This & That

Apple Crisp

Just a couple of notes from the kitchen this week, mostly because I've been flying solo with my husband gone on one of his annual once-in-a-lifetime events.

We did a pretty good job of using up the leftovers. The last of the turkey went into an enchilada casserole for the freezer. I did mention that Elise and the boys were here for several days after Thanksgiving. She has a sweet tooth just like her dad, and there always needs to be something sweet for snacking on. I'd opened up one of my quarts of bottled apples for some breakfast baked oatmeal, but most of the quart was still in the fridge, and those apples were perfect for a tiny pan of apple crisp. 

For me, it was easy to pour the canned apples into the pan and put the topping on. About as instant as a dessert from scratch can be. Now, I realize that not everyone has home-canned apples just sitting around, but the same effect can be achieved by slicing apples into a baking dish and sprinkling with some sugar. If they're really juicy apples, you can stir in a couple tablespoons of flour, but there's flour in the topping as well, so don't go crazy with that. Then all you have to do is top with a mixture of:

• 1 cup flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 stick of butter

Blend these ingredients together until crumbly then adorn those apples with it. The topping is enough for a 9x13 pan, so adjust quantities accordingly if your baking dish is smaller. There's half a recipe on this pan, which is smaller than a 12x8 pan. Bake in a 375° oven for 30-40 minutes, depending on the size of your pan, until the apples are done. This will work for any kind of fruit crisp you want to make.....peach is good, peach-raspberry is also good, a mixture of berries would be nice, and I think I could get my husband to eat one made of strawberry mixed with rhubarb. 

Breaking It Down

I mentioned last week that the last, big canning project happened.

That was the applesauce. It's a tedious, messy, sticky job I won't tackle on my own, and since my husband likes to eat it when he cooks waterfowl, he helps. We got 24 quarts and that should hold us for at least a couple of years. Hopefully we won't have to tackle it again soon. That said, the twins really like it....

Now here's a little interesting family history nugget. I've bought a lot of jars, gotten a lot of jars from the local thrift stores, and gotten jars from family members who aren't canning any more. Some of those came from Grandma Gwen's basement. That's my husband's grandmother, and this  jar was one of them. How do I know that? Since none of my other canning jars have this brand name, I did a little research. The Drey (pronounced "Dry") company began manufacturing jars between 1910 and 1917, depending on which internet article you trust. Sometime in the 1920's, the company was bought by the Ball jar company. This fits the timeline of Grandma Gwen's early married years. It also means this jar is about 100 years old. I didn't fill and process it, since I'd hate for it to break. I don't want to lose this piece of family history.

I decided it was time to break down this large Long Island Cheese pumpkin, to see if it would give me a better pumpkin yield than the wimpy Sugar Pie pumpkins we've grown in past years, and to see if we liked the flavor, since it's not specifically labeled as a sweeter pie pumpkin. We do get attached to certain varieties of garden produce. For example, if it's not Waltham Butternut squash variety, it's not going in the garden.

In the research I've done, this variety gets its name because it tends to look like a wheel of cheese, not because it resembles cheese in texture or flavor.

I ordered this little tool when I saw it used in a YouTube video. It's a scraper for getting the guts out of pumpkins and winter squash, and it works like magic...just so slick.

Let me tell you, the chickens really enjoyed how well it worked.

I set these to bake at 375° for a couple of hours....however long you might cook something like the afore mentioned Waltham butternut squash, which is our favorite winter squash for eating.

In retrospect, I probably didn't need the 375° temperature. 350° would have been just fine. The outside got a little toasty.

It did seem to have some obvious water content, so I scooped it into a colander and let it sit for a while. I got 7 cups from one pumpkin, which is a huge amount, so it passed the yield test.

Then I made some pumpkin bread with it, just to check the flavor. My husband liked it well enough to take it hunting with him last weekend, so that's a win. The real test will come when I make the Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. If it doesn't pass that test, we might be going back to the Sugar Pies, even though you have to bake like 6 to get the quantity we got from one of these.

