Canning and preservation continues

Cabbage Rolls

Last evening I finally tried the "unrolled cabbage rolls" recipe.  I have been wanting a different way to preserve cabbage as well as a more ready-to-eat out-of-the-jar type meal; this recipe meets fulfills both goals!

The recipe I used: "unstuffed cabbage rolls" gets good reviews from the facebook homesteading group users.  I made slight mods because I didn't have enough garlic and wanted to use up some fresh tomatoes.  Also, I converted to weight based instead of "small cabbage, large onion, etc. and doubled the recipe because I wanted to use as much cabbage as I could.

The modified recipe I used was as follows:

• 1.5 lb Ground venison
• 11 oz chopped onions
• 3.5 lb chopped cabbage
• 1 C shredded carrots
• 9 1/4 C tomatoes (I used about 6 1/4 fresh pureed tomatoes and 3 cups canned tomatoes)
• 1 C water
• 2 tsp ground black pepper
• 5 1/4 tsp garlic salt (to make up for lack of garlic and to ratio sodium in 2 tsp of salt)

Made 11 pints.  Pressure canned for 75 mins with 15 lb weight.

second batch:

I made a second batch Saturday night to use the remaining cabbage from last week.  Here is the recipe I used:

1 3/4 lb meat
12     oz onion
64     oz cabbage
9 1/4 oz carrots
8         C pureed fresh tomatoes
3              C canned tomatoes from last year
10         oz water
2 1/4 tsp pepper
8            tsp garlic salt

Made 13.5 pint  (I actually canned a half-pint).  Same PC directions.

Applesauce

I made first seasonal applesauce from some of the apples that I gathered at mom's last weekend.  I only did a bus tray full even though I had a bushel in addition to the bus tray.  Some of these apples are ripe, many aren't.  This turned out to be a problem worth noting in the future.  Unripe apples have a lot of pectin and that pectin makes it hard to cook the apples without burning the apples on the bottom of the pan!

Anyway, I burned the apples on the bottom of the pans even though I added a little extra water (1 C instead of 1/2 C as usual).  I went ahead and ran the apples through the victorio and mixed it all together - it did have slightly burned taste so I added some cinnamon - which I don't usually do - in case I want to cook with it.  I canned 9 quarts and 1 pint.

Tomatoes

I brought back the tomatoes I had left from last weekend.  We didn't have time to process them down in the city-house because Katherine has to work on the taxes (she didn't come along with me this weekend so she could try to finish them up).  After an experiment with powdering some dried  tomatoes earlier this week, I decided that  that I would dry these.  I processed them immediately when I got to the farm yesterday afternoon so that they would have plenty of time to dry.  I processed a full 12 trays in the dehydrator, which I think is equivalent to about 7 quarts of juice/sauce.

I picked some more tomatoes.  The tomato plants are looking a bit rough and the tomatoes are looking very poor.  Lots of rotten and "blighted" spots.  I noticed that the eggplants are still looking good but maybe being encroached on by the tomatoes, so i decided to start removing the tomatoes.  I chopped down the plants near the eggplants first an pulled out the trellis stakes there.

Here are the unripe ones.  I am leaving them on the porch this week.  There is enough other food preservation to do, and frankly, I think that I have more than enough tomatoes at this point!  Of the ripe ones that I picked with this batch, some went into the unrolled cabbage rolls above.

And the rest I made into "vitamix sauce".  7 quarts.

String Beans

I decided to pull the bean plants and harvest the beans.  I got about 1/3 through and filled a large bus tray!  Takes a bit of time but there is shade there in the afternoon so I will continue then.

Update: I finished picking the beans - an additional 5 gallon bucket and half of another!  Whew - will be fun processing these this week.

Carrots

The carrots that I picked at mom's place last week finally got processed - i dehydrated them!  Most of them anyway.  Whats left I will pickle this week - or maybe use some other way.  I should mention that I also got some carrots from the paw-paw patch.  They are little baby carrots!  I think maybe I got  2-3 lb.  Still undecided how to process them.

Dried carrots.  They really shrink!

Here are some from the paw-paw patch.  I didn't dig them all - I don't think I will.  Its  just not worth it.

Beets

I also picked the beets in the paw-paw patch.  There were so few, I decided to give them away to Curtis Raker (a farm neighbor).  Curtis had stopped by while I was  picking the beets and carrots and offered me some radishes.  I declined the radishes, but saw a good opportunity to get rid of the beets!

Red beets.  Probably enough to make a few pints of beet pickles.

