Vegetable Soup

  Vegetable soup is another one of those foods that is synonymous with the cooler weather of fall. Making the soup also gives us a way to use up all of last year's frozen vegetables that didn't get used up as well as any new fresh vegetables that are available. Usually around the cabbage harvest is when we make our soup, so for our location it is around mid October or so. This is definitely one of our comfort foods and it fills the house with a smell that is so nice to walk in to. This is not necessarily a definitive recipe so to speak, as with many of our recipes it is more of a guide and we use whatever we have available.

Vegetable Soup (Makes about 12 quarts)

2 quarts vegetable stock

2 28 oz cans crushed tomatoes with basil

3 quarts frozen crushed tomatoes (from last year)
2 quarts frozen sweet corn (from last year)
2 quarts frozen Lima Beans (from last year)
2 quarts frozen green peas (from this year)
1 quart frozen yellow squash (from last year)
1 medium head of cabbage, sliced medium thin
1 quart of fresh carrots, course chop
1/4 c fresh parsley, course chop
3 tbsp salt
1 tbsp pepper
2 tsp garlic powder

  We used a 15 quart pot to make the soup. I added only enough water to get the pot up between the 14 and 15 quart mark. It will cook down to about the 12 quart level. We add everything to the pot and brought it to nearly boiling and simmered it for about 8 hours. Be sure to taste it at least at the halfway point to adjust any of the seasoning components. Stir it every now and then to keep the soup from scorching. If the soup does scorch, don't scrape the stuck bits on the bottom of the pot. This will contaminate the whole pot. Just transfer it to an appropriately sized container and clean the soup pot or use another one if you have it to spare. If you are going to eat it right away or freeze it then it should be ready to go.

  If you are going to can the soup here are a few things to remember:

• Don't add any starch components to the soup like pasta, potatoes or thickening agents. You can add these things when you heat the canned soup for consumption.
• You can cook the soup for 2 hours less because the canning time is 1.5 hours.
• Do this when you have enough time to can the soup after making it. We can only do 5 quarts at a time and since we canned 10 quarts total we had about 4 hours of canning time after making the soup. If time is tight, you can make the soup one night and store it in the refrigerator (after it cools) and then can it the next night. Just remember to get the soup back up to near boiling before jarring.

  We put ours in hot clean quart jars and processed them in a pressure canner for 90 minutes at 10 pounds pressure. This was the first time we canned it and we have sampled the final product and it is wonderful. We will definitely do this again!

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Poultry Seasoning

  Poultry seasoning must be worth about the same amount per pound as gold or at least my local grocery store thinks so. I must have spent $20 last year on this blend alone. After that I made up my mind I was going to grow as many of the components as I could in my garden and find the rest of the ingredients cheap at a bulk spice retailer. I was able to easily grow the sage, thyme, parsley and rosemary. The volume I made today would have cost me over $20 in bulk already mixed and about $40 in those tiny cylindrical containers at the grocery store. I calculate it cost me only $1 using the stuff I grew and the other bulk components I bought. Ka-ching! Now if I could only find a way to get those bagged bread cubes for something less than the going rate for silver I would be in business. :-)

Poultry Seasoning

1 tbsp dried sage

1 tbsp dried rosemary

1 tbsp dried thyme

1 tbsp dried marjoram

1/2 tsp celery seed

1/2 tsp dried parsley

3/4 tsp ground pepper

  Put it all in a coffee grinder and mix it for 5-10 seconds. Done! This makes about the same amount as one of those small cylindrical containers you buy at the grocery store for $5.

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Lucy's Awesome Carrot Cake

  I never met Lucy. She befriended my girlfriend in another life and she wrote down her carrot cake recipe for her to try. Lucy is no longer with us but she is immortalized through her recipe. This is a perfect excuse to use up some those miniature carrots I grew in the bucket garden too. :-)

Lucy's Carrot Cake (1 loaf pan or 1/2 small cake pan)

1 c sugar (the poor dear forgot to write this down ;-)

1 c flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

2 eggs

2/3 c veg. oil

2 tsp grated orange zest

1 tsp vanilla

1 c carrots, finely chopped

3/4 c golden raisins

1/2 c walnuts, chopped

  Pre-heat oven to 350 F. Mix all ingredients together. Bake for 40 minutes in a loaf pan. Double the recipe for a medium to large sized cake pan.