In other kitchen news, I did a freeze dryer load with the purpose of doing hunting meals. Since my husband's been gone so much lately, I had a surplus of eggs. I scrambled them and mixed them with some leftover roasted vegetables for a breakfast option. Sadly, my hens are slowing down their production as the days get shorter and colder. This is normal, and will change supposedly sometime in February-ish, but I will really miss my happy hen eggs. BUT, since Google is my friend, I've learned that one of my ladies is capable of laying all winter. Whether she will or not is the question.

With all the meal freeze drying I've done in the past several weeks, my husband has quite a few menu choices. The thing is? He hasn't tried them out yet. This was the biggest reason he was willing to invest in a freeze dryer, and I'm not sure I'm going to go to the effort of doing them until he says it's worth it. I already know freeze-drying single ingredients works well for me, but if he's just going to take sandwich stuff, that might be all he gets (she says with a flounce).

Has It Stopped??

I think I can officially say that canning season is winding down.

Winding down, but not totally stopping. Our apple trees didn't give us anything this year, which is very, very unusual, so I ended up getting some apple seconds to try doing some apple juice. I got 2, 20 pound boxes and definitely got more juice than I thought I would. We'll see how it works. I did a tiny batch very early this year, and wanted to try some quantity. In my experience, it's kind of bland on its own, and much better mixed in with other juice. Since we don't drink at all, it's a good substitute for white wine in recipes.

Before the first hard frost, we picked some green tomatoes that have been ripening up. There weren't enough to make canning worthwhile, and my sister tried roasting and freezing some of hers, so I gave it a try. 

It's another experiment.

I did some freeze drying recently while my husband's been gone in hills. Because he's been gone, I had a surplus of eggs and wanted to get some in the freeze dryer, but I didn't have anything else that needed to be used that way. So, I made a batch of corn chowder, and a ground buffalo and macaroni skillet and used them to fill the other trays. My husband can use the meals when he's in the hills, and I got my eggs preserved.

The storage shelves are pretty full.

It was a lot of work...it really was.

But I sure like seeing it all on the shelves.

Zucchini Muffins

Canning season is definitely slowing down here. I've gone 3 days without putting something in a jar, and it feels a little strange.  A couple of week's ago I mentioned 20 pounds of onions. I turned part of them into the French onion soup base.

The rest of them went into this test project. It's something called onion marmalade and is a sweet/spicy jelly-type condiment that can go on burgers or sandwiches, but can also be mixed with cream cheese as a spread for crackers. I tried that cream cheese mix and it was yummy. I can see that this will be a repeat.

Something else new I tried was BBQ sauce from garden tomatoes. I'm not sure this is the final recipe I'll stick to, but it's close....quite sweet, but with a hefty kick. 

The last trial run I did was this Shrek-colored green enchilada sauce. I've been accumulating, roasting and peeling green chilies all summer to get enough for a partial batch. This smelled incredible....just like the "real" thing.

My husband has been in the hills quite a bit lately. It's fall, after all. This has been many a dinner.

I promised I'd give you an honest review of the chipotle buffalo I canned. I threw it in a little skillet to warm up. It took longer to organize all the condiments for the tacos, than to heat the meat through. I know you're all wondering how it tasted.....

There. I took a bite just for you. It was delicious and I'll definitely repeat this.

That brings us to today's recipe. In my ever-present quest to use up copious amounts of zucchini, I found this recipe for muffins. Sometimes it's more acceptable to kiddos if it's hidden in tasty carbs....and believe me, they're very tasty. I found the recipe here, and they freeze beautifully.

Zucchini Muffins

• 1 and 3/4 cups (220g) all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour (or mix of both)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup  vegetable oil 
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 Tablespoons milk 
• 1 and 3/4 cups shredded zucchini 
• optional: 1 cup (semi-sweet chocolate chips (or chopped nuts, raisins, etc)
• optional: coarse sugar, for sprinkling on top

Preheat oven to 425°F. Spray a muffin pan with nonstick spray or line with cupcake liners.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg together in a large bowl. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk the oil, granulated sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, and milk together. Whisk in the shredded zucchini. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk or stir until just combined. Fold in any add-ins you want to include, if any. Avoid over-mixing. Batter is thick.

Spoon the batter into liners, filling them all the way to the top. Sprinkle with coarse sugar, if desired.

