Winter Fare

As low as my energy level is since my heart attack, I'm still managing to put up some foods for winter fare. Many are not from my own garden since I didn't get much planted this year due to health problems plus our crummy weather.

I'm really concerned that this winter may be a bear, and with so much of the country having either flooding or drought, I expect food prices to rise.

I bought a bunch of tomatoes, plus got quite a few from a neighbor and I oven-roasted them in batches with lots of chopped Vidalia onions and garlic. After going through the food mill, I have quite a few pint jars now canned for winter use. (My own few heirloom tomatoes got late blight, I think I only got 3 good enough to slice.)

Corn is not a favorite because it gets so starchy so quickly, but I have quick-boiled a baker's dozen and just need to cut the kernels off the cob and can them.

The few summer squash my sister's yard man didn't cut down have yielded a bounty of fresh squash, mostly now grated and frozen for later use. I found a recipe for Zucchini Faux Crab Cakes last year, and loved them.  My zucchini hasn't done well (other than the gigantic one that grew while I was in the hospital) but now has more blooms. 

I'm thinking to make the faux crab cake recipe with yellow summer squash since the squash is basically a filler, and if I get any more zukes, they will definitely be used in that recipe. They are easy to make, cook, and freeze for re-heating later as part of a quick meal.

Two other plants the yard man didn't cut down look to be maybe a spaghetti squash (and loaded with small fruits) and one acorn squash plant that only has a fruit or two that I can see among the humongous leaves. Both are planted in a 2 year-old alfalfa bale and growing like gangbusters! Good thing I like winter squash, and they keep well in the root cellar. 

He also cut down all my pole bean plants. sigh.

I have picked a few of my thornless blackberries, maybe close to a gallon, but it's become such an overgrown jungle that most went to waste. I'll make some spicy blackberry savory which is great with white meats (kinda like using cranberry sauce), and perhaps some blackberry syrup if I have enough berries.

My filbert bush looks like it will be the first year for a really good crop. It's now about 5 years in the ground here. The first year it bore nuts, I think I got about 12-15 nuts. Last year, probably 4-5X that amount.

I planted shallots, garlic and cippolini onions in one bed but it became so overgrown with weeds that I don't think there's a chance anything survived. I wanted SO much to make some cippolini onions in balsamic vinegar! They are $8.95-$9.95 a pound on most olive bars and I love their taste.

I may have already posted this, so forgive any lapses in my memory (which is not so good lately)... I have an upcoming trip planned with a gardening friend to go to the Outer Banks for several days in early October to get seafood. Living inland as I do, seafood is always the pits... frozen, stored, shipped, thawed, maybe re-frozen, but certainly NOT fresh... and most shrimp here are just tasteless farm-raised 'shrimp'.

Please put out good vibes that we can make our trip without the threat of a coastal hurricane! I haven't looked forward to such a trip in years so I'm kinda like a young kid anticipating Santa Claus and Christmas.

Another Fermenting Aid

ReCAP mason jar lids

It's starting to be fermenting time again as veggies begin to appear in our summer gardens.
These lids may make it less messy to ferment veggies at home. Simply add a rubber stopper (with a hole in the center) onto the spout hole, put a fermentation lock into the stopper hole, and ferment away.

If fermenting (which actually INCREASES nutritional content in foods), just type fermenting or ferments in the search box located on the right column and it will bring up several posts I've done on fermenting.

Rubber stoppers come in many sizes. A #6 should fir the ReCAP lid.

One of several styles of airlocks from any brewing supply store.

The other good thing about these lids is their general use for mason jars used to store beans, sugars, flours or even vinegars that can be poured out through the jar opening. BPA free.

ps, I own NO stock in this company!

Eating what I grow

I'm deleting a few veggies from my garden this year... those I seldom eat although I enjoy them immensely, and those that are always iffy for me to grow (like melons, peppers and sweet potatoes). I'm finding it is less stressful to just buy those occasional things at the farmer's markets, as long as I know the vendor and how he or she grows them.

The things I will give more garden space are the vegetables that I can overwinter in the root cellar (mostly winter squash), or put up by either lacto-fermenting, freezing or canning... things like sauerkraut, green beans and tomatoes. Also vegetables that are far too expensive for me to purchase on a regular basis... such as fennel bulbs, leeks and shallots. 

This year I'm trying to grow some cipollini onions that are carried on many olive bars (in balsamic vinegar). I LOVE them but not at $9 a pound!

"Cipollini onions (pronounced chip-oh-lee-knee) were once a rare treat only to be found at fancy restaurants and the occasional gourmet market. We’re glad they’re finally getting their due attention...Now what exactly are they?

Their name literally means “little onion” in Italian, and indeed they are! Cipollinis are about the size of a golf ball with a flattened appearance. They’re thin-skinned and have translucent white flesh with more residual sugar than your average yellow or white onion.

