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

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

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

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

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