urbandryad

Pulled the lacto cucumber pickles out of the crock. They're really great, not too salty, lots of flavour, not hard-sour and a little bit fizzy. The recipe was: a handful of garlic cloves, several bay leaves, some black peppercorns, and many dill heads. Brine poured hot (just not boiling) over them at (half cup canning salt to 3 quarts water, imperial measurements bother me, what % brine is this?). They were in the crock 2 weeks at fairly warm (woodstove heated) temps.

I made a brandied applesauce, just applesauce with brandy and a trace more sugar than usual.

I also made an apple muffin recipe out of applesauce:
Cream 1/2 cup butter and 3/4 cup sugar. Add an egg and vanilla. Add 1 cup applesauce. Add 1/2 tsp soda, a bit of salt, some nutmeg and 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and 2 cups flour (I used whole whear). 350F for 20-25 minutes. They're pretty good, even without baking powder. This is a half recipe, the whole recipe made something like 30 muffins.

Then mom came up and I canned 25 lbs of tomatoes: roast at 400 for 40 minutes, slip skins off, pack, add citric acid, pressure can @ 5lbs for 40 mins or 10 for 25. They don't seem to have separated, which is nice. There was a little siphoning.

I also was given a bunch of peeled garlic. I put a jar of it to ferment with 10% salt brine. Again brined hot, it's bubbling away.

Then I put up three jars (2 1.5L and one gallon jar) of carrots, jalapenos, and some garlic in a 5% brine (note this is a pickling 5% brine which does not factor in the weight of the veggies). Hopefully they'll start bubbling away soon.

My intention with the fermented things is to pasteurize them at 180F if I run out of fridge room.

Then I have 25 kgs of cabbage and another 6lbs of jalapenos, I'm going to mix cabbage and "some" jalapenos for my sauerkraut. I'll definitely have cabbage left over.

I also will have a bunch of carrots left over, the plan is to eventually can them as glazed carrots (2 cups brown sugar, 2 cups water, 1 cup orange juice, carrots go into the jars cold, pour the syrup over them hot, pressure can 11lbs for 30min.

Desert Hills, the farm market I've been buying from, makes me pretty happy.

Then this coming weekend will be a butcher, so I'll be canning some chili and some pork in wine sauce (adapted from beef in wine sauce) or Italian sausage and putting up more bacon, coppa, and prosciutto. I have a bit of spruce syrup to go in that. I also should do some pork jerky with the syrup from cowboy candy. That would be amazing smoked.