Cream Cheese Frosting (makes about 1 1/2 c)

1/2 stick butter, melted

3 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 c 10x sugar

1 tsp grated orange zest

  Mix ingredients well. Frost cake when cooled. Enjoy!

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Drago's Charbroiled Oysters

    If you ever get to New Orleans, I highly recommend you stop in at Drago's for some charbroiled oysters. Several months ago I was in New Orleans on business and I ate these every night I was there. Lately I have been jonesing for them again and when my aunt offered to bring a bushel of oysters back from the Carolinas, I knew exactly what to do with them.

Drago's Charbroiled Oysters (Makes 8 servings or if you are me, just 1 serving)

32 oysters on the half shell

1 c butter

2 lg cloves garlic, pressed

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 c grated Pecorino Ramano cheese

1/2 c fresh parsley, finely chopped

  Heat your grill to medium high heat. Melt butter in a sauce pan. Add garlic and pepper to butter. Mix cheeses together in a bowl. Spoon melted butter mixture into each oyster. Add a pinch of cheese mixture. Add a pinch of parsley. Grill for 8 minutes until hot and bubbly. Enjoy! :-)

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Holiday Cranberry Relish

  This is my mother's recipe. I think she may have been inspired by one of my aunts, but she has made it her own over the years. It just isn't the holidays without this around the house. We use it to go along with our turkey or sometimes we eat it all by itself. The sweet-tart flavor really hits the spot when the weather starts getting cold.

Holiday Cranberry Relish

1 lbs frozen fresh cranberries

1 small sweet red apple, cored

1 small tart green apple, cored

2 small navel oranges (or 1 large navel orange, include half of the orange peel)

2 c crushed pineapple

1 c sugar
1 c orange juice

1 small box Jell-O (Cherry, Black Cherry, Rasberry, whatever floats your boat)
1 c craisins (optional - I have started adding these lately)

 Using a food processor, coarsely grind cranberries, apples, oranges, craisins and pineapple. Add sugar, orange juice and jello, stir well. Refrigerate overnight before serving.

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(edited 11/24/18 to reflect some minor changes)

Traditional Brown Irish Soda Bread

  We recently returned from Ireland and one of my favorite things from Ireland is soda bread. I want to set the record straight on this subject. Many people think Irish Soda Bread is some sort of fruit cake like bread with nuts and dried fruit. It doesn't help when you can go to tourist type places in Ireland and buy something that resembles the description above. Understand one thing, soda bread is peasant food, damn good peasant food, but peasant food none-the-less. The traditional version is very simple. The people who subsisted on this bread didn't have an abundance of sugar, nuts and dried fruit.

  I looked around on the internet for a traditional recipe and got a wide veriety of results. I picked what I thought was the closest version and adapted as necessary. The traditional recipe contains only whole wheat flour, baking soda, salt and buttermilk. Here is the recipe I used:

Traditional Brown Irish Soda Bread (2 loaves or 4 rounds)

4 c whole wheat flour

1 c flour
1/3 c rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 c buttermilk

  Preheat oven to 425 degrees farenheit. I didn't have buttermilk so I used the common substitute of 1 tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice for every cup of milk. Combine all ingedients in an appropriate bowl. Only work the dough as much as is needed to thoroughly combine ingedients, no more. I put my dough in a Pyrex loaf pan. Bake for 40 minutes.
  For a more traditional result, use irish oat meal instead of rolled oats and form the loaves into rounds and score the top of the loaf into quarters.
 
  Of course, the final results makes a great vehicle for butter and our homemade peach jam. Enjoy!

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Grilled Sourdough and Eggplant Sandwich

  I saw a great recipe on another blog that I like to read and it inspired me to make this sandwich. I wanted to put a link on this entry to that recipe, but after searching through the contents I couldn't find it. However, the blog has a lot of good stuff on it and here is a link to it, http://www.eatdrink onewoman.com/.

  This was a natural evolution for me. I really like all the components to this sandwich, so it was inevitable. I prepared it the same way I would a grilled cheese sandwich. Butter two slices of sourdough bread. Put them butter side down in a pan on medium heat, pile a little shredded mozzarell cheese on each slice, put a slice of grilled eggplant on each slice of bread and put a little red sauce on one side. When the cheese has melted a little, invert one slice on to the other and brown each side until done. Enjoy!

