Avivah Werner

Category: nutrition

  • Watching the rennet disappear!

    Here’s the amazing story of how my fifteen available bottles of rennet are getting quickly snapped up since just yesterday. 

    So you already know that I bought that big bottle of rennet, and my hope was to recoup my costs by selling small bottles to fifteen other families.  When I initially placed my rennet order, I was really hoping that I wouldn’t be forced to take a big loss on it.  Yes, I wanted to make cheese, but if I end up in a year having to throw away 15/16s of a container because I couldn’t use it (the rennet is perishable), then that’s not only wasteful, but very expensive cheese!

    Anyway, I posted on a parenting list I’m on about it, and three people said they were interested, which was a good start, since that was four or five bottles between them all.  But it still left eleven bottles.  Today I called a couple of women locally who I thought would be interested (we’ve discussed raw milk and gardening in the past), and they both wanted a bottle.  Not only that – here’s the amazing thing: one of the women is hosting a cheese making workshop in her home this Sunday, and has spent the last few weeks researching all of the things I told you about in my last post.  She’s not giving the class, but is the one organizing it all, and is the one responsible to get hold of kosher cheese making supplies for this workshop.  She has literally been one step behind me all this time (she called the OU less than three hours after I called, and the rabbi asked her, “Didn’t I just speak to you about a little while ago?”  LOL – I’m not surprised he thought it was me again, since it sounded like he had never been asked about the products I was asking him about).

     So she’s buying some for herself, and told me that probably the other 4 or 5 women who keep kosher who are attending might be interested in getting some, too, and offered to make them available at her workshop and collect money.  I’m so amazed by how G-d makes everything happening  – the timing is so incredible!   Right now I have 8 or 9 bottles spoken for, and am hopeful that Sunday the rest of the bottles will be sold.  When that happens, all of my costs will be recouped (it’s not a moneymaking venture – I’m selling them at what it cost me), all within a few days of first making the rennet available!  Isn’t G-d’s timing amazing?

    Avivah

  • Kosher cheesemaking supplies

    I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching what is needed for cheesemaking, as well as where to buy the supplies for kosher cheesemaking, which is a lot more involved.  So I thought I’d share it with you since if any of you are interested, it will save you hours of research.  🙂

    Firstly, you need rennet.  Most rennet are made from animal sources, but there are vegetarian sources of rennet.  However, almost none of these are kosher.  I finally found one source of certified kosher liquid rennet, Chr. Hansen in WI, but they sell only to large companies.  The company I found that sells this particular rennet, Chymax Extra, was Kelley Supply.  However, Kelley Supply only sells in industrial sizes, and though I found a company that buys large containers of this rennet from Kelley and repackages it for their customers, there’s no kosher supervision on the small containers that they send out.  I called that company (New England Cheesemaking Supply) to speak to them in detail about their repackaging process, hoping that there would be some way we could use the repackaged smaller container of rennet.  No luck – rennet has the status in kosher laws of not being nullified to the sixtieth (botel b’shishim), and because they also repackage animal rennets there, there’s no way to know that you’re getting something untainted.  The only remaining solution that I could see was to order the smallest industrial container size available (enough for over 1000 gallons of milk), and hope that I could afterwards find others to buy some of the rennet from me.

    The next thing is bacterial starters, mesophilic and thermophilic.  I was really hoping this wouldn’t need kosher certification because I was already tired of the researching process, but no luck – it definitely does.  After calling the OU to speak to them, I was given the source of the only OU certified starter products in the US – DSM Food Specialties.  I wasn’t having fun trying to get hold of them – they are an extremely huge company, and as I called back for the I don’t know how many-eth time trying to get someone to speak to, I said to my kids, “This is why no one makes kosher cheese on their own; it’s just too hard to get the kashrus information and supplies.”  BUT -I did more research, and found a source of OU certified bacterial starters, and the owner, Cathy Potter, with whom I spoke, was an absolute pleasure to deal with.  http://www.dairyconnection.com/cultures.htm  Not all of their starters are kosher, just those in the MM and MA line, marked EZAL – these come in packages each marked with OU certification.

