Category Archives: food preservation

Canning chutneys, relishes, and pickles

canning, food preservation

Now I need to tell you about what has happened to all that fruit so far that wasn’t wrapped up individually.

I was out yesterday with my daughter for an eye doctor appointment, then took the younger kids to their nature program; this morning I had an appointment and needed to do some veggie shopping.  In spite of that, I’ve managed to do a nice amount of canning.  Here’s the latest:

  • pickled pears – 13 quarts, 8 1/2 pints
  • pickled apples – 7 quarts, 2 1/2 pints
  • zucchini relish – 3 quarts, 3 pints, 2 1/2 pints
  • dilled green beans – 4 pints
  • Japanese pickled radish – 3 pints, 3 1/2 pints
  • Asian carrots – 2 quarts
  • apple chutney – 5 pints, 4 1/2 pints
  • pear chutney – 8 pints, 3  1/2 pints
  • sweet and sour carrots – 6 quarts

I have another pot of veggies sitting overnight for another large batch of zucchini relish (the recipe requires the overnight sitting).  It’s very pretty – it’s a mix of zucchini, onions, carrots, and red and green peppers, with a tumeric vinegar dressing.  I’ll do a batch of those tomorrow.  My kids tasted some this morning when I was filling the jars and really loved it, so I know it will get used.

I’ve never made chutney before, and the mixture of ingredients is really interesting.  The apple chutney has: apples, red bell peppers, raisins, lemons, ginger, garlic, and then the seasonings.  The pear chutney has: oranges, pears, tomatoes, onions, ginger, and garlic.  They both call for spices that I never use (like coriander and mustard seeds), but I have them in my kitchen cabinet so it was gratifying to finally use them.  Chutneys are supposed to be nice accompaniments to meat dishes.

I like being able to do a lot at one time and then draw on my efforts later on.  I’m making all of these with the thought that they’ll be nice side dishes for holiday and Shabbos (Sabbath) meals for weeks to come.  I’m making the half pint size jars for gifts; I’m planning to give my in laws and mother a basket of assorted gourmet foods for Chanuka.  I also want to give something now to the people who let me pick the fruit from their trees, to show my appreciation, and I’ll put some others to the side for gifts for my husband’s coworkers when the winter holiday season rolls around.

Avivah

Packing pears and apples for long term storage

food preservation

I have been busy, busy the last couple of days!  Remember all that fruit I told you about at the end of last week?  Well, I’ve been dealing with it, and here’s what I’ve done with some of it. 

I learned something very useful:  you can keep pears and apples for long term storage without refrigeration  (if the weather isn’t too hot) by wrapping each apple or pear in a piece of paper.  I took a bunch of newspaper from the recycling pile, ripped it in appropriate sized pieces, and put my younger kids to work. 🙂

They went through the boxes, and pulled out only fruit that was unbruised, withoug marks of any kind that could lead to spoilage.  They sat there wrapping while listening to their book on cd – good multi tasking.  I’ve lost track of how many pounds we’ve used for what, but we have a box of wrapped pears and another of apples, with a lot more apples still left to deal with. 

In the winter this would serve to keep them for a really long time – I’ve kept apples in my basement for over a month in the winter with no problem, but never knew about wrapping them before.

Avivah

Overflowing with pears and apples

food preservation

This afternoon I was so exhausted that I conked out in the living room on the recliner, and didn’t even know I’d fallen asleep until after I woke up! 

We had a busy, busy day picking fruit today.  (And I’m going to be a lot busier at the beginning of next week dealing with all of it!)  At about 12:30, we stopped whatever we were in the middle of to go fruit picking. We started with picking Granny Smith and Mcintosh apples from one person’s yard, and while the kids picked, I ended up having two very nice and substantial conversations with neighbors in the area about homeschooling.  One is now planning to call me to get specific suggestions for getting started with her boys. 

It took a while to do all the picking, since we’d picked all the apples that were easily reached without a ladder a few weeks ago, but we picked about 60 pounds between the two kinds of apples.  Then we went home, dropped off the 13 year old, picked up the 15 year old (who stayed behind with the sleeping toddler and infant), and went to pick pears.  Why would I do this all on the same day?  Because the woman who lived next door to the place we picked apples was so appreciative we were picking them (because the fallen ones were right next to her driveway and attracted bees) and she offered to let us borrow her ladder.  Though she couldn’t part with it overnight, she was willing to let us borrow it for the rest of the afternoon.  Since we also picked all the pears we could reach without a ladder several weeks ago, we needed a ladder for that, too.