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Country Ribs with Plum BBQ Sauce

  I knew this was coming when I posted the plum jam recipe and it worked out well. I had a general recipe in mind. So, after confirming a few of the proportions on the internet this is what I came up with:

Plum BBQ Sauce (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 c plum jam, recipe

1 clove garlic, pressed

1/4 c vinegar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground pepper

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp hot pepper flakes

1/4 c brown sugar

1 tbsp cornstarch

3 tbsp cool water

  Place the plum jam in a sauce pan. Combine water and corn starch, mix until smooth. Add cornstarch mixture to the plum jam and mix well. Add the remaining ingredients to the sauce pan. Mix well. Bring to a boil and immediately lower the heat to medium. Stir often. Continue simmering until the sauce is thick enough to cling to your meat, about 5-10 minutes. We applied the sauce 3 or 4 times during the grilling process and reserved a small amount for plating. I probably don't have to mention this would work well on chicken too. Enjoy!

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No Pectin Peach Jam

  Not much to say about this item except that it FREAKIN ROCKS and we are going to make more next year. This is good stuff. This may be my favorite thing out of all the items we canned this year. This was simple to do although, like the plum jam, it took some patience because we didn't add any pectin. I read through several recipes until I found a couple of pectin free versions. This is what we used:

Pectin Free Peach Jam (Makes 3 pints)

6 c peaches (pealed, pitted and finely chopped)

1/4 c lemon juice

3 c sugar

  We found using our food processor worked best for chopping the peaches. Combine peaches, lemon juice and sugar in an appropriate sized pot. Mix thoroughly. Bring to a boil and immediately lower the heat to medium low. We left it at this stage for 2 hours making sure to stir often. Skim any foam and discard. This was the part that took patience. You can certainly speed things up by using pectin. You could also raise the heat a little and stir almost constantly for 45 minutes to an hour. The Ball Blue Book explains the consistency to look for when a jam is ready to put in jars. This link explains it as well. We used the sheet method. Ladle into hot jars leaving 1/4 inch head space, seal and process in a boiling water canner for 15 minutes. Enjoy! :-)

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Last Garden Update for 2010

  Well, the last of the garden has been picked. Tomatoes, tiny bell peppers and a few herbs are all that remains. As usual we try to use up what we grow, but I won't bother to tell you how our green tomato pie turned out. We nicknamed it tobacco juice pie if that is any indicator. :-) The green tomato relish looks like it came out ok. We canned it already, but I haven't tasted it yet.

  It has been many weeks since my last post, but we haven't been idle. I have so many things to write about and hopefully I'll find the time to get it all done. There are still several canning items to post about from late August and early September and we canned some bread and butter cauliflower too. We made our own italian sausage and sourdough cinnamon rolls that are heavenly. I can't believe I have so many things in the queue that haven't made it to the blog yet. Look for more posts in the near future.

  Oh, and I just enabled comments for non-members. We'll see how that goes for a while. :-)

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No Pectin Plum Jam

  A week or so ago I posted a couple of updates about a marathon canning session due to some free produce we acquired. Twenty four pints of plum jam are one of the fruits (pun intended) of our labor. I only made a few pints the first time around, but it came out so well we did twenty one more. Plum jam isn't something you hear about every day and quite frankly I am surprised. We are not big jam eaters here, but I can foresee several uses for this recipe beyond your typical pb&j application. Currently I am planning to use it as a base for a liqueur, barbecue sauce for pork ribs and glaze for roasted meats. We used the Damson Plum recipe out of the Ball Blue Book and as it turns out I believe these are actually Damson Plums, though I didn't know it at the time.

No Pectin Plum Jam (yields three pints)

5 c coarsely chopped plums

3 c sugar

1/2 c water

  We used our food processor to chop the plums. Combine plums, sugar, and water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil slowly, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.. Cook rapidly to the gelling point. This takes about 30 to 40 minutes. Stir frequently to prevent scorching. Remove from heat and skim any foam. Ladle into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

  We changed two things. We used less water than the original recipe calls for because the cooking time is a little long and I processed my jars in a pressure canner for 10 minutes. By 'no pectin' I really mean no pectin added. Plums are naturally high in pectin and if you are patient, you don't need to add any. I prefer not to add anything besides simple ingredients to any of my food if not absolutely necessary.

