Canning Jam, Jelly, Salsa and Chutney

Canning is something that I've wanted to try for quite a while. For the past several years I've pickled cukes and beets and had them taking up space in my fridge for most of a year. That worked ok, but being able to put them in the pantry would be much nicer. So when I saw that House Party was looking for hosts for a Ball Canning Party, I applied and was chosen. They sent me a water bath canner, a canning discovery kit, about 20 boxes of pectin, canning tools like a lid lifter and bottle tongs and coupons for 4 cases of canning jars. With all that I had more than enough supplies to make a lot of canned food. To learn to use the canner, I made pepper jelly the weekend ahead. The coordination of washing jars, cooking food, simmering lids and processing the cans was a bit of a chaotic dance, but hubby and I got it made.

For the Canning Party I invited some friends over to help with with the chopping and processing... and chatting and laughing. My only issue with the House Party is their invite tool, which seemed to send a lot of invites either into people's spam folders or into never never land. (so if you didn't get an email invite and you live close by it probably went into your spam folder, but we'll do it again in summer and anyone who's interested is invited. ) But even with half of the invites getting lost we had enough people to make Salsa, Strawberry jam and apple chutney. The apple chutney was made ahead and brought by a friend, then we canned it at the party. The Salsa and jam were both made start to finish at the party.

Water bath canning can be used to preserve any high-acid food like pickles, tomato sauces, fruit jams and jellies and the like. Anything that's not high acid must be processed in a pressure canner. That always sounded really intimidating to me. Although water bath canning seemed intimidating as well, and it was a timing challenge but not really hard.

So the basic process for water bath canning is this:

1. run your jars - not lids and bands - through the dishwasher sanitize cycle.
2. hand wash lids and rings in warm soapy water

3. simmer lids but not rings in near boiling water - about 180 degrees while doing everything else.

4. fill your canner or big pot with water half way to the top (make sure that jars submerged in water are covered by water by 1 to 2 inches) and bring to a boil.

5. prepare your recipe. Core, peal, chop veggies and fruits and cook according to recipe directions until mixture is at a boil.

6. When jars are washed and still hot, canner water is boiling, lids are at a simmer and recipe is boiling ladle recipe into warm jars.

7. after filling jars wipe rims with a wet towel then put lids and rings on jars.

8. put sealed jars into boiling canner water and submerge

9. boil for 15 minutes or whatever your canning recipe tells you. The smaller the jar the less time you need to process. 15 minutes was the recommended time for an 8 oz jar.

10. Remove jars from water and sit upright on the counter. When you hear the POP of each lid and can not push lids down with your finger they are sealed.

The recipe for the strawberry jam came from the inside of the pectin box. It was basically 6 Cups of hulled and crushed strawberries, 4 Cups of sugar and a box of pectin. The pepper jelly recipe and the salsa recipe came from the House Party - Ball Taste of Summer site, but I'm sure finding recipes for these would be easy online.

Now I'm just looking around for things to can. I know I'll make all kinds of pickles this summer, and from the look of the strawberry plants in my garden, maybe I'll make some jam from my own garden fruit! Happy Canning!

Homemade Bread

Keeping with my "make your own food" theme I've made a couple of loaves of homemade bread lately. I wanted to make bread that was as healthy as possible but light enough that the kids would like it. I got my first recipe from my cousin. This one was originally Molasses Oat bread but I substituted Honey for the Molasses and substituted 2/3 Whole Wheat flour for the AP flour.

Yesterday morning we ate the Honey Oat Bread with Strawberry/Blackberry jam that I canned on Friday with some friends (pics and recipes on canning to follow in another blog entry). It was the best breakfast I've had in a while!