So off we went to pick pears, after switching the two oldest.  I didn’t think we’d get many, but surprise – my 9 and 15 year olds managed to get an astounding 110 pounds worth.  Yes, really.   

Then we went home to get more boxes, because whatever we took with us was filled up.  Everyone else elected to stay home (with my 9 yo complaining that he didn’t get to finish his work before we left, poor boy), and ds15 and I went to the final fruit picking stop of the day – to someone else with yet a different kind of apple.  (I told you, I had to take advantage of having the use of the ladder while I had it.)  I don’t know what they are, but they have an attractive pink tinged flesh and are better cooked than fresh.  These were the easiest to pick, because they grew in clusters, but were also the buggiest apples of all the trees we had seen, so we didn’t pick nearly the amount we could have if we weren’t as selective as we were.  We picked 30 pounds of those.

Then we returned the ladder, we went home, I took ds to meet his learning partner, and then spent a half hour going through two books of canning recipes.  Right after that, I just fell asleep.  I don’t know if it was doing all the picking or thinking about preserving them all that caused me to feel so tired! 

My kids have been munching all afternoon on them, my baby has been strewing them all over the living room floor (they’re lined up in boxes but haven’t been put away downstairs yet), and I’m trying to figure out the best way to use them all.  Two hundred pounds of fruit isn’t an insignificant project, but one must make hay while the sun shines, you know.  🙂  I’ll start on that project at the beginning of next week, and let you know what I end up doing. 

Avivah

3 piece pressure regulator – canning

canning, food preservation

Today I received my newest canning purchase in the mail – a three piece pressure regulator for my pressure canner. 

What’s the purpose of it? There are two kinds of pressure canners – weighted and dial gauge – they’re simply two different ways to measure the building pressure inside the canner.  The canner I bought, which I’m very happy with, came with a dial gauge.  The challenge with a dial gauge is they have to be professionally recalibrated each season, and a hard bump could affect the accuracy.

Since the pressure times have been scientifically determined for safety purposes, it’s really important to be able to accurately measure the pressure.  The more expensive canners have the double measurement system of a dial gauge and weighted measure, and now I’ve found a way to inexpensively duplicate that.

This three piece pressure regulator can be used in place of the one piece weight that my canner came with.  Each of the three pieces measures 5 pounds of pressure.  Different foods required different processing times and different amounts of pressure.  With this weighted gauge, you can food with its necessary timing and pressure, by removing or adding any of these weighted pieces when canning.  (I know that probably is hard to picture if you don’t can.)  Now that I have this new set, I won’t need to use my dial gauge to measure pressure, and a weighted measure is safer to use, because you hear it rocking when it reaches a certain pressure, unlike the dial gauge, which silently builds up and you have to stay very close by to monitor.

I bought mine through goodmans.net, which was the best price I found, though I can’t honestly say I did an extensive price search.  It’s the Presto 3 piece pressure regulator, no. 50332, and cost under $14 including shipping.  Since the American canners that have the double features cost upwards of $250, it’s nice that I can have a similar feature on my $80 + $14 canner. 🙂

Avivah

Effectively using food bargains

canning, food preservation, frugal strategies

Things have been so busy after my food shopping that I didn’t give you more than a hint about my wonderful bargains this past week!  Since I know you can’t wait to hear, here are some :):

– 8 containers of 3 lb ricotta cheese, $1.49 each

– 6 containers of 4 lb cottage cheese, $1.69 each

– 3 cases of cherries, 18 lb per case, $10 each

– approx. 10 lb wild salmon, $4.19 lb

– 2 cases cultured goat milk, 24- 8 oz containers per case, $5 each

– 3 cases whole organic milk, 3 gallons per case, $5 each

– 2 boxes of ripe bananas, 10 lb each box, 50 cents each

– 1 case nectarines, $8.75 (don’t know how many pounds, it goes by the number of fruit)

– 47 – 1 lb packages of organic split peas – .49 each

– 1 huge watermelon (20 lb?), 3.99

– 30 dozen eggs, $1.19 per 18

I also bought 50 lb potatoes, 80 lb sweet potatoes, 50 lb hard white wheat, and a bunch of frozen veggies (30 lb, maybe?).  I got other odds and ends, but those were the big things and together with the case of chicken and 10 lb of fish fillets I ordered from the butcher several days before, pretty much filled up our fridge and freezer.  Remember that even though it looks like I didn’t buy much variety, that I shop from my pantry when it’s time to prepare meals, and that if I didn’t buy it this month, I didn’t need it.  Every month, I shop to fill in the gaps and stock up on whatever the price is excellent on.