  I haven't done anything with the jam yet, but you can bet it will show up in at least one recipe here at some point. Enjoy,

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Baked Butternut Squash

  I discovered Butternut squash relatively late in life and since it has been in season for the last couple of weeks it seemed appropriate to do an entry on this versatile squash. It has become one of my staple sides for large family dinners and it is pretty easy to prepare while other tasks for large family dinners are being completed.

Baked Butternut Squash

1 Butternut squash

3 tbsp butter

salt

pepper

  Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut the squash in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and fibrous innards until just the meat of the squash is left. Lay on a baking sheet. I slice two small flat spots on the rounded bottoms so they don't roll and spill the melted butter. Add a tbsp of butter to each squash half and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 1 hour.

  When the squash has cooled a little, scoop the baked flesh out with a spoon and place in a bowl. I add another tbls of butter, mash it up with a potato masher, and add salt and pepper to taste. I like to eat it just like that. Many people like to add cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg before putting it in the oven. I think that tastes good too. These are easy enough to acquire and prepare so a little experimentation isn't too troublesome. Enjoy! :-)

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Fresh Pork Breakfast Sausage

We love sausage. This endeavor was initiated due to my girlfriend's allergy to MSG. I wanted her to taste sausage again because she likes it so much and can never have it. I did my own little empirical experiment and read every sausage ingredient list in every food store I went to for about 2 months and every single sausage package had MSG or the lesser known name for MSG of natural salt listed. I did recently find Johnsonville Brats without MSG and we eat a lot of those, but they aren't breakfast sausage. So, where to start? I started with Alton Brown's recipe from the Food Network and made it my own. Here is what I came up with:

Pork Breakfast Sausage
2 lbs fresh, cheap pork (bones not included)
2 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp black pepper
4 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp garlic powder

  I am sure there are sausage connoisseurs out there that will tell you to use only certain cuts of meat. In fact Alton Brown recommends using pork butt, but I tend toward what is available and economical. In this version we used a Pork Loin Sirloin End Roast (whatever that is). I recently saw a pork shoulder for $1.69 a pound and mammasan thought that might make good sausage, so we'll probably try that at some point. The bottom line is, use the pork you want to use! You want 2 lbs of meat after de-boning. If you do have a bone, make sure you save it for a soup or Gramma and Grampa's sauce. Just throw it in freezer bag and freeze it until you need it.

  Cube the meat and place in a large bowl. Mix all the other ingredients together and sprinkle over the meat cubes. Mix well. Chill for 1 hour. Grind according to you meat grinder's instructions. We don't have a grinder, so we used our food processor. If you use a food processor, don't fill the container more than 1/3 full at a time. I ground all the meat up and put it back in the mixing bowl and gave everything a good stir when it was done.

  We froze our extra sausage. Whenever I freeze meat I try to make sure it is flat so I can stack it and thaw it easier. We just put about 1/2 lb in a freezer bag and got as much air as possible out before sealing it. Then I press it flat and stack it in the freezer. A quick defrost cycle in the microwave first thing in the morning or an over night thaw in the fridge should have it ready for breakfast. Here is the finished product:

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Aunt Lib's Bread and Butter Pickles

  The continuing saga of the canning marathon. We canned twenty three quarts of bread and butter pickles. We used the Ball Blue Book recipe for the majority of our bread and butter pickles, but we have found a recipe we like better since then. This is the recipe we recommend:

Aunt Lib's Bread and Butter Pickles (about 4 quarts)

4 qts cucumbers, unpeeled

4 medium onions, sliced thin

3 c white vinegar

4-5 c sugar

1 1/4 tsp turmeric

1 tsp celery seed

2 tsp whole mustard seed

1/2 c canning salt for cucumber prep

ice for cucumber prep

   Combine cucumber and onion slices in a large bowl, layering with salt; cover with ice. Make sure the salt is mixed well throughout. Let sit for 3 hours. Rinse the cucumbers and onions well to get all the salt off. Combine vinegar, sugar, turmeric, celery seed and mustard seed into a pot. Bring to a boil. Add rinsed and drained cucumbers and onions. Continue cooking just until the cucumbers change color. Only a few minutes. Pack warm jars with the cucumbers and onions. Split the liquid between jars. The liquid should completely cover the cucumbers. Leave 1/4 inch of head space. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner. Enjoy!