    I wanted to order both thermophilic and mesophilic starters, since different recipes call for different ingredients.  I wouldn’t have known that there are two different thermophilic starters, from the TA and LH series, or what the purpose of them was.  Fortunately Cathy isn’t a sales representative impatiently waiting for you to quickly tell them your order so they can get off the phone, and when she asked what kind of cheeses I wanted to make, she pointed me in the right direction and gave me helpful information.  I ordered one of each – when making Italian cheeses, you use a mixture of both, in a ratio of 2 parts TA: 1 part LH.  I was also told that The New England Cheesemaking Company sells these with kosher certification, but after my first conversation with them several months ago and a very unhelpful representative, I didn’t feel like calling back to go through more questions about the starters.

    Citric acid – I was able to buy this in the regular supermarket, also labeled as sour salt.  I happened to get mine by Liebers, but probably most spice companies carry this.

    Calcium chloride – I was so happy to find something on the list that didn’t need kosher certification, and that was this.  I’ll pick this up tomorrow at a small pharmacy near the post office.

    Lipase powder – of course I didn’t realize that I needed this until after I did all of my other research.  🙂  This also needs kosher certification, and I believe that The Dairy Connection sells this also; I’m going to call first thing in the morning and check this.  If they have it, I’ll ask them to tack it onto my order (I ordered the starters this afternoon and she told me would go out tomorrow so hopefully that will work).   ***Update – I called them about this, and the certification on the lipase is a Tablet K, which we don’t use.  I’m going to skip buying this – it doesn’t affect the consistency of the cheese, just the flavor.

    Avivah

  • First step in cheesemaking – done

    I’m feeling very, very busy with all the projects I want to do right away.  Today the kosher rennet I ordered for cheesemaking arrived, and the book on cheesemaking that I reserved also got to the library today.  I made a trip to the library with the kids this afternoon so I could pick it up immediately (I don’t go often – my husband picks up the books I order online on Sunday if I have something waiting – it’s efficient as far as gas and time). 

    Once I got home, it was already dinner time, but I was thinking I’d be able to get a batch of cheese started before going to bed.  That was wildly wishful and unrealistic thinking, because besides the time involved in doing this for the first time, there’s the additional fact that it seems that I need either mesophilic or thermophilic starters for almost all of the cheese recipes.  That’s what’s nice about reading the book; you actually learn what you need to do! 

    I don’t know if it will be easy to find or not – I know where to buy it within five minutes if it didn’t have to be kosher, but now I’ll have to spend some time on the phone making calls about it, finding out if this kind of thing needs to be certified kosher or not, and if so, where to get it.  It helps that dh is in the field of kosher supervision, because he has someone readily available to ask the questions he’s not sure about to. 🙂  But it still takes time.

    I didn’t do the canning today that I said I was planning to do – I was too busy with lots of other things, beginning with standing on line for an hour waiting to vote.  (Not that I’m complaining – as I was standing there, I was thinking about how many people have fought for the privilege of voting in accordance with their beliefs.)  So that means I’ll have to can the soup that I planned to do today, tomorrow (though we ended up getting less than we expected, which means less canning for me!).

    So the first steps have been taken towards cheesemaking – researched kosher rennet, called the manufacturers, called the supply company, ordered it, got the book, and bought 15 gallons of raw milk on Thursday to use – now I have to quickly get the starter I need so that I can use my milk while it’s fresh!  I guess worse comes to worst, we’ll drink the milk, and wait to make cheese for the next time I pick up raw milk, or try to make a batch with store milk (hormone free at least, though that’s far from ideal). 

    I also ordered a bunch of small glass bottles with dropperlids, for others who may want to get some of the kosher rennet in a small amount from me.  I think I’ll have enough to split into 14 – 16 two ounce bottles, which seems to be the size generally sold for individual cheesemakers.  Unfortunately, there’s no source with kosher certification of regular sized containers, and the container size I bought (the smallest available) is intended for small cheesemaking companies – it’s enough for over one thousand gallons of milk!   Of course, letting people know it’s available and making those arrangements is another thing to take care of….but I never complain about being bored!

    Avivah

  • Canning butter

    Today we got two more thermal quilts made – we (dd 12 and 13 and I) sewed the two temporary ones that were hanging for the last few days in the boys’ bedroom.  I think that I’ll do them bit by bit, one or two a day, and we’ll get them done in a timely way without stressing about having a big project hanging over our heads.