Part of doing a big shopping trip like this is that it takes a couple of days afterwards to unpack everything, reorganize the shelves or food storage to put it away in an organized way, clear out the fridge and freezer to make room, and then can large amounts of fruits if I get a super buy on them.  We dehydrated bananas and made banana jam, cooked all the nectarines into compote (I didn’t have room in the fridge for a couple of days and they started to get soft so this was the solution to save them), made cherry-apple spread, lots of applesauce (with the many pounds of apples we picked this week – it’s a blessing to have so much, but it’s also a lot of work!), made tomato pineapple jam that never jelled and ended up mixing it into a pot of cooked apples for a tasty but interesting flavored chutney, and pitted lots of cherries to freeze.

I still have the rest of the cherries to deal with tomorrow before they start to go bad – maybe 35 pounds or so.  I think I’m going to can them in juice, the way I did last month.  My husband thought they were delicious, and they’re relatively quick and easy to can.  It’s a lot less work than jams, and more personally satisfying, because I don’t enjoy canning foods that I won’t eat, and don’t really want the kids to eat.  My experiments with jam on Thursday took a lot of time and weren’t very successful, because I tried to use fruit juice as a sweetener instead of sugar, but sugar is a major ingredient in making jam and getting it to thicken.  It was too much time for too little reward, and I was exhausted at the end of that day.

Canning whole cherries is simple.  I wash them, de-stem them, and the kids prick each cherry with a sterilized needle to keep them from bursting from the heat when they cook.  Then I put the heated cherries into the canning jar, pour boiling liquid on top of it, put the lid on, and pop it into the canner for processing.  If I had done this on Thursday instead of feeling like I should be more creative with all the fruits I had (ie, the jam), I would have gotten through them relatively quickly (ie, in one full day of canning).  But now they’re starting to get soft spots so I’m going to need to spend some time sorting through them and cutting off any parts that aren’t good.  That will be the project for tomorrow.

The kids are enjoying the goat’s milk, which is nice, since it’s so good for them.  I’ve never bought goat’s milk before, so it was taking a bit of a chance.  I had heard goat milk has a strong flavor, but maybe because this was cultured, and my kids are used to drinking cultured milk (kefir), they all like it and didn’t comment on the different flavor.  The small individual bottles are perfect portion sizes for each child to have for breakfast, so that’s we’re using them for, and we’ve already finished a case and a half of them.

The wheat went into two 5 gallon buckets with lids.  The split peas also went into buckets like these (prevents any insects from finding their way in).  I put most of the cheeses and milk into the freezer, and pull them out to defrost a day before I need them.  The salmon and chicken are also in the freezer, so the freezer is pretty much filled to capacity now.

Having room in the freezer for everything new means taking out and using older things that were using the space until then.  Can you tell why it takes a couple of days to get it all done? 🙂

Avivah

Our super-duper apple machine!

canning, food preservation

When I see kitchen gadgets for sale, I tend to ignore them.  They’re usually expensive, unnecessary, and just create more clutter. 

But a couple of days ago, I was coring lots of apples and thinking that I would appreciate an apple corer to save me some time.  And wouldn’t you know, the next day what did I see in front of me at the discount store but an apple machine!  I usually would walk right past this, but yesterday, took a second look.  It was an apple peeler/corer/slicer, and it seemed to be decent quality.  So I took the chance and bought it for $7, hoping that it would work well.

This apple machine, as it’s called, is super!  My kids love it.  They think it’s fun to peel, core, and slice an apple in 15 seconds (my 15 yos does it in six seconds :)), with the peel coming off in one long curly piece.  I love it, because now my kids are all vying for the opportunity to use it, and I don’t have to do any more cutting and peeling!   As a result of their fun today, I have 7 quarts of applesauce waiting in the canner right now.   (They all had to taste some, we actually made more than that.)

As a nice bonus, because the apple peels are unsprayed and come off so nicely, it was easy to turn them into a treat today.  I had one son mix up some oil, cinnamon, and sugar on the peels, and then roast them.  He forgot about them, so I have 4 large pans of charcoal, but he put some in the dehydrator and those came out well. 

Now on to my next gadget – gotta get a cherry pitter!

