Home Preservation

Hello! Wow - once again, the busy-ness of life has caught me off guard and I have not kept you all up to date on what we've been eating. I know the extreme sadness this must have caused you (excuse me, my tongue is in my cheek ;) )

The garden is in full swing! Although the first planting of cucumbers is dwindling down, I've still got another, smaller planting now producing. The tomatoes are getting their "I'm tired" look but the peppers are blushing just like a new bride. Here's a list of what I've canned and preserved (not in it's entirety but close):

Tomato Juice
Salsa
Italian Seasoned Tomato Sauce
Dried Tomatoes
Really Quick Dill Pickles
Quick Sweet Pickle Slices
Honeyed Pickled Jalapeños
Southeast Asian Chile Garlic Relish
Dried (and crushed) Anaheim Peppers
Blueberry Lime Jam
Peach Jam
Spiced Peach Jam
Dried Sage (need to do more!)
Dried Dill (need to do more!)
Dried Thyme (need to do more!)

.....I'm sure the list will continue to grow :) I've also done some freezing: like 11 pounds of chopped onions.

I'll also keep my bell peppers and hot peppers that I haven't been able to use fresh and freeze them.

I get an immense sense of satisfaction by putting up the food I've grown, seeing the clean jars that glimmer like jewels on the counter beside the stove. Adding the dehydrator has been a nice addition to canning and freezing. What have you been putting away for the upcoming months?

Sage Harvest

This year I started a bunch of sage plants from seeds. They are a perennial here and I think the gray-green foliage is pretty. I also like sage. Sage is delicious paired with pork and with another favorite garden produce item - butternut squash. Mmmmm....sage scented butternut squash soup - delicious!

So anyway, winter IS coming. It has already made it's presence felt a few days this fall. So I harvested some sage. All I did was place it on a cookie cooling rack. Then I left it in an out of the way spot (in this house, that means up HIGH!). After a few weeks I needed the cookie rack so I checked on it. Yep, it was dry! So then what was I to do?

I figured that I would one of my presents from birthdays past. This time it was a molcajete or in normal speak - mortar and pestle. It did the job fantastically and the product looks so much better than the dried rubbed sage I buy at the store.

Apple Pie Jam

You know that line in one of the Batman movies where Batman says "I am Batman"? Well, I spent the day on Tuesday peeling apples and the thought that kept going through my mind was "I am Apple Peeler." Obviously, mundane tasks allow your mind to wander into weird places.

So what did I accomplish? I made 6 half-pints of a delicious recipe called "Linda Lou's Apple Pie Jam" that I found on the Harvest forum on Gardenweb.com. It had received rave reviews so I decided to give it a try. So thank you, Linda Lou, for posting the recipe! I also made 3 quarts of frozen apple pie filling, so in the future all I'll need to do is defrost and put in a pie shell and call it a day (well, after it bakes anyway).

Here is Linda Lou's Apple Pie Jam recipe:

APPLE PIE JAM

4 cups tart apples, peeled and finely chopped
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
4 cups sugar
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 box pectin
1/2 teaspoon butter

Add water to chopped apples to measure 4 cups.(This is NOT 4 cups each, but water placed on top of the diced apples to come up to the 4 cup mark.) Place apples and water into large, heavy saucepan. Stir in lemon juice, cinnamon and allspice.

Measure sugars. Stir pectin into fruit. Add butter. Bring mixture to full rolling boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Quickly stir in both sugars. Return to full rolling boil and boil exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim off any foam with metal spoon.

Ladle quickly into hot, clean jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Wipe jar rims and threads. Cover with two-piece lids. Screw bands on finger tight. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Now, I would make one change, simply for appearance's sake. Allow the jam to sit for a few minutes and then stir to distribute the apple pieces throughout the jam. The apple pieces are less dense and float to the top otherwise (which is what happened to me). Not really a problem since once you open the jar, you can stir but it would just look prettier on the shelf being more "even."

Hot Sauce!

I love it when the garden and the kitchen collide. And this is the season when there is one collision after another. I've made pickles, salsa, tomato juice, peach butter and so on. Now I have three hot pepper plants loaded with peppers. So what's a girl to do? I was planning on pickling them (and I still may do that) but after watching Rick Bayless's "Mexico One Plate At A Time" I decided to make some hot sauce. I followed the recipe exactly as listed on his Frontera Kitchen website and have included it here. I guess the only difference is that I used a different hot pepper entitled "Little Boy" pepper (I've come to realize the joke intended by my darling husband's grandfather).

Habanero Hot Sauce

Makes about 2 cups

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Ingredients

5 cloves garlic, unpeeled
½ cup peeled, roughly chopped carrot (you’ll need 1 medium carrot)
½ cup roughly chopped white onion (you’ll need about half of a small onion)
12 medium (about 5 ounces) orange habanero chiles, stemmed
1 cup apple cider vinegar
About 2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon sugar

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Directions

Roast the garlic in a skillet over medium heat, turning regularly until soft and blackened in spots, 10 to 15 minutes. Cool and peel. In a small saucepan, combine the carrot, onion and habanero chiles with the vinegar and 1 cup water. Partially cover and simmer over medium-low heat until the carrots are thoroughly tender, about 10 minutes. Pour into a blender jar, add the roasted garlic, salt and sugar. Blend until smooth. Thin with a little additional water if you think your hot sauce is too thick. Taste and season with additional salt if you think necessary. Pour into jars or bottles and store in the refrigerator until you’re ready to add some dazzle to a dish.

Here is the lovely results and it is quite tasty. If you like that super hot punch-in-the-mouth type of flavor (which I do!).



As you can see, I did not purchase this bottle especially for this little project. I've been saving olive oil bottles, soy sauce bottles... you know the little bottles with the plastic regulator on top for items just as this. It is recycling at it's best in my book!