    I did something for the first time today – I canned butter!  I bought lots of little (half pint) canning jars a while back because I got an amazing buy, but it’s really not a size that’s very useful for our family size.  They’re great for gifts, but honestly, as happy as I am to share what I make with others, I really don’t want to give away all my jars!  So they’ve been sitting on the shelf, taking up room.  And while I don’t mind storing things that I use, I don’t enjoy seeing things take up space that aren’t serving a purpose!

    I was thinking about what would be a good use of these jars for my family, and it occurred to me that butter would be perfect.  I wouldn’t want to pack butter into anything bigger than a pint in any case, and it is nice to know that we have a decent quality fat on the shelf if we need it.  On Thursday I did my huge monthly shopping, and discovered when I got home and wanted to unpack that I really overestimated my freezer capacity! That meant that I needed to make room by moving some of the food out, either eating it or preserving it.  Since I bought a case of butter last month, I still had about fifteen pounds in the fridge, so I thought it was a good opportunity to see what canning butter would be like. 

    I didn’t can all of it – I think I did about eight pounds, which filled sixteen small jars.  It was very simple to do; the hardest part for me was that since it was dairy, I couldn’t use my regular canner, which I use it for meat.  That technically wasn’t a problem, since butter is canned in a boiling water bath, and I didn’t need to use my pressure canner (though it’s so big that I could have done double the amount at one time that I actually did).  I used my big soup pot instead of the canner and improvised a rack for the bottom with a cloth diaper (to keep the jars off the bottom of the pot).  The biggest problem was that the tools I use are all set aside for meat preparation (tools such as a funnel to pour the food neatly into the jar, and a jar lifter), and it made it a little messier to can everything without those.  I’m going to have to buy another set of canning tools (fortunately a set is inexpensive) so that I’ll have one for dairy and one for meat.  And now I need to figure out how to organize and mark the jars so it will be very obvious which are for which – until now, they’ve all been deemed meat. 

    I got the directions for canning butter from Jackie Clay, who I think is the most amazing and knowledgeable canner around!  She writes a column for Backwoods Home magazine, which I encountered online when I was doing a search for canning instructions for something specific.  She understands the reason for each step of the canning process, bacteria formation, etc, and answers canning queries that you won’t find answers to anywhere else.   She’s amazingly knowledgeable about lots of other homesteading related things, too – it seems like she knows how to do everything! 

    Tomorrow I’m going to look for more things in the freezer to can to make more room – I know I have some chili in there – because I’ll be getting meat on Wednesday and will need a place for it.  And Tuesday I’m blessed to be receiving a huge amount of freshly made vegetable soup (and when I say huge amount, I really mean huge – 10 gallons) that I’ve estimated will take me 2 1/2 days of nonstop canning to process.  It’s not for the happiest reason that it’s suddenly available for us – someone dh knows opened a restaurant a year ago that they’ve suddenly decided to close because it’s not doing well in the current economy.  But because he and his wife really like our family, they offered us the food supplies (the soup and meat) that they aren’t going to transfer to their other restaurant.  I jokingly told my husband that it pays to have good kids, because this couple was so taken with them that I think that’s the real reason we made a big enough impression on them for them to think of us at this busy time.

    So I’ll be busy canning this week, and yes, it is definitely work to do all of this.  I can’t say canning is effortless, though most of the time is spent waiting, not in actual hands on work.  It’s kind of like making bread- when the main effort is to mix the dough and stick it in a pan, but you spend most of the time waiting for it to rise and then bake.  But it’s worth it to me to spend the time canning – it’s already helped to make our food dollars go further and put us in a position to benefit from food we otherwise couldn’t have used for lack of storage space, like all that fruit we picked for free, or like when we were given eight fresh bakery challahs that I only had room for in my freezer because it wasn’t full of all the stuff I used to keep in it.   And a number of times having canned food on the shelf has simplified dinner at the end of a busy day because all I’ve had to do is bring out a couple jars of something and heat it, and voila! – within ten minutes, a hot and nutritious dinner was ready.  My own tasty and nutritious fast food.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Canning supplies running low

    It’s interesting to watch how the state of the economy is affecting many things you wouldn’t expect!  One of those things is canning supplies.