Avivah

How to get started canning cheaply

canning, food preservation, frugal strategies

Canning is sometimes suggested as a frugal way to cut down on your food bills, but I have to tell you honestly that the upfront costs aren’t cheap.  Not at all.  It’s usually only in the longer term that you start saving money.  But I’ll share with you how I got started, and what the costs were.

Unless you have an older relative who gifts you with a canner and jars because they don’t need it anymore, you’ll need to buy all of your canning supplies.  Some people luck into that situation, but that wasn’t me.  :))  I bought the Presto 23 quart pressure canner new from Amazon, for $80, and had free shipping.  You can buy canners that are much pricier, but this one is effective and I don’t see the value in paying 3 times the price if this works well.  Then there’s the cost of the jars – each dozen costs about $ 6 – 8 new, depending on size, and if you plan to can a substantial amount, you’ll need a lot of jars.

Buying all of those jars new is very expensive, and I’ll share how I’ve managed to aquire a good stock of jars in the last two months at a relatively low cost.  Once you have the jars, you have them for good.  There are no further costs except for the purchase of lids, which are about 15 cents each, since they can’t be reused, so over time the money spent on jars is amortized and you can start to really save money by taking advantage of sales, free or reduced produce, etc. 

All of my jars have come from Craig’s List.  Most were in response to ads that were placed, and  I also utilized the ‘items wanted’ feature to request people who had jars contact me. 

My first jar purchase was from a lovely woman who was downsizing her jar collection because her sons were in college so she didn’t need to can as much food.  It was in PA, about a half hour beyond where I do my monthly shopping, so I scheduled it on the day I went shopping and it wasn’t much out of my way.  The Mapquest directions were confusing and I had trouble getting to her home, so I got there after she had left for an appointment, and unfortunately I didn’t get to meet her in person.  But she has helped me out with a couple of canning questions and has been a pleasure to be in touch with via email since then.  I bought around 6.5 dozen half gallon jars (these are the most expensive by far), 6.5 quart jars, and 4 dozen pint jars for $80. 

Then someone responded to my CL request and gave me 2 or 3 dozen brand new jelly jars.  I responded to an ad on CL a week later, and it turned out to be the same person who gave me the jelly jars (when you use CL, you email to a blind address, so you don’t know who you’re contacting until they contact you).  I was very happy to buy jars from him after his generosity to me.  He lived close to where my dh worked, so my husband picked them up and I didn’t get to meet him in person, either.  It was another $15 for 25 quart sized jars and 19 smaller jars, some still new in a sealed box. 

Then someone else offered me 1.5 dozen free jelly jars.  Dh picked those up for me also.  I had a couple of people offer me more jars who were too far away for it to be cost effective to drive to.  Then two weeks ago I bought another 129 quart sized jars (I think that’s how many there were…) – it was the night dh picked them up that the van broke down right afterwards – for $30.

Today I got a lot more jars (after telling dh last week that I wasn’t going to buy any more) – 34.5 dozen half pint jars, all new in the box with bands and lids (except 1.5 dozen didn’t have the lids).  Some women splurge on jewelry and new clothing, I splurge on things like this.  🙂  I paid $40 for the entire lot, which was an amazing deal.  It literally would have cost me more to buy a box with a dozen lids (1.81 at Walmart, less at my new online source) than it cost for each box of jars.  They were being sold by a large institution that bought them for a huge project, and were stacked in the closet, extras that were left over after the event.  The person who took over the position found a closet filled with boxes that she was happy to empty at one time by selling it all to me, and I was happy to be of service.  🙂  It was a true win-win for us both.  She even had a bunch of young teen volunteers load them into my van for me. 

So now I have approximately 84 – 90 1/2 gallon jars, 232 quarts, and 414 of pints/ half pints with a very few 1.5 pints.  My 9 year old thought I must have thousands, and was disappointed when I added all this up a minute ago and told him I only have 736 (I think I also have another dozen that I bought new a year or two ago that isn’t included in this numberso make it 748).  The total cost for all of the jars was $165, which averages out to about .22 cents a jar.  The average canner won’t be buying or using half gallon jars, and that was a big part of my cost, so you could easily subtract $50 from my total, and the total costs would be under $200 for the canner and all the jars.