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Fire Roasted Red Peppers

Roasted red peppers are another handy preparation to have around. We harvested these from the bucket garden and Mommasan had the great idea of roasting them, so on the grill they went. We hadn't done this before, so we have some wisdom to pass on. Cutting in half and coring was the only prep work we did. Getting the roasting part right is the tricky part. You want the peppers to lay as flat as possible with the skin side toward the heating surface. You can do these under your oven's broiler as well. The trick is getting every part of the skin blistered. If it isn't blistered everywhere then it will be tough to get all the skin off. The skin comes off very easily if it is blistered properly. If you are having a tough time getting the skins off put'em back on the grill. We had more than we could immediately use so I canned the remainder into half-pint jars for later.

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Fire Roasted Eggplant With Garlic

  This is a pretty versatile preparation. I was driven to try this because we had some eggplant lying around getting soft and roasting it on the grill sounded like a great idea. You can see I cut couple of slits in each half lengthwise and stuffed whole cloves of garlic in there to roast along with the eggplant. The picture above is the eggplant right off the grill. The following pics are prior to and during grilling:

  To prepare the eggplant for grilling, I simply sliced it in half, made four or five slits for the garlic cloves, drizzled a little olive oil on top and finished with a little sea salt and cracked black pepper. Each side was grilled for about 5 minutes and then I shut half the grill off and placed the eggplant on the 'cold' side and closed the lid for about 20 minutes. All the grilling was done on the lowest flame.

  After roasting, the eggplant can be scooped out and placed in a bowl. It is now ready for several wonderful dishes including a rustic mixture of feta, roasted tomatoes and herbs served over rice, quinoa or couscous as well as roasted eggplant pesto. These particular beauties ended up mashed together with roasted red peppers and olive oil and served on thin slices of toasted sourdough bread. Use your imagination. I am sure there must be at least a dozen excellent ways to use roasted eggplant. Enjoy! :-)

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Sourdough Bread

  I have embarked upon another journey, only, this one has me a little more excited than pasta and canning. I feel like Tom Hanks' character on the beach in Cast Away when he has his arms extended to the heavens shouting, "I HAVE MADE FIRE." Only, I would shout, "I HAVE MADE BREAD." Bread you say? Anyone can make bread .... Well, as it turns out this last statement is true, but there is a little twist ... you are only allowed to use three ingredients; flour, water and salt. No store bought yeast, no oil or butter, no fancy dough conditioners or vital gluten, no store bought pre-mixed dough in a bag ... just flour, water and salt. What do you say now ...?

  If you are not already familiar with this process then you will be amazed at how easy it is to do, how nice it looks out of the oven and how supremely awesome it tastes. This was made with only three ingredients, some time to prepare and read about the process and some common kitchen items. I am not going to describe the step by step detailed process to you or shoot a video because many people before me have already done this and they are much better at it than I am. I will give you a road map though and provide you with my lessons learned. I started this journey about a week and a half ago and had some failures in the beginning, but now I know what to do and maybe I can save you a little time if you care to try this. First of all this is what my first success looked like out of the oven this morning:

I think it looks pretty sexy. :-)  Anyone can do this. It might even be fun to do with kids because it is that easy. First, learn about sourdough starters and how to make them by visiting this link. Sourdough Baking by John Ross will explain most of what you need to know about making a sourdough starter and he will even give you a recipe for making the bread, but I suggest you read on and follow a different bread recipe which will unfold as we go. Don't add commercial yeast either. If you follow John's direction (minus the commercial yeast) it will work. I will mention a few things here while we are on the subject of sourdough starters. If you have city water, don't use the water straight out of the tap for the dough or the starter. It may kill your local wild yeasts that have setup camp in your sourdough starter container. This was the cause of all of my failures. As soon as I stopped using my city water out of the tap, things started coming together. Hopefully I can help someone avoid this frustration because it almost stopped me from continuing. Feel free to use well water from the tap or city water from a Brita filter or I read you can leave a container of city water out on your counter for 8 to 10 hours and the chlorine will go away.

Next, watch the video below. It will explain a technique that somehow attracted a cult following. Very similar techniques are used in other place around the world, but somehow in all our wisdom and gadgetry we lost this process and Mark Bittman and Jim Leahy are here to remind us.

Ok, the important parts to take away from the first video is the container Jim Leahy used to bake the bread and how simple his technique is. The next video will tie this technique together with sourdough baking and provide an easy to use and remember recipe for the bread. I want to warn you, the video is a little freaky, but it has all the info you need to get where we are going.