    When I started canning just a few months ago, I was fairly easily able to find all of my jars used.  I usually named my price if I felt their asking price was too high, and the sellers always agreed (I was fair and reasonable; I never take advantage of people).  There was almost never a situation where I had to buy them fast before someone else did.  I was even given several dozen jars free, that were new in the box, by people happy to get them out of the way.  But that’s all changing rapidly – I see the price of used jars going up, and being sold fast.  Most stores that stock canning supplies are sold out across the country, whereas usually they have to discount the leftovers at the end of the season (I had been waiting for those sales, lol!). 

    Last week I saw a post for someone selling brand new jars, and called because I’ve been filling up my jars faster than I expected, and I’d rather get more now before I need them. And I prefer buying new jars to used jars when I can get them at used prices, so this was an opportunity that I wanted to take advantage of.  (You probably noticed that’s my theme, right, buy it at a good price before I need it? :))  When I picked up the jars from the seller, she told me she had gotten so many calls about them that she couldn’t remember who she spoke to about what.  I’ve never spoken to anyone who I bought jars from who said that – in fact, two different sellers held the jars for almost two weeks for me until I was in their area and could pick them up.  For my huge purchase of almost 35 dozen from one person (when I got that amazing deal I shared with you), I was the only person who called them. 

    This morning I called the Amish owner of a bulk store that I periodically order from, to inquire about the current bulk grain prices.  (He’s available at the phone from 7:45 – 8 am only.)  I was there on Friday, and noticed they didn’t have bulk packaged lids in the regular size in stock, so today I asked him to order some for me, in addition to my grain order.  He told me that he doesn’t know why, but he can’t get quart jars or regular sized lids from the supplier anymore – there are none to be had.  He might not have known why, but it’s obvious to me.  A lot of people are worried (panicking, actually) about the possible food scarcity in the near future and are getting into canning as a way to prepare. 

     I told my  husband that I feel lucky that I happened to be ahead of the curve when I got interested in canning, and I’m so glad I was!  Who knew that the interest in canning would rise so fast and so drastically?  No one around here has even heard of canning – I’ve yet to meet one person in my community who cans!  I would hate to be trying to get into canning now, with the prices of new canning supplies so high and so few new or used supplies to be found. 

    Avivah

  • Storing bulk grains

    In June, I shared some suggestions for preparing for emergencies, which included stocking up on water and food.  Some of you might be wondering where and how to store the foods you’ve bought (and if you haven’t been buying some food to stock your pantries for at least a couple of weeks, I really, really strongly suggest you do it now – really). 

    The ideal foods that can be bought ahead and stored for a fairly long time are beans and grains.  They are easy to buy at most supermarkets and health food stores, and still fairly cheap, and you can get big discounts if you choose to buy large 50 lb bags, which you can split with a friend or two if that’s way too much for you to think of using in this lifetime. 🙂   

    What kind of grains can you store?  Wheat, amaranth, millet, buckwheat, rice (though supposedly brown rice gets rancid within a few months, I’ve never had a problem), oats (whole, steel cut, rolled, quick), barley, quinoa, corn, popcorn (you know that’s an important part of everyone’s daily diet!).  Flour and cornmeal don’t stay nearly as long as the whole grains, though it hasn’t stopped me from buying that, too – especially since my grinder grinds corn finer than I like it to be, so the whole corn I bought ages ago is still sitting, unused.  For cornmeal, I like to get the 1 or 2 lb packages that are each separately packaged – easier to freeze, to use, and to protect from infestation.  Then there are loads of different kinds of beans, in addition to yellow and green split peas and lentils. 

    Over the last few years, I’ve gotten free buckets from a restaurant, that vary from the large pickle size (I don’t know how many gallons that is – maybe 3?) to 6 gallons.  These are round and have tight fitting lids, and are perfect for food storage.  I’ve heard that restaurants and bakeries around the country give these away, though you usually have to wash them out (I’ve been lucky – mine have all been washed). 

    I line each bucket with a garbage bag, and fill the bucket with the grain.  Ideally, you should freeze the grain for a couple of days before you put it in the bucket in case there’s any weevils or moth egg that could potentially hatch; that will kill them.  You won’t usually have this, but all you need is one moth to hatch, and it can infest your entire pantry – it’s amazing what they can get into. 