Cauliflower and broccoli, and eggplants

The broccoli is still putting out side branch florets.  I gathered enough (1.5 C) to  cook with my soup for dinner.  The cauliflower produced a couple of nice heads this week.

I gave the top one to mom and brought the big one back for me and Katherine.

I didn't get any pictures of the eggplant that I harvested this week.  I got about 5 small ones.  I gave one to mom and brought the rest back.

Sauerkraut!

I finally got some time to can the kraut!  I checked the small crock and found that it had gone bad.   The big crock was fine, so i went ahead and canned that up!

I got 13 pints.  This was the early cabbage.  I have more left, but i want to explore other recipes besides kraut!

Family get together and harvest wind down.

Yard and orchard care

Of course, I mowed some!  It seems to me its time for the grass to really stop growing, but maybe I am just wishing for that!  I also sprayed the grapes for fungi and worms.  I also sprayed the cherry trees and some of the elderberries (the elderberries have some tent caterpillars).

Family reunion

I went to a family reunion at my cousins house on Saturday.  Pat & Paul hosted.  It was very good to see so many of the family together again!

Katherine made a delicious potato salad with our new potatoes and some of the cucumber relish that she canned just a couple weeks ago.  Unfortunately, due to a wasp incident, Katherine didn't make it to the reunion and the potato salad was all eaten up, so she didn't get any!  We will probably make more this week.

Wine production continues

Below are some pictures of the wine now that I removed the skins and seeds and racked it into the clear carboys for further fermentation.  The directions say to rack it once its specific gravity drops to 1.03, but when I tested the S.G. early last weekend it had already dropped to 1.01!  Anyway, I racked it and it continues to bubble away.   I am actually surprised at how fast the bubbles come since the S.G. is now almost 1!  I looked it up though, and wines can ferment to S.G.'s below 1.0, so I may have a ways to go.  It smells delicious, although the fermentation smells make Katherine nauseated.

Getting cold out!  

It was the first day of fall this past weekend and it sure felt like it!   I thought it best to bring in the squash and pumpkin from the front porch where they were curing.  Below are some pictures showing most of the crop.  I have already given about 12-13 pumpkins away and processed (dried or made leather) out of about 4, I think.  I only gave away 3 spaghetti squash and I think I ate about the same number.   Looks to me like 24 pumpkins and 12 spaghetti squash in the photo below, so total pumpkin harvest was probably about 37 and total spaghetti squash harvest was about 18.  

I didn't even bother with the zucchini count; it was a lot!  I am guessing we ate about 10-15 lbs, made relish of maybe 5-10 lbs, and dried 40-50 lbs per dehydrator load (of which I think there were 4 - but maybe 5 loads).  So  10+5+40*4 =  175 low end, 15+10+50*5 = 275 lbs on the high end!  Therefore, my best "gut-level" guess is probably 200 lbs of summer squash!

Apples 

Katherine and I went to Mile Level Market to look at the apples last Friday, but we didn't find any "seconds".  The "seconds" - or "deer apples" as Mile Level sometimes calls them, are perfect for making applesauce.  Anyway, they had apples for $12/bushel - which is a good deal I think, but I am in no rush for canning more stuff, so I think I will wait until more "deer-apples" come my way.  Besides, I stopped at mom's place and picked about 1.5 bushel of "Prairie Spy" apples from her trees.

Prairie Spy apples from Mom's trees

Carrots

I didn't get around to harvesting my carrots and beets from the paw-paw patch, but I did harvest them from the patch over at mom's place.  I got about 2 plastic shopping bags full.  I gave one to mom since she is the one who really took care of them!  They are in rough shape.  Mom says that if you plan on picking them this late then you really shouldn't plant them as early as I did.  Considering that I got as many carrots as I wanted from the half-row I planted in the front patch, I probably shouldn't have planted them at all!  I have more, I am sure, in the paw-paw patch yet to pick!  We will probably pickle some of these and dry the rest.  They dry quite nicely.  These are not in good enough shape to put in the root cellar.

Hard to see in the bag, but there are some HUGE carrots in there!  

Pyracantha Berries

While I was over at mom's i noticed bright orange/red berries on some of her shrubs.  She told me they were pyracantha berries.  I did some research and found out that they are edible and that people sometimes make jelly and wine from them.  One guy said it was one of his favorite jellies!  So i went and picked some of the berries to make a taste-sample of jelly.  It took almost all day to pick the berries from the "bunches" that I harvested.    I only extracted 4.5 lbs of berries!  I washed them and froze them - i will make jelly later in the year when things settle down more.