Bake for 5 minutes at 425°F; then, keeping the muffins in the oven, reduce heat to 350°F and continue baking for another 15–17 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The total time these muffins take in the oven is about 20–21 minutes, give or take. (For mini muffins, bake 11–13 minutes at 350°F  the whole time.)

Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes in the muffin pan, and then transfer to a wire rack to continue cooling, or enjoy warm.

Muffins stay fresh covered at room temperature for a few days, then transfer to the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Freezing Instructions: For longer storage, freeze the muffins for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, then heat up in the microwave if desired.

 

Some Tried and True & Some Experiments

Food preservation continues to be a big part of my week, but the pace seems to be getting a little more reasonable. There was a stretch there a while back that I was putting something in jars almost every day, sometimes twice a day, and that's a real challenge.

There are things that appear every year, like the peach jam,

...some things I did a trial run on last year that I'm making bigger batches of, like this peach salsa,

...and some experiments I'm trying on for size. I bought 20 pounds of onions for some very specific projects. Yes, I know I grew onions in the garden, but they're a sweet variety that are good for eating and store well, so they got put away in storage. I don't grow enough onions for all the various canning projects and storing on top of that, usually.

I caramelized most of them down for this French onion soup base. While we do like French onion soup, I'm picturing this more as an additive to meals like pot roast, meatballs, other soups. At least, that's how I'm picturing it in my head right now.

We only had one jar of grape jelly left, so that was a priority this year. I purchased grapes and got plenty of jelly and some quarts of juice as well, keeping in mind that when I can, I'm trying to put enough by for multiple years, so I'm not canning absolutely everything, every single year.

I got about 8 little habañero peppers off one lone plant. We've made this very spicy pepper jelly before, but it's been several years, and I was looking to restock. Jellies always manage to look so pretty in the jars.

I made tomato soup base last year and we loved it, so I made a larger batch this year. I used the paste tomatoes for it, and won't do that again. It was much thicker than last year's and while we'll definitely use this, I prefer it a bit thinner. 

Then there was the catsup. It's not something I would normally do given the choice, but it's my husband's grandmother's recipe and he loves it. It's all connected up with the memories he has of her, and helping her do it as a teenager. As long as he's willing to juice the tomatoes, I'll simmer the stuff literally forever, until it passes his taste test. Seriously, the stuff bubble, bubble, toil & troubled for nearly two full days, and there's a very fine line between perfect and a ruined batch because it scorches.

I unfroze the gnocchi I made last week from the chewed-on potatoes and added a little more flour. They worked out a whole lot better and I vacuum-sealed them for freezer storage. 

I had a bit of a garden epiphany as I was working with the gnocchi. I saved a few out and went searching for a recipe for some kind of gnocchi soup. All the vegetables I needed for the soup were living in the garden. I gathered an onion, a few celery stalks and a couple of carrots, pulled some frozen chicken I'd packaged up from a meal and some spinach I'd also frozen, added the gnocchi, and we had dinner.

I find I'm looking at recipes differently. I'm looking at what needs to be used from the garden or what sounds good from the jars in the storage room as a reference point. How can I use what I've canned to substitute for recipe ingredients? It doesn't have to be exact. If it's close, I'll give it a try and see how it works. We opened on of those jars of canned chipotle buffalo last night. I'll give you an honest review in next week's recipe post. I need to get a more blog-worthy picture first. For now, I'll just say it wasn't at all what I expected.

Caramel Pear Pudding

More preserving going on here. It's Peach Week, which has similarities to Shark Week in that it seems like it will never end sometimes, but given that peaches are one of the easier things to can, it beats listening to the "Jaws" theme.

I'm about done with canning the peaches plain. I still want to do some jam and some peach salsa, but those are both small batch things, still takes some time, though. 

Now this is a true experiment. Some of the potatoes we dug weren't in the best shape. I peeled them as good as I could and made mashed potatoes then tried to turn them into gnocchi. 

After watching more YouTube tutorials, I think the gnocchi, which I stuck in the freezer to flash freeze, are WAY too soft. I think a project this week will be to thaw them, add some more flour and try again. I'm afraid that otherwise, they'll just be gummy and gross. 