    I also have square buckets, that I love and prefer by far over the round buckets, but they are much harder for me to get hold of.  The restaurant that I got my buckets from usually returns them to the food companies, so I’m delighted whenever I’ve been able to get them.  The reason I prefer them is the same reason I prefer square or rectangular food containers for the fridge – they use the space more efficiently and look neater and more organized.  Another is that sometimes when I get the round buckets, I’m given mismatched lids that don’t close properly (since there are several size buckets as well as different companies that make them and therefore slight differences in even lids that are the same size), but the square lids always fit perfectly – very tight seals. 

    For the beans, until now I’ve found it cheaper to buy them by the 1 or 2 lb bags, not in bulk.  But yesterday when I noticed the recent price increases for beans, I thought I probably should reevaluate if this is still the most affordable option.  I don’t have enough of each kind of bean to fill a bucket, and even if I did, I don’t have enough buckets, so what I do is put them all in a large rectangular plastic storage container – I put all of each kind of bean together so it’s easy to pull out what I need without hunting through all of them. 

    There are also other things other than grains and beans that can be stored.  Cans of tuna, fruit, vegetables, peanut butter – whatever you would usually use for your family.  Imagine that a hurricane hit your area (like what happened just sevem weeks ago with Ike across many states in the US) and you couldn’t go shopping for a week.  What would you want to have on hand?  Remember, when there’s no power, your refrigerator and freezer aren’t going to be useful.  So you need to have shelf stable foods available.  Whatever your personal list is, that’s what you should stock up on.

    I don’t believe in running out and stocking up on a bunch of foods you don’t eat and don’t know how to prepare.  I’ve used wheat berries for almost three years and since we grind all of our grains, it’s natural for us to buy them.  But I wouldn’t recommend across the board that people buy wheat berries just because they store well – you’ll end up letting them sit there forever! 

    These buckets do take up some space, but not nearly as much as you would think.  Fifty pounds of grain fits in two 5 gallon buckets – and fifty pounds of grain is a lot of food!  They can be stacked and placed against a wall in an out of the way area of your home – for us, that’s the basement.  Don’t think I run up and down the stairs every time I need a cup of rice, though!  I keep smaller containers of the grains in my kitchen for daily use, and send one of the kids down to fill them up when they get low. 

    And no, mice can’t get into these!  I’ve heard rats can, so if you have rats, you need metal storage containers, but hopefully none of you have to deal with that.  Also, I’ve heard that putting some bay leaves at the top of each container helps prevent insect infestation – they don’t like the smell.  I got some bay leaves on Friday, but haven’t gotten around to putting them in the buckets yet, but in any case I don’t have long term experience with how well that works.

    Avivah

  • Fennel seed helps digestive complaints

    Last night at dinner, my oldest son started complaining of sharp stomach pain.  He’s not one to complain, and I saw that he was bent over at the table as he told me that because of the pain.  I asked him when they started, and he said his stomach was hurting a little before dinner, but he thought they were hunger pains.  Once he ate something, they got worse very fast. 

    When I made that herb order yesterday, I had read a bit about fennel on their site, and remembered it was good for digestive complaints.  I ordered some for my husband, but of course the order won’t arrive for a week, so that didn’t help me.  However, I happened to have grown fennel this year in my garden, though I honestly didn’t know what to do with it.  I harvested some of the seeds about three weeks ago and put them in a container in my spice cabinet, and that’s what I pulled out last night.  They have a pleasant, licorice-like flavor.  I quickly made him a cup of fennel tea – a teaspoon of the seeds, 1 teaspoon of honey, and hot water, and told him to drink it. 

    Because he’s fifteen, he didn’t mind the seeds swimming around at the top of his cup – a younger child would have needed them to be strained out.  Literally two minutes later, he told me he was starting to feel much better.  He said, “When you gave this to me, you didn’t think it would really help, did you?”  I told him of course I thought it would help, that’s why I gave it to him!  Anyway, within five minutes of that, he was feeling totally better – he kept saying how amazing it was – “It’s a miracle, I can’t believe it!” 