That's it! It couldn't be any easier. Here is the bread recipe if you missed it:

No Knead Sourdough Bread (1,2,3 method or 1,1,2,3 method for you detailists)

1 c sourdough starter

1 c warm water

2 tsp salt

3 c flour

There may be some differences due to oven type, choice of baking vessel or sourdough starter characteristics, but this is the general process which can be tweaked for your set of variables. Mix the ingredients together in a bowl. This step shouldn't take more than a minute. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or equivalent covering. Let the dough rise for 6 to 12 hours. Many factors contribute to this time. Ambient temperature, water temperature, sourdough starter yeast population .. etc. When the dough has doubled, put your baking vessel in the oven and turn the oven temperature to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven is at the set temperature, carefully (so you don't deflate it) dump the dough on to a floured surface. Fold all four sides toward the center of the dough. Sprinkle corn meal in your baking vessel or all over the outside of your dough. Put the dough in the baking vessel and cover for 25 minutes. Remove the lid from the baking vessel and bake for 10 minutes more.

A few things I noticed ...

I used a $10 Granite Ware Roaster to make the loaf this morning. I also purchased an unglazed clay vessel from Romertopf for the same purpose. I noticed they definitely have different baking characteristics and I am guessing it has to do with the thickness of the vessel material. My loaves darken much quicker on the thinner Granite Ware roaster than with the Romertopf. I am guessing the you could also use the glazed ceramic insert from a CrockPot. For the crock lid just used some tin foil because most CrockPot lids have some sort of plastic handle that won't survive the high oven temperatures. It is important that the vessel have a lid, preferably the vessel should be bigger than your loaf so you can get it out and use some sort of edible grit on the bottom of the vessel to keep the dough from sticking. You can use corn meal, multi-grain cereal like Uncle Bob's, wheat bran or anything like those things already mentioned. Also, the instructions for the sourdough starter tell you to throw half of it away when you feed it. It also instructs to add 1/2 c water and 1/2 c of flour. You don't have to throw it out. You can use it to make all kinds of things like pancakes or biscuits. If you know you are making several loaves then add more than 1/2 c of water and flour. Just make sure there is enough starter left to continue the colony.

My intent here was not to re-invent sourdough bread. People have been making this bread for thousands of years. It doesn't need to be re-invented, but somehow it seems out of reach for most people which seems completely wrong. Maybe it just needs to be re-introduced. Something that was a common everyday process has been replaced with a loaf of Wonder bread form the grocery store. I feel sorrow for those people who will never experience what I felt and tasted this morning. Experiment with it. Try making rye, whole wheat, multi-grain, pumpernickle, ciabatta, english muffins, buscuits, sweet breads ...... the list is endless, but use the process explained above to do it. 

If you give this a try, you won't be sorry and maybe we'll get a chance to break bread together sometime. :-)

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Update

Ok, tonight we did 9 quarts of dill pickles and 12 quarts of bread and butter pickles. We probably still have 14 quarts worth of cucumbers left. We won't get to these until Saturday though.

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Gramma & Grampa's Pasta Sauce

This is a family recipe that I'll wager only family members will appreciate. It isn't a 15 generation Italian recipe that came to America on a boat. Nope, it was invented right here in the states by my Mother's parents and it was born out of the necessity to feed 6 children with what little money they had. I use the term recipe loosely because they didn't really follow a recipe when they made it. They just used whatever they could get their hands on and they put it all together in the same pot and cooked it for a long time. When it was ready it always had the same distinctive taste that still takes me back 35 years today. My mother, being the oldest, remembered many of the ingredients that were gathered to make the sauce, so it wasn't too difficult to recreate. Below is our rendition of this family recipe.