Moving to today's recipe, this is one I've made for years. My kids remember it from when they were younger. It comes from one of the first Taste of Home magazines and is a really easy way to use the pears that are in season now. It's sweet, but not overly so, and the caramel sauce really complements the whole thing. Top it with a scoop of vanilla? And this happens to be some of my mother's homemade vanilla...and you have one really delicious, late summer/early fall treat.

Caramel Pear Pudding

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Pinch ground cloves
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 4 medium pears, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (opt.)
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3/4 cup boiling water
• Optional: Vanilla ice cream or whipped crea

Preheat oven to at 375°. In a large bowl, combine the first 6 ingredients; beat in milk until smooth. Stir in pears and pecans. Spoon into an ungreased 2-qt. baking dish. (That would be a 9" square pan, or a 12" x 8" pan.)

In another bowl, combine the brown sugar, butter and water; pour over batter. Bake, uncovered, for 45-50 minutes. Serve warm, with ice cream or whipped cream if desired.

 

 

What Can I Turn It Into?

The garden continues to produce, but with the shortening days, I can sense a shift. Pumpkins are turning orange, the beans have given up. Even the pepper production has slowed down some, despite temperatures that sit in the 80's. (Come ON, 60's!!!!)

Look here! We actually grew potatoes! We've had notoriously bad luck getting them to grow, but we planted some in one of the new raised beds. This is the yield from one plant and we have several more plants of different varieties still to dig. I'm excited to see what we might still have hiding under the ground. Of course given past history, it's possible this is all the potatoes we'll get.

The question I've asked myself multiple times this summer as I've looked at buckets of produce...."What can I turn this into?" I've done many freeze dryer loads of shredded zucchini, and filled close to 200 jars and I'm not done yet. This week, I've did some corn relish. This was an experiment last year that was a win, so this year I did more.

I also bottled some whole tomatoes. Tomato production in the garden this year hasn't been tremendous. With the fairly cool spring, things were late getting started.  Recently, it's been pretty steady, but other than the cherry tomatoes, it hasn't been overwhelming. After the mega-canning marathon I did last year, there are some things I don't need to do this year. I did 11 pints of the tomatoes, and I probably won't go through all of those in a year with what was left from last year, since there's just the two of us.

A peach pie happened, much to the delight of Elise and my husband.

And thinking of freeze drying, for the first time I tried freeze drying meals for hunting/camping. My husband is thrilled. I'm thrilled for a different reason. The leftovers get totally used up. He has yet to try reconstituting one, but we're optimistic.

Preserving

The garden continues to give. I've thought really deeply this past couple of years about the ability to grow food to sustain my family. Perhaps I'm obsessing about it a little too much...and maybe not. I just see the supply chain as very tenuous. It could be affected by so many random things. I can only say that between my husband's critter-chasing obsession, the garden, and the chickens, I feel like most food areas are pretty well covered...if only the chickens would start laying. They're very close to the right age, but we haven't see any action yet, and I've been really generous in all the garden scraps I've tempted them with. C'mon, ladies! Now if only one of my kids would get a dairy cow....

My canning philosophy continues to evolve. I've decided that if the garden gives me an abundance one year, I'll preserve all the abundance. Then I won't have to grow or can it the next year. I have enough banana peppers now.

Maybe you remember a couple weeks back that I freeze-dried the elephant garlic. I put all the freeze dried little pieces into my blender and made garlic powder.

I did a big batch of the hot sauce I experimented with last year. My husband and several other family members really like it, and we had a large crop of cayenne peppers. I won't have to grow or make this for at least 2, and maybe 3 years.

You might also remember that last year I dehydrated the pepper seeds and skins after I strained the sauce, making my own pepper flakes. I still have a lot of those left so I took this year's leftovers, dehydrated them, then ran them through the blender....

...to make cayenne pepper powder, which is the same thing that's sold in stores as hot red pepper. It's a two-fer. I get the sauce and the spice. I have way more than I'll ever use, so some of this will be offered to family for sharing.