Which makes them incredible for roasting or caramelizing. Roasted whole in the oven or cooked in a little butter on the stove top, cipollinis become soft and practically melt in your mouth. Those residual sugars caramelize and concentrate, leaving behind none of the astringent raw onion flavor.

Seriously, you haven’t had caramelized onions until you’ve made them with cipollini onions. Even you onion-haters out there might be swayed!" Source

Canning Bacon

I had no clue bacon could be canned! However, I found the process several places online and decided to try it. It would be nice to have bacon available in an extended power outage instead of it spoiling in the freezer from no power!

Bacon (raw or partially cooked) can be canned by laying the strips on parchment paper, covering them with a second piece of paper, rolling it tightly and packing it into a jar.  If the bacon is longer than the jar you’re using, you can cut the strips in half to make them shorter, or fold the whole thing over before you roll it.

I used raw bacon and natural unbleached parchment paper, so you can't actually see the bacon through the paper in the photo above. Sorry I didn't take any photos of the process, but there are photos in the links below. Those 3 jars above contain about half a pound in each jar, my trial run. The next batch will be strips cut in half, to fit in wide-mouth pint jars.

Here are some links to check out. The first link below, and the maple syrup link, both have good photos of the process, and I like that they use food grade parchment paper, not brown paper bags others used that may contain chemicals.

Canning Bacon Links
http://texascookin.blogspot.com/2012/08/putting-up-canned-bacon.html
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/gay127.html
http://www.rural-revolution.com/2011/01/canning-bacon.html
http://akhomesteaders.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=foodcache&action=display&thread=289

Maple Syrup or Tabasco flavored Bacon

RuralSpin read and tried the various ways online to can bacon, finding fault with most of them. She details what she didn't like, and then she experimented to come up with her own hybrid version. She says, "You can consider other flavorings for your bacon besides just maple syrup or Tabasco sauce, including brown sugar, chili powder, cayenne pepper, dried thyme, dried basil, cinnamon, or a mixture. For dried herbs and spices, just sprinkle them liberally over your bacon before rolling." 

One of the best lunches away from home that I've had in years was Shrimp and Cheese Grits. The generous garnish over the whole dish included hickory-smoked bacon laced with maple syrup. I think I could make that bacon with RuralSpin's technique, so I'm trying her method next!

Vacuum Sealing Dry Foods in Mason Jars

Set-up to seal jars. Vacuum tube attaches to a port on top of my sealer, just behind the tubing.

I've had a vacuum sealer for several years and I love it! I bought it because I was tired of freezer-burn on the meats in the freezer, and for sealing veggies in bags to freeze... but I haven't been using of all the functions... like vacuum sealing dry goods in mason jars.

Inside of the sealing cap, and 15 bean soup mix.

Vacuum lid attached to seal jar, be sure metal jar lid is centered.

I hadn't thought much about vacuum sealing jars of purchased dried goods or home dehydrated fruits, vegetables, jerky and even mushrooms, because in my pantry they generally stay crisp, partly due to the dry heat from the furnace in winter. However, lately I cooked some stored dried beans that took forever to cook to a soft, edible stage. 

So now I'm wondering if vacuum sealing keeps moisture out, can it also keep the minimal amount of moisture (like in beans) in? It's sure worth a try since I already store most of those items in jars.

FoodSaver makes a Universal lid, but I couldn't get it to work on Rock Candy. Guess I need a wide-mouth lid sealer cap.

I'm also looking at vacuum sealing items that become rancid from exposure to oxygen, like flour and cornmeal, which I usually keep in the freezer. (One of my goals is to reduce dependence on the freezer.) Sugar and salt that are vacuum sealed won't become hard bricks either, and herbs and spices will have a much longer shelf life.

Another benefit of vacuum sealing dry goods in jars is that the lids can be re-used over and over, unlike the lids on home canned foods. For example, if you open a jar of thyme, you can take out what you need, and immediately re-seal the jar. (I just got a big bag of French Thyme from Penzey's, it's far tastier than what I grow in my garden. I'd hate for it to lose all flavor before I use it up, so it will get vacuum sealed in a pint canning jar.)

But what if there's no electricity? It's cheap and easy to make a hand cranked pump to seal jars. The pump is an automotive vacuum pump (I believe it's used to bleed brake lines), and the jar cap is made for use with electric vacuum sealers.

Wendy Dewitt has some great food storage videos on Youtube. Wendy has taught food storage for years; she's a Mormon, and the Mormon church recommends every member stores a year's supply of food. The video I watched was quite long, but she covers a lot of ground in it, including vacuum sealing jars of dried foods, where to store what, and rotation of stored goods. Her other videos are shorter segments, and more manageable if you only have a few minutes at a time to watch them.