Honey Oat BreadIngredients
2 cups boiling water
1 cup quick oats
1 tablespoon yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon butter
4 cups Whole Wheat Flour
2 cups Bread flour

Directions
Pour boiling water over oats and let stand about 1/2 hour.
Sprinkle yeast and 1 tsp sugar into warm water. Let stand 10 minutes, then stir.
Add honey, sugar, salt and butter to the cooled oatmeal; blend well.
Stir in dissolved yeast.
Add enough flour to make a soft dough.
Turn out on floured board and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.
Place in a greased bowl; turn to grease top.
Cover with a clean towel and let rise in a warm place until double -- about 1 hour.
Punch down and knead lightly for 2 minutes.
Divide dough in half and shape into loaves. Place in greased pans.
Cover and let rise until double.
Bake at 400 degrees 45 -55 minutes.
Note* If bread darkens too much for your liking while baking -- cover with a piece of tin foil -- shiny side up. This will help it from darkening any further.

This is a sweet bread and the kids loved it! I wanted to try another variation of Whole Wheat bread that wasn't quite so sweet so I took a recipe I found online and modified it to be more healthy. This one was also a hit with the kids and the adults and was much less sweet...more of a standard whole wheat bread recipe. Yum!

Standard Whole Wheat Bread
Ingredients
1 cup warm water
2 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 Tbs sugar
1 C rolled oats
1 C boiling water
2 Tbs butter
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp salt
2 C bread flour
2 C Whole Wheat Flour
1/3 C Flax seed meal
1/3 C Wheat Germ

Directions
Pour boiling water over oats and let stand about 15 min.
Sprinkle yeast and sugar into warm water. Let stand 10 minutes, then stir.
Add honey and butter to the cooled oatmeal; blend well.
Stir in dissolved yeast.
Mix flours, Wheat Germ, Flax seed meal and salt.
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix to make a soft dough.
Turn out on floured board and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.
Place in a greased bowl; turn to grease top.
Cover with a clean towel and let rise in a warm place until double -- about 1 hour.
Punch down and knead lightly for 2 minutes.
Divide dough in half and shape into loaves. Place in greased pans.
Cover and let rise until double.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45-55 minutes.

Eating Local and eating well

Well, I've been attempting to eat more locally lately and had the opportunity yesterday to go to the Farmer's Market. Having a small unheated greenhouse I really had no idea what you could actually grow here in winter/early spring if you gave it your all. These farms represented at the market must have huge heated greenhouses to grow the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, herbs and other veggies I saw there yesterday. Some of the tomato plants were HUGE and one vendor had red ripe tomatoes while we still have 40 degree temps outside some days.

I was especially enamored by the meat and cheese vendors. One stall had gigantic igloo coolers filled with various parts of pigs and cows. You could get literally every part of that animal if you wanted it. They also sold little tubs of lard, which I was tempted to buy, but didn't. The same vendor had a very large variety of cheeses he had made from milk from his cows. So yummy!

We also visited the alpaca farm booth where the vendor had a hand crank sock loom making a very long sock from wool his wife had spun into yarn. Daughter loved this booth and wanted to feel every sample of wool they had. The man let her take a few curls of wool from one sample that looked a lot like it came from a guy named Al Paca rather than an animal (hubby's joke). I think we're going to have to visit this farm and pet an alpaca. Although from the way the man talked, if you come to pet and feed the animals they may make you shovel some manure as well...I guess I'll put the kids on that job. :)

So I walked away from the market with asparagus, early walla walla onions, honey sticks, and a strawberry rhubarb pie. I looked for more rhubarb plants, but didn't find any.

On the way home we stopped by Bill the Butcher to buy some meat. I've heard a lot about this place and wanted to see what they had. We chose local Tri Tip preseasoned with their own herb mixture, a pound of house made bacon, a couple of bratwurst and a couple of beef franks. We had the tri tip last night cooked on the grill and the bacon this morning for breakfast. I got the end piece of bacon that's about a 1/2 inch thick and tastes like a piece of heaven. Yum! We'll have the "hot dogs" tonight for dinner and hopefully the kids will like them as well as Oscar Meyer.

