my batter bitter.

But a bit o´ better butter

Will but make my batter better."

Then she bought a bit o´ butter

Better than the bitter butter,

Made her bitter batter better.

So ´twas better Betty Botta

bought a bit o´ better butter.

Every now and then I have to pause and reflect on the position I find myself in and I have to say out loud, "Thank you."  I try not to pause and reflect in public places because most people don't understand why I'm talking to myself and they tend to swing wide around me at the grocery store and paint shop.  They stare at me in my car as I have entire conversations with myself about how grateful I am.  Perhaps though, they might think I'm talking on a bluetooth cell phone and I'm just imagining their reaction.

I have a job that I don't absolutely hate any more.  I work one day a week but have opportunity to work more, but I don't HAVE to work more than I want to.  I get to play with goats and alpacas.  I get to spin, weave and knit, when I want to.  I get to bake and cook as much as I want to, but not more than that.  I get to make soap and butter, beef jerky, jam, jelly, pickles and more.   I get to do all these things because I want to.  I do not have to grow my own food, make my own soap and butter and such just to survive.  Deep inside I'm certain I would not enjoy these things nearly as much if I HAD to do them or starve.

I love to tour historic houses.  For some reason they really spark my imagination.  There is an historic house in Ferndale called Hovander Homestead.   We toured it a few years ago and It was fascinating.  The kitchen was equipped with all sorts of appliances from "the day,"  There was a wood-fired oven with a hot water reservoir attached, an ice box,  and a butter churn.  The butter churn was a mason jar butter churn that totally intrigued me.  For two years I've been keeping my eyes open at second-hand stores and estate sales hoping to find one of these treasures.  I finally spotted one - but they wanted $100.00 for it!  I sure didn't want it THAT  bad.  Then as luck would have it, our local newspaper had a story about making your own butter using a Kitchenaid mixer.  I already have one of those!!

So I bought cream from the local dairy.

It's really good cream.  I mean, the cream started out so thick it needed to be coerced out of the bottle:

Once I got it out of the bottle I mixed it.  A lot.

The directions said to add really cold water and knead the butter under the water.  I immediately thought I had ruined it.  The nearly-solid-almost-butter turned into a gushy soupy mess.  I would have taken a picture but both of my hands were covered with goupy soupy ick and I couldn't pick up the camera.  

Needless to say, I was very disappointed, but kept working with it, refusing to give up.  My perseverance paid off and I eventually ended up with butter.  Real butter!

The daily grind

We should live off the land!  Says I.
I need to go out and slaughter a pig!  Says I.

All this junk that get's put in our food.  It's just crazy.  I don't want to eat chemicals and hormones and alien babies!  I don't think the time will come when I can ever slaughter a pig.  Or a chicken for that matter - but it doesn't mean I don't want to take what steps I can to eat healthier.  We don't eat packaged food around here (except on very rare occasions), we don't have a microwave and we grow much of our own produce.

I decided to start the journey to eventually slaughtering a pig with baby steps by grinding my own ground beef.  Ground beef at the grocery store was $4.99 a pound.  Roast was $5.49 a pound and buy one get one free.  That made quality roast about $2.75 a pound.  Roast was much cheaper than hamburger and I knew additional fat and gunk was not being added.  It still was not grass-fed beef - but I had to start somewhere.

So I set up the grinder:

 I cut a piece off the roast:

I tossed it into the grinder opening and cranked on the handle for about 5 minutes.  The grinder slipped and shifted.  The meat squished and squashed.   Stuff oozed and goozed.

My result:

The process was totally off-putting.  The results were most unappetizing.  Plus the labor-intensiveness of the process did not seem at all a good investment.

I might just turn vegetarian.  Except I like bacon.  And I like ribs.  And I like fried chicken.  Perhaps I need a newer grinder - this one was from the 40's or 50's.  I need something electric and with a tad less personal involvement because this did not work for me.  In fact - I just went to Amazon and ordered an attachment for my KitchenAid.

I should have the attachment in about three days.  I'll report back on how it goes with this tool...Wish me luck.