By the way, I think in almost every one of these cases the prices were lowered for me.  None of them were listed at the price I shared with you. The first set was $120, and since I bought all of them, she dropped it to $80.  The next was $25, down to $15.  They were requesting $6 per dozen for the large lot of 129 that I bought, and they agreed to $30, which was 2.79 dozen.  Today’s purchase didn’t have a price in the ad, or other relevant details, and I had to follow up with three different people, which I think is more effort than most people would have been willing to spend (though it only took me 5 minutes or so by email and then one phone call).  I initially offered $100, thinking they were quart sized jars, which they accepted, but then I found out they were the half pint size and told her that I really didn’t want to pay more than $1 a dozen for that size (it’s not a size that’s of maximum value to me, all the others I got in that size were free).  The person I was in contact with called her supervisor to check my offer with her. She (was away for the day) told her they could take $45, I said I’d be okay with $40, and without hesitation she agreed.  You might think that I’m a big bargainer, but I’m really not.  I don’t bargain -I just tell them what I’m willing to pay, I try to be reasonable and fair in my offers, and if it works for them, then good.  If not, that’s okay, too.  I’ve found that most sellers don’t generally have a good idea of what new canning jars sell for, so they price their used jars too high. 

Canning is a valuable skill, and I look at it as a fun and productive hobby.  It can seem intimidating and foreign (not to mention expensive) to get started, but I think it’s really worth it.

Avivah

Stocking the pantry with fruit!

food preservation

Do you have any idea how many apples it takes to make 16 quarts of applesauce?  Neither do I, but I can tell you it’s a HUGE amount.  Especially when the apples are small.  I spent what felt like hours cutting and coring apples yesterday – the first batch filled my 16 quart pot (the largest I have except my canner) 2/3 of the way, the second batch filled the pot to the very top.  I didn’t cook the Granny Smiths that we picked, though, so we still have 20 lb or so to enjoy fresh until we go picking again.  I also made a bunch of compote with a mixture of pears, apples, and peaches that we’ll have for dessert this weekend.

As much work as it was, it was enjoyable and relaxing (yes, I said relaxing) to do it with the kids.  My 11 year old daughter said the same thing.  It reminded me of when I used to visit my southern great-aunt in the summer.  We’d sit around on the porch with a huge bucket of butter beans or green beans freshly picked from her huge garden, shelling the butter beans or snapping the ends off the green beans as we chatted.  I think that’s been typical for generations – people always had lots of work to do, but they lessened the load and made it more social by doing it together.  It’s only the last generation or two that we have so much leisure time that it’s become a foreign concept.  My 6 and 7 year olds helped out a bunch by cutting the apples in half, so I only had to quarter and core them (I didn’t bother peeling them – I’d still be sitting there with a huge pile of apples if I had).  

It’s amazing to see how much the fruit cooks down – it doesn’t look like that much after it’s finished cooking.  But it’s a nice feeling of satisfaction to see our homemade organic applesauce, knowing exactly what was put into it, free except for the energy to cook it and the cost of the lid (15 cents).  I love looking at the rows of jars of food that we’ve preserved ourselves – it’s very satisfying.

In addition to the apples, I put up the last of the pears we picked – three quarts, and three quarts of the peaches from the farmer’s market.  (I can’t remember if I mentioned that we also made a few quarts of spiced pears last week.)  I forgot about a large pot of peeled peaches that were waiting to be canned until last night, so I’ll hopefully finish that up today since I need the fridge space.  I was wondering about how I had so few jars of peaches – now I know why!  I’ve taken the pits out and halved them, so I can fit a lot into a quart jar, since I layer them one on top of another. 

This coming week I need to find a step ladder to borrow so we can go back and pick more pears – we got all of the pears that were easily reachable from the ground.  It’s funny to think how in the past, we’ve driven forty mintes to u-pick farms for the experience of picking fresh fruit, and then paid more for what we’d picked than we’d pay in the store!

Avivah

The fruit of today’s labor

food preservation

A couple of days ago I saw a notice on a community bulletin board, that someone had a surplus of organic peaches that they were interested in bartering for something else.  Usually something like that wouldn’t draw any attention from me, but the day before we had picked all of those pears I told you about.  So, I mused to myself, maybe I could trade some free pears for some free peaches, and have more of a variety of fruits.

I called the number, and today went over to make the trade.  She had posted about two weeks ago, when she had loads of peaches, and was now at the very end of the peaches.  Though one other person called her, I was the only one who ended up actually showing up.  Because there were so few left, we only got 7 pounds, and traded for an equal amount of pears.  Even though it wasn’t a large amount of fruit, it was still worth it – it turned out she lived just a few minutes away from me, by foot, so I walked over with my 7 and 9 year olds, and it was a pleasant outing with them. 

