68. Canning Supplies

When you set out to can, you really don't need many supplies, but the few you need? You really need them.

1. You need jars. Canning jars. I'm sure there are people out there who reuse pickle and mayo jars from the store, but unless you are canning-for-the-fridge (meaning, making a small batch of jelly and sticking it in the fridge right there and then to use as your current jar of jelly--pickles are often done this way successfully as well), you need canning jars. They are sold by the flat at most grocery stores. They are made by Ball and by Kerr, which may be the same company? Not sure.
You can reuse jars as long as they are in good shape. We open jars, use the contents, and then use them as drinking glasses. The ones that survive to the next canning season get sterilized with the others and get put-up again.

2. With the jars you need bands and lids. The lid is the flat thing on top with the rubber seal. The band holds it on. You can reuse bands until they rust. You cannot reuse lids. If lids look damaged or weird (see below), discard. Just don't even go there. The one on the right has some sort of weird spot on it. I discarded.
3. You need something to process the jars in. I use the official canner from Kerr or Ball or whatever. It doesn't have to be that--any large flat-bottomed kettle will work. But the part that is implied here:is the rack. The rack is what makes it all work. You don't want jars to rest on the bottom of the kettle, where they are likely to burst. They need to rest just slightly above the bottom. There they'll do fine.

4. A few other random supplies that could be substituted for other similar objects:Tongs; a jar-lifter to bring it out of the hot hot water; a wide-mouthed funnel (which is frankly so useful it gets used all the time in my house); pectin if you are going for a firm-set jam or jelly and you are worried it might not set. I'll talk about pectin later. I have used it successfully, I have used it unsuccessfully (by not following the directions, oops). I have set jam without it as well.

5. And as Daisy is demonstrating there, you need water. Lots and lots of hot water. Many people, myself included, boil jars before using them. I rest lids in hot water but I don't boil them because I want the rubbery seal to stay hard until I need it to soften and do its job (seal). And hot water to process jars in, too, is key, of course, in "hot water bath" canning. It's such a large kettle of water that I start it on the stove before I do any other prep work (except chopping if I'm working with hot peppers, or pickles which have to rest in cold water a long time first). But straight-forward tomatoes or jam or jelly? The water goes on to boil first.

That's it for the hardware: jars, bands, lids, kettle, rack, a few utensils, pectin (the only "special" ingredient), water, and a stove to heat it on. Towels are good. Spoons. Knives. But those things you probably already have ready to go.

Next up: the basics of jam.

67. Shamefully Returning to Posting

It's been a really busy, really hectic return to school this year. Not only am I taking an online class that I'm too advanced for (long boring story omitted), but I'm volunteering 5 hours a week at school and Leo goes to speech therapy 2 hours a week. So there hasn't been a lot of anything that would qualify for this blog. Really. The garden is declining. I have a dying cat. The treehouse is all but done, but my part of it is the part that is all-but. Girl scouts are underway but nothing really for here to say right now.

But I have a few canning photos. So I'm going to go ahead and start that. Right now.

66. Learning to Can

Melinda came over yesterday. I don't know Melinda--she is a friend of Jen's across the street. They know each other from craft shows. Melinda wanted to learn how to can, how to "put up". She is part of a community organization for sustainable food and growing your own and all that. I told her to come on over.

Raspberries were cheap, the cheapest I've ever seen. I picked up plenty to make raspberry jam, something I would normally not waste raspberries on, frankly, because they get hoovered up at my house at an alarming rate. I pick them myself when I am able (the fall crop is coming in out at the farm where I usually pick, so Leo and I might head out early sometime this week).

She came over Sunday morning, and about 10 minutes before she was due to arrive, I realized I had no pectin. I always cheat. Always. Every jam I make has pectin in it. So much work goes into it, I don't want it to fail. So I had a mini panic, realizing I couldn't run to the store in time, and Mike was camping with the girls so I couldn't have him run out for me. By the time Melinda arrived I had shifted gears. Raspberry sauce, I told her. She was thrilled I was going to do a demonstration and not just a lecture.

Cut to the end: I used a Ball recipe for raspberry jam, warning her it probably wouldn't set. But it did. I followed Ball's recipe exactly and it set fine. It's definitely a homemade variety, it is runnier than store-bought, but it isn't just a sauce. It is jam.

But anyway, I went through the process with her and I realized that wow, I've been doing this for 12 years. Once again, not a novice anymore. And while the internet is probably not the best source for information, pretty much across the board, I'm going to do a few lessons about canning. Maybe it would be better to call them tips. It'll be a few days. I didn't take pictures of the whole process yesterday. I'll need to can something else. Salsa verde perhaps. Hmm.

65. Caprese Salad and Crostini

It is summer. August, specifically.

There have been many Augusts of Caprese salad. This year is no exception, although the tomatoes aren't coming from my yard this year, but from the CSA. Little candy-sweet sungold grape tomatoes. Romas. Big red lovelies for $1/pound because the farm that raises them doesn't consider them worthy of full price.