So last night's dinner consisted of local asparagus, local tri tip steaks, local onions and mushrooms. Can't beat that!

Something about the garden for a change

Well, I've been talking mostly about cooking lately and thought I'd post something about the garden instead. Hubby and I have gotten about 98% of the garden weeded and about 80% of the planting beds are topped with our homemade compost. I've gotten some of the seedlings planted and a few seeds put into the ground for direct planting. But even with all of that done I feel behind for some reason. I looked at my blog from last year about this time and we were just getting the first greens of the season from the greenhouse. This year I'm at least a month ahead of schedule on that front, but I still feel like I'm behind.

So far I've gotten the peas, pom pom lettuce, miner's lettuce (still not sure about this one as it appears to be bolting already but still tastes ok), scallions, leeks, potatoes, spinach and 1/2 of the red beet seedlings into the garden. I direct sowed corn this past weekend, and as soon as those sprouts come up I'll put soybean seeds next to them. Soybeans, green beans and peas are nitrogen fixers that put nitrogen back into the soil while most other plants take it out. The corn needs lots of nitrogen, which makes soybeans a perfect planting partner for it. I'll also add some blood meal to the corn patch once the seedlings get about 3 inches tall to add even more nitrogen.

I still have carrots, red cabbage, broccoli, golden beets, pumpkins, pole beans, soy beans, romaine lettuce, cukes, butternut squash, zucchini and the last half of the red beets to put into the garden. This year I decided to try a few new veggies I've never grown before. I've started some Okra and Artichoke in the greenhouse. The okra is starting to sprout, but so far there's nothing to see in the Artichoke pots. I grew up in the south, so I'm really looking forward to the okra. I haven't had it in quite a while and would love to have some made just the way Mama used to make it. Yum!

This year the rhubarb is looking really pathetic. I don't know much about rhubarb; so I'm not sure if the plant is just old and needs to be replaced, if it needs more nutrients of some sort, if it needs to be moved to get more sun, if there's a pest eating it or if it's something else entirely that's causing the stalks to be tiny and the leaves to be yellow-ish and full of holes. Maybe it's a little bit of all of those problems. I'm thinking of buying a few more plants or trying to start one from seed and then planting it somewhere else in the yard.

I'm also planning to move our blueberry bushes and raspberry plants from another part of the yard into the garden next to our gorgeous strawberry plants. Both the blueberry and raspberry are not thriving where they are for any number of reasons, so by putting them in the garden I hope to give them regular water, sun and nutrients they don't get now in their neglected corners of the yard.

So, all in all I guess the garden is going pretty well. But I can't help but think I'm forgetting to plant something...and no, it's not tomatoes! Tomatoes and I don't get along in general. Although last summer was a pretty good year for tomatoes in my garden. I didn't plant them; they were volunteers. But I did get a few handfuls of cherry tomatoes that ripened on the vine, which is a first for me. I've been considering buying a few tomato plants from a guy down the road just to have something to fancy up our new deck. :) Maybe if I don't start them from seed on my own they'll consider growing for me.

Homemade Pizza

So following my theme of making healthy food that I hope the family will like to replace the less healthy version they've been eating, I made my own pizza dough for pizza dinner last night. I got the dough recipe from Baraba Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Pizza.pdf ) then used Classico bottled pasta sauce and shredded mozzarella. (I'm hoping to make my own Mozzarella at some point from the recipe in this book, but didn't have the time or ingredients last night.)

FRIDAY NIGHT PIZZA (Makes two 12-inch pizzas)
3 tsp. yeast

1½ cups WARM water

3 tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. salt

2½ cups white flour

2 cups whole wheat flour

To make crust, dissolve the yeast into the warm water then add oil and salt to that mixture. Mix the flours in a separate bowl then knead them into the liquid mixture. Let dough rise for 30 to 40 minutes.