    Today my dd13 went to a still photography workshop with my dd12, and they both really, really enjoyed it and learned a lot.  But she came home feeling very carsick.  I remembered reading a couple of weeks ago that fennel was good for nausea, so I told her to make herself a cup like what I made for ds last night.  She did, and that was the last I heard about her feeling nauseous!  (I would have otherwise told her to have some fresh ginger and honey, but this was quicker and easier.)

    It’s so nice to be able to quickly and easily help alleviate unpleasant physical symptoms for my family!  Today I called the company back and asked them to tack onto my order a half gallon of vegetable glycerine, since that way I can make tinctures with the herbs and can easily get it into my baby and toddler – I just can’t see them drinking a whole cup of tea when they’re feeling under the weather.  And the tinctures last a lot longer than herbs maintain their pungency, so that will be another benefit.

    Avivah

  • My newest kitchen appliance

    Last week I made a big decision, one that I’ve been thinking about for a few months, and couldn’t justify doing.  I purchased a new dehydrator, an Excalibur.

    I mentioned that I had a small dehydrator that my mom had left behind for us, right?  Well, a month or two ago, I went down the basement and discovered that someone had apparently stepped on it (!) since the trays were all broken.  Please don’t ask how it’s possible for someone to step on a dehydrator without noticing what they’re doing, or why it was on the floor instead of where it was supposed to be.  That’s the kind of question that comes up very often here, and to keep my sanity I’ve tried to accept a certain amount of collateral damage is an inevitable part of living with children.  🙂

    Anyway, as long as we had that dehydrator, even though it wasn’t very good, I couldn’t get something else, because that would be wasteful.  And if I was going to buy something, I wanted it to be top quality and large enough to handle the capacities that a family our size demands, and that meant the Excalibur, which meant $$$.  I’ve spent plenty these last few months on my other projects that I didn’t feel it was right to spend on a luxury that I could do fine without.

    But then I found out about these dehydrators – they are being sold direct from the manufacturer, but are only $149.95, including shipping.  It’s the largest size they have (not including the commercial ones), with nine trays.  I got mine on ebay, and that listing expired, but here’s a link that will be current for a couple of days: http://cgi.ebay.com/Limited-Offer-Excalibur-2900-3900-R-FREE-Shipping_W0QQitemZ120322998919QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item120322998919&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1421%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1308.  They are unused, but for whatever reason were returned to the manufacturer (eg, store display, wrong size ordered, etc).  They are thoroughly checked over to be sure that everything works as it should, and come with a ten year warranty – if you buy a new one direct from the manufacturer, you get a three year warranty.  So it’s a lot cheaper with a much longer warranty!

    I also ordered three Paraflex sheets, to use for making fruit leathers.  I’ve so often seen ripe bananas and other fruits that I’ve passed on because I couldn’t use it all up fast enough, and I thought that having an option to turn them into fruit leather would be nice.

    It arrived yesterday, and right away everyone was commenting on the obvious difference in quality and size.  I decided to inaugurate it today with sweet potatoes since I had about twenty pounds around and some were starting to get soft spots (and I’m going to be doing a big shopping trip very soon and buying more).  We cut away the soft spots, put them in a pot to steam lightly (they ended up getting more than lightly steamed, but as I said before, letting go of rigid expectations of how and what everyone does things is a big part of a pleasant home atmosphere), sliced them, and then put them in the dehydrator.  They’re still going right now – the kids were commenting about how much faster they seem to be drying – with the old dehydrator, it took over 24 hours and we had to rotate the trays, and still the tray on the bottom was too crispy and the top one not dried enough!

    I’m amazed that only 4.5 of the nine trays were filled – it really has a large capacity!  I’ll turn it off before I go to sleep tonight, and once they cool off, I’m sure they’ll take up a lot less space than they were before!

    Avivah

  • Canning chili, pickling green tomatoes

    Today I started my day off by thinking it would be a good day to do some canning.  Yes, the day before erev Rosh Hashana I know that sounds like a bad idea, but I had about nine pounds of fresh ground meat in the fridge, and rather than put it into the freezer, I figured I’d prepare a huge amount of chili and it would be all ready for a busy day.  So one child soaked five pounds of different beans, another cooked up the meat.  It was a really good idea, since I planned to do it first thing in the day, when I had nothing else planned and nowhere else to go – the glitch was that by noon, I ran out of steam and didn’t feel like dealing with it, all day long. 

