What a sticky week

Last week as you know, I ended up with fruit, lots and lots of fruit.  Pears and Peaches made their way to my house late Tuesday night.  They were ripe and ready to do.  Pears went quickly but I had nearly twice as many peaches.  I was dreading them to be honest.

Thursday afternoon I tackled the peaches and with the help of my lovely husband we finished in 3 hours.  We ditched the sugar most recipes call for and opted for honey instead.  Oh so yummy! 

When all was said and done we stocked over 60 bottles of fruit in the pantry.  Not shabby if I may say so.  I have to add that having those lovely little fruits in the pantry makes me happy.  This winter when we are locked inside watching the blizzard close in on us, I will pop open one of these jars and have a little ray of summer sunshine.  Now that makes me smile.

 

 

Fall preserving

{Jars fresh from my moms storage room.  Some of these babies had old lids on them that said 1979.  The needed a little washing love!}

Yesterday I spent that day canning pears.  Approximately 100 lbs of pears went through these hands.  100 lbs turned out to be 30 quarts.  Not to bad.  It seemed to take a lot longer than normal, about 6 hours start to finish, and I have to say that I was worn out by the last batch.



The kids wanted to help out since they seek out every opportunity to wield a knife.  So I handed over 3 good knives to the older 3 and gave Laina a smooshed pear and a butter knife.  They had a ball, I have the counters and floor to prove it.

{Binoculars are a must have when preserving, at least that is what the boy tells me.}

All in all it was a great day.  Today I get to start in with peaches, lots and lots of peaches.  At this point I just hope I have enough jars to store everything!

{This post is part of Simple Lives.}

How to dehydrate veggies

There are so many great ways to preserve the food you grow or that you have bought at the farmers market.  Canning is probably the most well know.  It works great, its easy to do, and there are a  million tasty recipes out there to try.  The downside?  You need storage space.  A small batch here or there isn't going to take much space but storing 75 pounds of peaches requires a bit more.

  Root cellaring is another great way to preserve food.  It takes very little prep work because all food is kept in a cold storage space as is (or pretty close to for the most part).  The biggest downside to root cellaring is most of us do not have the space to create one (or the budget). 

Freezing is another great way to save food for later use.  Its quick and easy for the most part.  But like the others above,  you do need space for a freezer.  If you live in an apartment that might be hard to come by (or even against your lease agreement!).

Enter dehydrating.  Talk about a space saving way to preserve summers bounty for the cold winter months!  In this post you can see a few jars of dried corn.  Not too bad right?  That is over 40 ears of corn in those 2.25 jars.  Now that is awesome! :)

Dehydrating for some people is pretty daunting but it needn't be.  Its simple and pretty fool proof.  Join me for carrots....

Start with a bunch of fresh carrots and  nice clean dehydrator trays.

 



Wash them well and slice off the ends.

Next using your food processor (mandolin or knife) cut 'em up!  I choose to use my shredder attachment because I wanted to use these mostly for cakes, muffins, pancakes etc.  I have in the past used my slicer attachment with great results.



Scoop the prepared carrots out and layer on your trays.  With sliced vegetables I do one even level but when I shred them I just throw a bunch on the tray all willy nilly like.  I live on the edge sometimes!



Continue the process until all your vegetables have been processed.  Stack your trays, put the lid on, and turn it on and set the temperature at 135 degrees.  The water content of your vegetable will cause your length of dehydration to vary greatly.  The corn I did the other day took about 24 hours.  I imagine these carrot trays will take about the same because of how dense they are on each tray.



You can leave  your vegetables raw or you can blanch them.  I don't waste time blanching, like I said I live on the edge.

So pick up a cheap dehydrator (the one I use was bought for $25 at Wal-Mart.  I later found an identical one for $5 at the thrift store!) and give your hand at drying.  Its simple, quick, and takes up little space.

 

Feeling a little saucy...applesaucy that is.

Saturday a friend of ours offered her apple tree up for the taking.  Since my  motto during canning season is "The best fruit is the free fruit!" we headed over to grab the goodies.  We came home with two laundry baskets full of apples. 

 

These little babies pack a nice little punch.  I have no idea what kind they are but they are a perfect mix of sweet and sour.  Dean cut up 24 cups the first night.  We tossed those with cinnamon and sugar for pies later on in the year and stuck them in the freezer.  The rest of the apples sat glaring at me Sunday. 



Monday morning I woke with the deep desire to sauce those little buggers. So that is just what I did.  However I did things a little differently and utilized them more than usual.



First I quartered the apples then I threw them into my steam juicer. 



I let them steam until they were soft then I sent them through the food mill. 



Steaming them released the juice so in the end I got a gallon of juice and 11 quarts of nice thick sauce.



By steaming the apples, the excess juice was released and the sauce was thicker because of it.  Now I don't know about you but I like my applesauce nice and thick, I don't want apple juice with pulp.  This worked like a charm.  I was worried that once the juice was removed the apples wouldn't have as good a flavor.  No worries, it still tasted wonderful.

Strawberry Jam

Every year I put up lots of strawberry jam.  We used to live by an organic strawberry farm that sold their berries by the gallon.  Oh were they sweet and juicy, loved those berries!  Here the seasons are cooler and strawberries don't come on until mid July.  We don't have an organic farm anywhere near here but we do have a family that grows berries vertically.  I have never seen a more cool set up!  Hundreds of vertical styrofoam growers contain over 16,000 plants!  Amazing! 

I visited this mini farm Monday to pick of 5 cases of strawberries and headed back home to start the sticky mess of jam making.  We wiped down the kitchen, made a quick lunch and launched into the process.















I didn't have a big enough pan out for the first batch and nearly lost the whole thing!  It was a great day that I look forward to repeating for raspberries and peaches.  Oh how I love canning season!