Tomatoes

Yes, we had more tomatoes - but far fewer than last time!  I did about 7 quarts in the dehydrator and Katherine made more sauce - 5.5 quarts.  We brought back enough to make 7 quarts of sauce/juice I think (just one bus tray load).  I tried powdering some in the vitamix.  It works, but it does attract moisture I think - it clumps and is a pain to work with.  I didn't powder it all because I am not sure how useful it will be.  I am thinking we could add it to the "juicier" sauces to thicken them up a bit!

A piano, tomato sauce and kale

Kale for dinner

Last night we harvested a bunch of kale and actually ATE IT! LOL.  I think it was the first time this YEAR that we ate any kale directly as a green for dinner.  We braised it like usual.  It was delicious.  Cooked with our own potatoes and used our tomato liquid from last years canning instead of chicken broth! :)

Tomato Sauce Canned

Katherine processed the tomatoes that I brought back last weekend into a thick sauce.  This time she canned in the pint and a half wide mouth jars.  Here is a picture:

Sauerkraut

I checked the sauerkraut - it smells ok.  I think that the large batch is ready to can.  I am concerned about the smaller batch fermenting correctly  The cabbage was so dry that there still isn't water over the top of the cabbage.  I didn't see any mold in either though so i am going to let them go another week.

I am thinking of other ways of using the cabbage instead of sauerkraut since we don't seem to be using the sauerkraut that we have.  I did see a recipe for canned "un-rolled" cabbage rolls that looks good.  I may try that.

Hot Water-heater issues?

Katherine pointed out some vibrating pipes this morning near the hot water heater downstairs.  I did some research online and tried a few things - flushed all the toilets, lowered the temp in the heater (I should have done that long ago - it was way too hot!), but the pipes still were vibrating.  I decided to go ahead and purge the water heater.  I read the manual and proceeded.  It was pretty straight forward.  So far so good, no more vibrations observed today anyway.  I keep going down to check though, just in case.

Piano delivery!

Katherine has arranged for movers to deliver her piano today.  She and Ken prepared a spot for it downstairs last weekend,  Katherine got this piano from Ken's mom who is moving to Frederick soon.  

The movers!

In place!

With Ken Sherrfey, the original user

Grapes, wine-making, mowing, and of course: Tomatoes - still more!

Pretty Posies

Before i left i took some pictures of the balloon flowers in front of the Silver Spring house:

Really nice this year!

Peppers

I picked more jalapenos before I went to the farm.  This time I tried making "Cowboy candy".  Here are the peppers before cooking and canning:

About 5.5 lbs from the 2nd picking!  Good yields on the peppers this year.

After canning

I should mention that I have about 5 pints of liquid left from this recipe!  This is typical for this recipe from what I have read online.  I am saving the liquid and will try to can another batch of cowboy candy with it later this year.

Katherine's Tomatoes

Katherine worked on canning the tomatoes i brought back last weekend.  Here are the results:

These are thick sauce.  

She cooked them for about 12 hours on the stove and in the oven.  We figure these would have been about twice as many if we just made our normal "juice/sauce".

Grapes/Wine

Went up to the farm last Friday eve (9/12) and stopped at mom's place to pick grapes.  She has a bunch of concord grapes (and a few other types) that were in desperate need of picking.  I got about 60 lbs!  I had no idea how much i would need for a natch of wine - Google search didn't help a lot in determining how much i should pick.  I picked what I thought was enough for 5-6 gals of wine.

Picked these off of mom's concord vines.  I got a few apples as well.

I started picking these off the bunches Friday night.  I didn't finish the FIRST batch until around 10-ish Saturday!  Here is the first batch ready to wash:

You can see a few of the other - non-concord - grapes in there.

Ready to squish.  In the primary fermentor in a nylon mesh bag

"Juiced" and additives combined and added.  I used plastic wrap over it while the campden tablets did their job.  I couldn't find the lid!

I tied the pulp in a ball in the bag.  i hope this will keep the must from expanding too much and overflowing the bucket.

I started cleaning up the rest of the grapes after I started the first batch "sterilizing" (the campden tablets are potassium bisulfite which kill the natural yeasts which can make things taste funky.)

The 2nd batch (top of photo) with additives.  The first batch ready to receive yeast - on the bottom of photo.