    The problem with starting a project like this is, you have to finish it, unless you have lots of available fridge space for a couple of days. Something that I have absolutely none of now, right before the holiday.  So at 10 pm, when I got my second wind, I started canning the chili (I had to go out for the evening or I would have started at 8 pm instead).  It takes 90 minutes to process the chili, and that doesn’t include the time preparing the jars, filling the jars, getting the canner up to pressure so you can begin the 90 minutes….so here I sit after midnight, waiting for it to finish.  One thing I’m very grateful for is that new weighted gauge I told you I bought.  This is my first time using it, and it makes a huge difference.  Usually with a pressure canner that has a dial gauge, you need to stay in the room where it is for the entire processing time, to keep an eye on the pressure so it stays steady.  If I go out of the kitchen, it’s only for a couple of minutes, and then I go right back to look at the gauge.  But with a weighted gauge, it makes a noise when it’s holding the pressure, so it’s based on sound, not sight.  That means I can be on the computer, out of direct view though still very close, and it’s safe.  What a pleasure!

    While I was waiting, I’ve made up 4 half gallons and 2 quarts of pickled sour green tomatoes.  I told my kids earlier in the evening to pick all of the tomatoes that are green and we’ll do something with them.  That was an assignment they really, really enjoyed.  Usually we don’t have enough ripening all at once for them to be able to pick a lot at once.  Anyway, have you ever tasted pickled green tomatoes?  Yum, yum, yum.  I don’t care for vinegar pickles, or any pickled veggies for that matter (and yes, that includes all those things I made a couple of weeks ago).  But real sour pickles, or sour tomatoes – I can’t get enough!  Until now, I’ve only bought them once in a while, so if this is a successful experiment, it will be a really nice treat. 

    These are going to be fermenting for the next few days, and then I’ll heat process most of them after that so that they won’t need to stay refrigerated.  Right now they’re lined up on the kitchen counter, looking very attractive.  The kids will enjoy seeing them when they wake up in the morning (which at this rate is going to be before I’ll be able to drag myself out of bed :)).

    Avivah

  • Canning without sugar

    When I first began reading about canning, I wanted to fully understand the science of safe food preservation, and read several books before I started doing any canning at all.  When I perused the various recipes in every single category, I was dismayed to find that most recipes that were canned in a water bath (ie, didn’t require pressure canning) were full of sugar. Fruits all were covered with a sugar syrup, relishes were filled with sugar, and jams were jam packed (no pun intended) with sugar. 

    That usually wouldn’t be a problem for me, because I’m comfortable adapting recipes to fit my needs.  But every book warned about how absolutely forbidden it is to change even a little detail of a recipe, as it might render it unsafe.  That put me off, so I regretfully looked at all the pretty pictures of the relishes and put it out of my mind, because I wasn’t willing to tamper with food safety or my family’s health.

    As I was reading yet another book on canning recently, one sentence jumped out at me – that the crucial proportions to maintain are the vinegar/water balance, and that if you did change a recipe, this was the area to be very vigilant about keeping exactly as written.  This made a lot of sense to me, since the concern is about botulism and scientists have determined the right balanced for pickled foods that will prevent bacteria from growing.  Until this point, I was unsure if there was a need for sugar or not.  I knew it was possible to can without sugar, because I read a book on canning without sugar.  But I didn’t know how to safely make the adjustments myself, and after unsuccessfully making the tomato jam from that book, I wasn’t willing to risk more of my time and food supplies with uncertain experiments.   

    So, today I used either apple juice concentrate or pineapple juice concentrate in place of sugar in all the recipes but three – for the chutneys I used a combination of mostly sugar with a small addition of concentrate, and the sweet and sour carrots called for honey, which I left as is.  I slightly increased the vinegar content to compensate for the additional liquid in the concentrate, keeping in mind the guidelines of the minimum amount of vinegar necessary per half pint for safety’s sake. 

    Since dh, one daughter, and myself don’t eat any sugar, we’ll be able to enjoy these things with the rest of our family now.  All those filled jars on the counter are looking very appetizing (my kids counted them and told me there are 62), so it’s especially nice to know we’ll be able to have them, too!

    Avivah