urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
We've had our first frost, so I suppose it's fall canning now.

More things I've completed:

6kg of tomatoes' worth of Salsa Ranchera. I used my bolting cilantro and canned instead of fresh lime juice. It's really excellent, and the ovening is a good way to peel the tomatoes. It had a bit of trouble sealing, like many of these thick tomato sauces.

Crock full of lacto pickles using A's recipe.

Eggplant pickles - 6 kg worth.

Marinaded peppers using the national center for home food preservation recipe. This was hard to get to seal, maybe because of the oil.

Zesty pickles. I did the first 4 jars of spears in a water bath; the other 14 jars of pickles (12 slices, 2 spears) were done using the pasteurization method.

Eggplant puttanesca (3kg tomatoes), out of the healthy canning website. This is... better than expected from all the discussion about whether it's too vinegary on the website, though of course not as good as fresh puttanesca. Nice to have ready-made pasta sauce though.

Chicken wing sauce, 1 batch: tastes too spiced right now, we'll see how it settles. May be a good pork sauce?

Creole sauce, 1 batch: this is tasty, I'll need to remember to use it. As they say in the recipe, shrimp/seafood would be a great combo with rice.

I'm currently doing a double batch (8kg) of stewed tomatoes and veggies, altered a touch: roasting the tomatoes to de-skin, halving the onion, using a touch of lovage instead of a bunch of celery, and using jalapeno peppers and poblano peppers instead of green peppers.

Still to do: lacto jalapeno pickles, apple jalapeno hot sauce, lacto mixed peppers, and a lacto apple pepper sauce.

Not many jars left so let's hope this works out. I think I'm going to try some of the lacto ferments in vacuum bags (!!!)
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Planning to get as follows from Desert Hills in Ashcroft:

Poblano - 1 box like tomatoes and eggplants come in ($40)
Green jalapeno - 1 box like tomatoes and eggplants come in ($20)
Roma tomato - 3 cases ($16 ea = $50)
Eggplant - 1 case ($10)
Pickling cucumbers - 1 case ($40)
Carrots - 20lb bag ($10)
Red onions - 20lb bag ($10)
Cantaloupe melons 3 large or 4 small ($4)
Garlic 2lbs ($4)

=$190

If it won't fit in the car, remove:
1 case tomatoes
Pickling cucumbers

The goal is to make a bunch of things that can:
1) go on no-cook charcuterie plates (marinaded eggplant, peppers, mixed jalapeno-carrot pickles, sauerkraut, cucumber pickles)
2) pretty close to open-and-serve or open-put-on-pasta-serve (ranchero sauce, pasta sauce, eggplant puttanesca)
3) Hot peppers to go with every meal (pickled jalapenos)
4) Assuage my curiosity (cantaloupe jam, apple ketchup)
5) Tomatoes as a staple
5) Jars of something I can throw in the instant pot with a chunk of meat

Planning to make:
Canned:
Marinated peppers (nchfp site) from a mix of anchos and jalapenos
Pickled eggplant (healthy canning site, recorded here)
Pickled mixed jalapenos and carrots (zesty pickle brine)
Eggplant puttanesca (healthy canning site, recorded here)
Ranchero salsa (healthy canning site)
Pasta sauce (Homemade Italian sausage, tomatoes, pressure canned)
Tomato sauce (tomatoes, acidified and cooked down)
Cantaloupe jam
Zesty pickles (my old recipe recorded here)
Chicken wing sauce
Cajun sauce?