I didn't take photos of the fermenters setup with the airlocks.  I moved them both into the bathroom and set the bathroom thermostat to 70F (the minimum recommended temperature for red-wine ferments).  The recipe says to stir and mess with the bag of pulp daily, but I wont be around to do that!  I hope they don't over expand and leak juice everywhere!

Picked the Orchard!

I decided it was time to pick all the fruits in the orchard.  I read that pears should be picked before they are fully ripe for best turnout.  Here is everything i got:

Asian pears, crab apples and some nice eating apples!  The eating apples and pears are delicious.  Not sure what to do with the 4 crab apples!

Picked some Kale

The kale recovered from the cabbage worm issues and I was able to pick about a bushel and a half of it.   I tried the "kale cracker" recipe with mixed results.  The recipe gives a measurement of "6 leaves" - what size leaves? Sheesh.  I experimented with varying amounts of kale in the cracker.  First batches where mostly just ground almond and sesame - they were good but very greasy.  So I tried adding more kale.  i baked these on silpat sheets in the oven at 250F.  The ones with more kale took longer to become crisp and i think they burned.  They tasted burned.  But then again, they tasted a lot more like kale.  Not delicious.

First batch - mostly ground almond and sesame!  Tasted good but not much kale in them.

Tried adding more kale and putting it through vitamix until all smooth.  About 2 C of kale puree to 1 C nut mix here.

On the silpat, ready to bake for about an hour.

I decided that I had experimented with the cracker recipe enough and proceeded to simply load the rest of the kale into the dehydrator.  After drying I got the kale into 3 gallon size zip locks - with some pressing and crushing.  Later I went back and vacuum sealed the kale into smaller portion that should be about 1 quart each when re-hydrated.

More tomatoes

Picked more tomatoes!  Here is what I started with:

I got a few more cucumbers too.

I decided to save Katherine some pain and started processing them right away.  First I did a dehydrator full of them - about 7 quarts dehydrated looks like this:

This is the second jar like this of dried tomatoes that I have made this season.  

I also went back and vacuum packed the first jar of dried tomatoes in the seal-a-meal bags - smaller portions.  From what I have read, vacuum sealing them will extend their shelf life considerably.  Again, I put them in quart size  portions (I estimate).  I will probably vacuum seal some of these as well, but I want to try powdering some first.  If they powder well i may use them to thicken the regular sauce.

I also "vitamixed' some sauce and canned them.  I pressure cooked most of these:

Vitamixed sauce

Doing them in the pressure cooker only takes 15 mins.  I still added full amount of citric acid and salt.  I did 3 quarts and one pint in the water-bath since there wasn't enough to do full PC run.  A weird thing happened to the first batch of the PC'ed jars when i took them out of the canner they started pinging sealed.  Not that strange, sometimes jars will even seal inside the canner. However, they "unsealed" and resealed several times while on the counter cooling!  Katherine asked in the facebook group and they think it was because the vitamixed sauce has more air in it and it takes longer for it to work its way out.  They said that they should still be good as long as they seal.  I marked the jars in question just in case!  They did all stay sealed (so far).

Tomato Savior!?

While picking  the tomatoes this time I found a carcass of a tomato worm:

Worm carcass with parasitic wasps on him!

Cool!  I hope the parasitic wasps get well established in my area now!

Eggplant picked 

I decided to pick the eggplant before it got too big this year.  I was also afraid that maybe weather would turn too cold and ruin them before I got them!  Last years harvest. Here is the harvest:

Not near as many as last year, but at least i got some after the flea beetle attack!

Picked a few more cabbages too!

The late cabbages are looking really good.  I picked the cabbages and kale and then sprayed them all down with BT.  The worms seem to be under control and I want to keep them that way!

We actually got 2 more than what is shown - we ate them as cole slaw.  Delicious!

Tried drying some pumpkin

I read about drying pumpkin and thought I would give it a try.  I washed a pumpkin well and sliced it thin and placed it in the dehydrator at 150F overnight.  I tried powdering it in the vitamix but it wasn't quite dry enough yet.  I placed the grind into the toaster oven on 150F for a couple more hours then re-tried the vitamix.  This time it made a fine powder.  They say this is a convenient way to store for use as pumpkin puree for pies!  I will have to try that.

Mowed most of the property

Some where along the timeline I managed to mow most of the lawn!  The Huskee mower deck should be in great shape, but the damn thing really mows lopsided.  I adjusted the deck a couple times, but it doesnt seem to help much.I check the spindles - they are mounted fine and the spindles themselves seems to rotate smoothly, so no problems there.  Makes buying that Cub Cadet zero turn more attractive every time I mow!