Gramma & Grampa's Pasta Sauce

10-12 quarts tomatoes, skinned and cored

1 large onion, chopped

24 oz tomato paste

2 lbs chicken hearts

2 lbs chicken gizzards

1 large pork bone or boney pork chop

1 chicken back or chicken thigh with the skin

10 cloves garlic, pressed

1/4 c salt

2 tbsp pepper

1/4 c sugar

1/2 c fresh oregano, chopped

1/4 c fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 c fresh basil, chopped

2 sprigs of rosemary

4 bay leaves

1/2 tbsp sage or poultry seasoning

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Heat the oil in a 15 quart sauce pot. Add onions and pressed garlic to the pot to render the aromatics into the oil. This process should only take a few minutes. Do not scorch the garlic or onions. Add tomatoes. If using fresh tomatoes, crush them with your hands in the pot after they have been skinned and cored. We actually added 2 28oz cans of crushed tomatoes to the pot because we didn't have quite enough tomatoes from the garden. Fresh tomatoes are not a must and we used them because that is what we had. Add salt, pepper, sugar and herbs to the pot and bring to a boil. Stir often to avoid scorching. Lower heat and add all the meat and bones. Make sure you count the boney things that are added so you can fish them out later. Simmer uncovered for at least 8 hours and if using fresh tomatoes, at least 12 hours is needed. Stir at least every hour. The sauce will transform from a bright red runny mixture to a full bodied dark red sauce. When the sauce is done fish out the bones, bay leaves and rosemary sprigs(if you can find them).

If dried herbs are substituted, only use 1/3 the amount listed above. Most of the moisture has been removed from the dried herbs, so volumetrically they are not compatible. I would encourage everyone to use fresh herbs as often as possible, but I understand that isn't always easy.

As you can see from the picture, we decided to can this batch. The freezer tends to get crowded and with the new canner this became an option. We ended up with 10 quarts of sauce from a beginning volume of about 14 quarts. We'll see how it holds up. Enjoy! ;-)

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Update

Tonight we processed the apples and canned 11 quarts of bread and butter pickles. I want to pass on a couple of ideas that may be of use in the fruit processing for pies. In last night's update I mentioned freezing peach pie filling. We made a big batch of filling and lined pie plates with plastic wrap and filled them with the filling. We then covered them and stuck them in the freezer. When they are frozen we will take them out of the pie plates and wrap them for stacking in the freezer. When we are ready to make a pie, we will take one of the frozen pie fillings and thaw it and have our pre-measured and prepared pie filling ready to go. I can't see any reason this shouldn't work on any similar pie. The next idea that may be of use is the way we processed the apples tonight. We peeled and cored the apples like we normally would for pie filling and soaked them in lemon juice water to keep the oxidation at bay. We lined a cookie sheet with plastic wrap and put the apple on the plastic in rows and layers with more plastic wrap between layers. When these are frozen, we can put individual apple slices in a freezer bag and pull as many as we want out later for making pies or whatever else we need them for. More pickles tomorrow night. :-)

TTFN

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Mild Green Chile Sauce

The pepper plants are still cranking. As a matter of fact, there are probably enough peppers ready to pick for another batch by now. Green chile sauce comes in handy for all sorts of things, so a few jars will definitely get used over the next 8 months or so. I never made this before, so I got on the internet and read how others do it and this is what I came up with:

Mild Green Chile Sauce

25 Jalepeno peppers

10 green Cowhorn peppers

15 green Cayenne peppers

10 Hungarian Wax peppers

13 dried chinese hot peppers, divided

10 cloves garlic

2 tbsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 large red tomato

2 small red bell peppers

1 yellow bell pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

4 c distilled vinegar

De-stem all the peppers. Also de-seed the bell peppers. Process all ingredients except olive oil, vinegar and 8 dried chinese peppers in a food processor. Heat oil in a 4 quart or larger pot and add processed ingredients and vinegar. Bring to a boil and then lower heat and simmer for several hours. I started with about 6 pints of material and ended up with  4 pints. I added 2 dried chinese hot peppers to each pint and canned the result according to the Ball Blue book.

This recipe was driven by the produce gathered from my bucket garden. Any mixture of ingredients similar to this will result in a similar product. Use what you have. The resulting product was fairly mild, so I added 2 dried chinese hot peppers to each pint before canning, to add a little heat. Enjoy! :-)

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Update

Ok, we have a busy week ahead of us. This past weekend a friend arranged for me to receive 10 lbs of plums, 15 lbs of apples, 10 lbs of peaches and about 80 lbs of cucumbers. With the stock we already had from the bucket garden and the new goodies, in the past two days we managed to can 5 quarts of plums, can 3 pints of plum jam, freeze 3 peach pie fillings, bake 1 peach cobbler, bake 2 loaves of sourdough bread, and make 2 batches of ratatouille. We have untold quarts of pickles to make yet. Look for all these entries in the next few weeks.