Once the dough has risen, divide it in half and roll out two round 12 inch pizza crusts on a clean, floured counter top, using your fingers to roll the perimeter into on outer crust as thick as you like. Using spatulas, slide the crusts onto well floured pans or baking stones and spread toppings.
16 oz. mozzarella, thinly sliced
2 cups fresh tomatoes in season (or sauce in winter)

Other toppings
1 tbs. oregano 1 tsp. rosemary Olive oil

Layer the cheese evenly over the crust, then scatter the toppings of the week on your pizza, finishing with the spices. If you use tomato sauce (rather than fresh tomatoes), spread that over crust first, then the cheese, then other toppings. Bake pizzas at 425° for about 15-20 minutes, until crust is brown and crisp.

I used pizza stones and sprinkled corn meal on them before putting dough on top. I thought they were much better than frozen and almost better than delivery. Son didn't like that they were different than he was used to but daughter loved it. We'll try again with leftover pizza tonight and see if he likes them better the second time around. :)

Make crackers, PopTarts & cinnamon toast crunch

So I'm reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver and loving it! The basic premise of the book is eating local is good for your health, bank account, community and the planet. I believe in that and want to do what I can to eat more locally farmed and made foods. To that end I've been shopping at stores that carry local produce and meat and give back to the farming community (like PCC). I've been avoiding fast food altogether as that industry fuels the worst farming practices. And I've been trying to reduce our consumption of pre-packaged foods.

That last one has been a bit of a problem where the kids are concerned. They LOVE their goldfish crackers, pop tarts, granola bars, cereal, etc. and although they love fruit, they don't feel like that's an acceptable substitute for their packaged treats. So today, I thought I'd try my hand at making some of these on my own. I ended up making crackers, Parmesan crackers, cinnamon toast crunch crackers/cereal, pop tarts and chocolate pockets. This is the basic cracker recipe:

Crackers
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 C Flax Seed meal

1/2 C wheat germ
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water

Directions
1.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2.In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, wheat germ, flax seed meal and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Pour in the vegetable oil and water; mix until just blended.
3.On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough as thin as possible - no thicker than 1/8 inch. Place dough on an ungreased baking sheet, and mark squares out with a knife, but don't cut through. Prick each cracker with a fork a few times, and sprinkle with salt.
4.Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until crisp and light brown. Baking time may be different depending on how thin your crackers are. When cool, remove from baking sheet, and separate into individual crackers.

That makes the basic cracker. Parmesan cheese on top for the Parmesan crackers, cinnamon sugar on top for cinnamon toast crunch. For pop tarts I cut 2 3x3 squares of dough, put some jam in the middle, put second piece on top of first piece and sealed the edges. Then for chocolate pockets I put chocolate chips in the middle of a 2x2 square of dough then bunched up the edges into a little chocolate kiss shape.

I think they are a success! I've tasted them all and they are pretty darn good. Just make sure to make the crackers really really thin. The thinner the better for a crisp cracker. Maybe with this recipe I'm one step closer to being a locavore!

Deceptively Delicious

As my son continues his picky eater phase I've been looking into new recipes that will both be healthy and appealing to a 4 year old. He loves most breakfast foods so I thought making them more healthy would allow me to serve them more often and for other meals. I found a few recipes online for pancakes and french toast, and I've recently gotten out my Deceptively Delicious book by Jessica Seinfeld and have found a few recipes that will be new favorites. I think the ones I like best are the pancakes I found on allrecipes.com that include cottage cheese, whole wheat flour and fruit or veggie puree. So far the kids have eaten them up and asked for seconds. In Deceptively Delicious I found a french toast recipe that included butternut squash and sweet potato puree. Also in that book I found chocolate chip cookies with chick peas and chocolate pudding with avocado. The kids loved those as well. I'm not sure how I feel about sneaking healthy foods into something that doesn't seem healthy, but I guess as long as I continue to present the healthy foods at meal times in their original form there's no harm in adding some other healthy goodies into other foods that I know they'll eat.