Now this right here? This is a leap of faith. This is buffalo and I know what you're thinking, because I've thought the same thing for the decades my husband has tried to get me to put deer or elk in jars. He has a couple of hunting buddies who bring stuff like this on hunting trips he goes on. He raves about how delicious it is but then, he will eat anything....raw fish? Squishy cantaloupe? Black bananas? It's all on the menu for him. He's had me buy extra canning jars in case our freezers go out, so I can hurry and can the meat and we won't lose it. I hate to tell him....we'd have to add a very large room onto the house to store all the jars needed to hold his exotic meat supply. All that said, I have wanted to try canning some protein to make it shelf-stable. I started with beans last month, and was working my way up to chicken, since I find it the more innocuous meat in a jar. But then he brought home a buffalo, and they're really big, and I stumbled onto a recipe for chipotle-seasoned beef which I thought didn't sound too terrible. So I put some in a jar, along with some plain meat and onions in a few other jars, and we're going to see how it all comes together after it sits for a month and the flavors all blend. It's certainly not the prettiest thing I've ever put in a jar but like I said, it's a leap of faith.

Sourdough experimenting continues. I tried a recipe for sandwich bread, which was not as soft as advertised, but wan't too bad either. It makes a great tomato sandwich, but I'm not sure the grandchildren would love their PB&J on it. I keep trying, though.

 

 

The Garden Giveth

We keeping going out and finding buckets of things growing in the garden.

That in and of itself isn't surprising. What I've mentioned before and what continues to amaze me, is that a good share of what keeps coming was started from seeds I put under grow lights in my back hall. I can see you saying, "Well, what did you expect, Catherine/Mom?" It's just that back in the day, I never pictured myself doing things like that, so every time I go out and pull fresh tomatoes, peppers, or whatever off the plant, I'm almost a little shocked. I picked my first Sugar Rush peppers yesterday, and those Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes really are super sweet.

I took some of those cherry tomatoes and seasoned them up with a little salt, pepper and Italian seasoning and put them in my dehydrator. I haven't used my dehydrator much since I got the freeze dryer, but I gave these a try because my husband likes them.

I got them a little too desiccated, but I put them in a jar on the counter, and my husband will choke one down every once in a while.

I've started processing the peppers I picked several days ago. The jalapeño mustard was first on the list. This is just amazingly good and a great way to use prolific garden peppers. 

 

Reason #1

Explanations and reasons why there was a bit of a hiatus from regular posts.

Reason number one is definitely the garden and preserving the produce. There have been a variety of projects underway that have used a variety of preservation methods.

I've tried fridge pickles for the first time. These are some bread and butter pickles that were very good. While we will eat dill pickles, I have done mostly sweet ones, as that's what I grew up with. My DIL, Jan, has strong feelings the other way, but we're tolerant here and still love her. She, and consequently her kiddos pull faces of extreme torture when they try sweet pickles. 

My basil is flourishing. I've freeze-dried about a quart off these plants so far and the haircuts I've been giving it for that process seem to stimulate more growth. 

I brought in the garlic that's been curing in the shed for several weeks. It's a disappointing harvest probably because we planted it so late and in ground that was on its way to frozen. The heads are very small. Even the elephant garlic in the bottom box is supposed to be the size of a softball. Experiments sometimes fail, but I've ordered new seed and will try again this fall. In the meantime, I'll freeze dry what elephant garlic I have and turn it into powder and we'll eat the small hard and soft neck varieties fresh.

Freeze drying the past couple of weeks have included the basil, some random broccoli found in the fridge, the ever-present zucchini, which I've mostly powdered (don't ask what's in your pancakes or other baked goods and sauces if you come to my house), and for the first time I tried some milk.

In the quest to use some of the abundance of celery I grew, I searched in the freezer and found a lonely chicken carcass and put it in the slow cooker to make a batch of broth. 

The jar count so far this year stands at 72, and that doesn't include what I'm freezing and freeze-drying. I probably won't reach last year's totals, since I went a little canning nuts last summer, but there will definitely be repeats on some of the things of which I only did tiny let's-sample-this experiments. Things that come to mind are the cayenne hot sauce, corn relish, jalapeño mustard, and peach salsa. I have a list of  new experiments to try as well.

Dinners continue to be a little hit and miss depending on who's around, but the garden veggies are featuring in a big way, and the harvest keeps on coming, for which I'm very grateful.