The kids picked while I chatted with her, and asked her about what else she was growing.  She showed me her herbs, gave me some tarragon to take home today, and offered to give me some tarragon for replanting and strawberry plants for my garden if I wanted to come back in September; she told me she could give me some black eyed Susans as well, but I told her I’m sticking to investing my time and limited gardening space on things that are edible.

Since she’s a financial planner, we chatted a little about the economy and I asked her if she saw people making noticeable changes in how they’re managing their money.  She told me that she sees a lot of people living above their means with significant credit card debt, and that there seems to be a big disconnect between how people want to live and what they can actually afford.  She thinks that with food costs going up, that next year there will be more interest in the kind of bartering the two of us did. 

A few minutes from there, on the way home, we passed the home of someone who had given us permission to pick their apples last week.  I hadn’t planned to pick them today, but since my husband said he picked one this morning on the way home and they seemed ready, I figured maybe I could get some since we were already right there.  We picked 26 pounds of apples, and will go back in a couple of weeks for more, plus there are still the two apple trees of the second person for us to pick from.  I’m planning to make lots of applesauce.  I think next week we’ll also go back for more pears.

Avivah

Canning to the rescue!

canning, food preservation

I’ve shared with you how I buy several vegetables, like potatoes, yams, and carrots in bulk once a month.  And for many months, I’ve been happy with my storage system.  Last month was the first time that I found some foods started to get soft spots before we could eat them, and required a lot of last minute effort to quickly use everything up before they spoiled from the heat.

I was anticipating the need to be careful about that this month, because of the heat.  But I didn’t think I’d have to worry about it so soon!  It’s been only two weeks since I bought the yams and sweet potatoes, and ten days since buying carrots.  Well, the carrots were a disaster – I think all you need is one carrot in the middle to start to rot and it gets the snowball rolling.

I probably still had 30 of the original 50 pounds left, and had to throw away several, and peel every single one that was left.  The yams weren’t quite as bad, but I saw that I was going to need to take action faster than I expected to prevent losing a lot more.

So today ended up a canning day, after pear picking.  I’m so glad that I’ve learned how to can this summer, and have the equipment to do it.  It saved the day – otherwise I would end up throwing a way a lot of produce in the next few days because it’s much more than I can use for our family’s immediate needs.

I canned two quarts of yams (I could have canned a lot more but didn’t know how much I needed to fill all the jars, and didn’t prepare enough), then didn’t have enough left to fill a quart so I stuck in some carrots to fill it up.  My canner can accomodate 7 quarts at a time, and it doesn’t take more or less time to run a large or small load, so I wanted to fill up another 4 quarts with something.  I had all of those freshly peeled carrots around, so that’s what I decided to use.

After filling one quart, though, I thought I should do something more interesting than plain carrots.  So the next quart had carrots and onions, then the next two were carrots, onions, and some chicken thrown in (I had a package that was accidentally defrosted and since I’m not planning to use it this week, this was the perfect use for it). It will make a good base for a stew or soup one busy day.

Then I pulled some meaty lamb bones out of the freezer to make a stock with.  This ended up being a good thing to do, since a short while later my husband came home with a bunch of turkey bones, and there was room in the freezer for them!  Since the potatoes are starting to sprout from the heat, I decided to can potatoes and carrots in the lamb broth, adding the pieces of lamb that came off the bones to each jar – I did 7 quarts of that.

Tomorrow’s activity will be canning all of the turkey meat from the turkey bones, and then canning it with more potatoes and the remaining carrots in the turkey stock.  It’s not exciting but it will be tasty and filling when we want to use it, and shelf stable until then.

My 7 year old daughter was hoping to help me tonight with the lamb stock, but it was too late and she had to go to bed, so she was happy to know that she could do it tomorrow.  And my 15 year old asked if he could can a batch, too.  I can only do two batches of meat or vegetables a day (fruits/pickles/jams go much faster because they require significantly less processing time), so they will be the helpers for tomorrow.  (Helpers is really understating what they do – I’ll mostly supervise and they’ll do the bulk of the work.)

For my next shopping trip, I’m not going to buy vegetables in such large amounts unless I have a plan to can or dehydrate them right away.  Especially for the carrots, I ended up not paying any less than I would have paid for a smaller amount, once I factor in those that had to be thrown away.  One thing that I look forward to about the winter is the ease of keeping vegetables fresh outside of the fridge – but there are so many wonderful things about the summer that I’m not wishing for it to be over!

Avivah