Mozzarella, the soft white kind, not the gummy string cheese kind. I found the latest batch at a local grocery chain, hormone free.

Basil from the yard. Handfuls of it. It's getting a little on the anise-ish side of basil this time of year (I've missed the perfect moment to make pesto but I'll still make it).

And we had this package of crostinis from the CSA. Crunchy, tasty, perfect with a slice of mozzarella, a basil leaf, a little orange tomato.

We've had it for dinner, just this and maybe some chicken strips from the freezer for the kids, for 2 nights this week. I'm out of mozzarella but that will be remedied tomorrow.

64. Summer Garden

We left town for 5 days. Only lost one basil plant, a poorly placed container, not enough dirt to support a good sized basil. Everything else survived.

No tomatoes. I have heard lots of theories, but since it's affecting everyone I know, I'm going to blame the heat. I read something about how fruit won't set if the night temperatures don't get consistently below 75 degrees. Well, it's laughable these days because I don't think we've seen a seven in the tens place in a month? Today is the first morning it felt, well, normal, outside since the 4th of July parade.

So the Russian tomatoes, I can see why they're suffering. The Ozark Pink kind of ticks me off--it's from even further south than we are. Ah well. Some years are not tomato years. At least everyone is having trouble so I don't sit here worrying about my dirt or my watering procedures.

I had 4 bean plants that are spent now, but enough beans to freeze and eat over several meals. Peas of course are gone but they were fun, too. And the lettuce! Cilantro bolted I think the moment it sprouted, ah well, but the parsley and basil are hearty. Mint, in a separate undisclosed location, is making it just fine.

Now it's cucumbers and okra and jalapenos and small sweet peppers (maybe some variation of banana?). I lost one watermelon, baseball sized, to a water-crazed squirrel, but I have three more about that size, several little ones that may or may not take, and two about the size of Daisy's head. It's the first year for okra and watermelon. Both plants are kind of scary. The watermelon, if I didn't train it back and up the fence each day, would have covered my back gate by now. And the okra has huge leaves and fruits (I planted a cultivar that doesn't get stringy or woody even at 6 inch fruits).

I make pesto early next week. Tomato sauce? I bought 20 pounds of "seconds" from the CSA. Just freezing it this year. And we'll see about pickles. Looks likely.

63. Paneer

I stood at my stove in my own kitchen and made paneer, an Indian farmers cheese. I got help on the internet. Here's what I did:

I put a half gallon of whole milk on to boil. I let it come to a boil while I took these pictures and marveled at how I think the kitchen is clean enough but the camera always catches me in denial.

It boiled and I added a 1/4 cup of lemon juice diluted in a 1/2 cup of warm water.

I stirred.
It separated, which was actually kind of gross, like what you don't want milk to do, there I'd done it on purpose.

I poured it into a cloth napkin I'd draped over a colander. I didn't have cheesecloth and it was too late to run upstairs for muslin. I just used a clean cloth napkin.
I rinsed the little globs of cheese to get rid of the lemon taste.

Then I put the globs into a glass container until I needed it for saag paneer. I could have pressed it further and made it more of a solid, like a tofu consistency, but I was sort of pressed, myself, for time. So it was more of a ricotta-esque, only dryer, kind of cheese.

Which made me realize something, that I no longer had to hope for the best and no antibiotics/hormones in my domestic ricotta--which of course is too much to hope for. I buy antibiotic and hormone free dairy products and meat--you would too if you'd had an antibiotic-resistant infection during childbirth. But the only product I could never find that way was ricotta. So every time I made lasagna I felt a bit queasy. Paneer is not equivalent to ricotta. But it could substitute. Easily.

I also started reading up on how to make my own ricotta, for that matter. Perhaps stay tuned.

I love the feeling of learning something new and being empowered by that learning.

62. Dice Bag

Jake lost his dice bag.

What?

From high school, and college. Dice bag. As in "I play roleplaying games that require dice of multiple shapes and sides".

I blame the girls. They've started playing a cute little game called Fuzzy Heroes and the dice bag disappeared.

It is our 15th wedding anniversary. The theme is "crystal" and I decided dice fit the bill. I picked up a variety of dice online and then made a bag for him.

The first bag was drawstring, lined, made of the same fabric as the ottoman cover I made earlier this year. I liked it. It was cute. But it didn't pull all the way shut. Fail.

So I went into my stash and found a doubleknit skirt that my sister gave me for the fabric (I made her a doubleknit quilt last Christmas). I cut it, salvaged the zipper, and made a sort of pencil case-ish bag that zips shut. It's red and white striped. Pretty ugly because the lines are nothing like straight. It is, in fact, entirely made of skew lines. But the dice go in and it's small enough to stash in a drawer where it will belong: the checks, 9 volt battery, and dice drawer. Of course.