Fermented:
Jalapenos and carrots
Jalapenos
Cucumber pickles

Plus, from home stuff later in the month:
Apple ketchup
Apple rhubarb sauce
Fermented sauerkraut with jalapenos
Canned potatoes (maybe lemon-oregano or with jalapenos)

Already made this year
Pizza sauce
Veggie pasta sauce
Tons of apple sauce (I can dehydrate it and make fruit leather! It's free from my tree) including flavoured apple sauce
Candied jalapenos (delicious but a little too hot for everyday hot peppering, great for making pork jerky or in instant potted meats)
Chicken stock
Pork stock
Canned chicken
Grape jam
Spruce rhubarb orange marmalade
Rose rhubarb orange marmalade
Lemon curd
Asian plum sauce
Tomato jam (replaces ketchup, I don't like homemade ketchup normally)
Turnip pickles
Peach BBQ sauce
Rhubarb caramel sauce
Candied rhubarb (canned)
Sweet ciciley syrup and candied seeds
Pickled spruce tips

Lammas

Aug. 5th, 2020 08:20 am
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Last weekend:

First tomato harvest (moravsky div) and some snap peas and dandelions for salad.

2 cups of sweet ciciley seeds into 1L of moonshine for something ouzo-like?

2 cups of borage flowers in white wine vinegar (they turn from blue to pink!)

2.5kg rhubarb in 2kg sugar, simmered, immersion blended, then burnt. Gently lifted off the top layer and canned it- tasted caramely and actually surprisingly good. So: caramel rhubarb sauce I guess.

Macerated 1.5kg thin sliced rhubarb in 1.5kg sugar for 2 days, now I'll simmer gently without burning and can.

One rhubarb out front died, the other is doing really well. Go figure. In the back half the rhubarb is huge and half is still tiny.

Also did some soap: 15% tallow, 62% lard, 16% coconut oil, 5% castor oil, peppermint essential oil. One more round with tallow and I'm back to lard-only soap.
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Straight up 1:1 sugar:rhubarb, brought to a boil, water bathed 20 min.
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
The season for spruce tips comes first, overlapping roses and rhubarb.

I made a spruce tip rhubarb sauce: 1:1 fruit/tips and sugar, immersion blended. Tasted amazing.

Also made some marmalades, since every time folks come over they go home with marmalade and my vanilla marmalade is almost gone. One was a rose rhubarb orange, one was a spruce tip rhubarb orange. In both cases it was 1:1 fruit and sugar cooked to 218F.

Next year I very much want to make a spruce tip cured pork sausage.
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Homogenized eggs frozen in vac seal.

Egg pasta sheets frozen in vac seal.

Tomorrow castella or sponge cake? More pasta?
urbandryad: image of a city growing out of the branches of a tree (Default)
Did a raid on an industrial area on Saturday night and gathered maybe 2.5 total rubbermaids of apples: there was a red variety and (joy of joys) a russet, plus a couple pears. Starting to sauce them, first batch was just stovetop-simmered with no sugar, just a touch of lemon juice.

Second batch was an overnight high-heat slow-cooker full with 2 cups of sugar added, nicely caramelized.

Cores went into a couple gallons of water and got boiled awhile for juice, will be strained with lemon and a touch of (sugar? Honey?) added. I've been thinking about boiling some sarsparilla in with that too.


So between those sauces and splitting the apples with my partner in crime, I have a couple batches of apples left. Hm. I really want to play with apple-juniper flavours, maybe with some grains of paradise or something to take it in a ginny direction.

At the moment I also have a blister from processing apples; aall my soft fruit this summer was so easy to prepare, now I'm cutting up, coring, and grooming these sometimes pretty cracked or corky apples.

Oh, exciting news, guys! I DISCOVERED A PERSIMMON TREE IN WITH THE APPLE TREES. I'm gonna ask permission to harvest that one if it gets ripe by the fall. Pretty damn exciting.

It also seems to be white oak season. I need to get some acorns before it's too late! There were a bunch by main x 2nd this morning, but I didn't have time ot pick them up. Maybe tomorrow...? I really want to get more white oak acorns because they're supposed to be sweeter.

Chickweed season is also upon us. I've been eating chickweed salads like mad, just chickweed with olive oil and basalmic and salt and a tiny bit of pepper on it. So yummy. Just don't harvest any that's been peed on.

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