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Canned Peaches

  A friend called on a Sunday afternoon around 2pm and said he had peaches for me and that they were a little on the ripe side and would need processed as soon as possible. Well, I guess it was time to learn how to can peaches! Fortunately when I picked up the pressure canner I got more jars and the Ball Blue Book which comes highly recommended by the way. I got mine for $2.99 at my local country store. It is well worth the info inside. Especially if you are a beginner like myself. I got the peaches home at 6pm and we had 7 quarts cooling on the counter by 9pm. Not too bad for the first time. 7 quarts may not seem like much, but each jar holds between 25 and 30 peach halves.

  We blanched the peaches in batches of about 10 to slip the skins off, sliced them in half, scooped the pit and reddish flesh out and submersed them in a lemon water ice bath until canning time. The lemon did a good job of keeping the peaches nice and bright. There weren't instructions for pressure canning the peaches so I used the time for water bath processing instead. The blue book recommends a 30 minute time for the boiling water bath processing method and I later read that 10 minutes is sufficient in pressure canner, so I will remember that for next time. I tasted them for the first time last night and I thought they were pretty good. I highly recommend canning whatever you'll eat. It is satisfying and you have control over what goes in the jar. :-)

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Mel's Famous Brisket Tacos

My buddy Mel invited me over for dinner not too long ago and made his brisket tacos. He has been talking about these tacos for weeks and now that I have had them, I can see why. These things rock! If you like TexMex, then you will love these.

Taco Filling

5 lb brisket

1 c taco seasoning

2 jalapeno, sliced

1 tbsp black pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tsp red pepper flake

1 12oz can diced tomatoes (with green peppers and onions)

24 oz water

(3) ONLY (3) Drops of Da’Bomb Hot Sauce (1.5 Million Scoville)

1 can french fried onions

Sear the brisket. Mix taco seasoning, jalapeno, pepper, salt, pepper flakes, tomatoes, hot sauce and water in the base of a pressure cooker. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Add brisket to pressure cooker. Cook the brisket in the pressure cooker for 45 minutes according to your cookers intructions.

When the brisket is done, remove it from the pot and shred the meat. Add the meat back into the pot and mix everything up well. Serve the filling in a soft tortilla with your favorite Chipotle BBQ sauce and French Fried Onions. Refried beans and Spanish Rice make great sides. For quick Spanish Rice, Mels adds a jar of salsa to almost ready minute rice and then covers it back up to finish the cooking process.

These were done very well and if I hadn't seen him make everything I may have thought he bought the food prepared from a good TexMex restaurant and pawned it off as his own.

TTFN

BTR

Quinoa Pudding with Macerated Strawberries and Pistachios

Ok, so I am going through my weekly routine of substituting quinoa for rice in all the recipes I like and I come up with this brilliant idea ... quinoa pudding! A very good friend of the family has this awesome rice pudding recipe and I thought I might try my hand at converting it. Well, I didn't exactly have the recipe for this awesome rice pudding, but I thought I new the secret and I could make my way through it. So, I get on the internet like I normally do and start studying other people's rice pudding recipes and the thought came to me to search for quinoa pudding and see what comes up. I got several hits on Google and I felt a little deflated because my idea wasn't so original after all. So anyway, I am making my way through the results and I hit the Quinoa Pudding Mother Ship! Canelle et Vanille is a blog by Aran Goyoaga who is a pastry chef and photographer. What a great food blog with excellent photos. If you are food lover you have to check it out. I immediately switched gears and started adapting Aran's recipe for the stuff I have around the house.

Quinoa Pudding with Macerated Strawberries and Pistachios

2 1/2 c regular milk

1 c vanilla coffee creamer

1 c quinoa (uncooked)

1 tbsp vanilla

1/4 c sugar

1 tbsp sugar

1 pinch of salt

1/2 c sliced strawberries
1/4 c chopped pistachios

Get the sliced strawberries going in a bowl with the tbsp of sugar on top and let it sit while everything else comes together. Rinse the quinoa good. I do this like sushi rice and put the quinoa in the pot I am going to cook it in and just run lots of water on it to get the bitter dust off the grains. Drain the quinoa as best you can. Combine the quinoa, milk, creamer, vanilla, 1/4 c sugar and salt in a pot. Mix well and bring to a boil while stirring often. Immediately turn the heat down to medium low. Stir every minute or two for about 30 minutes. The mixture will thicken. Serve in an appropriate container topped with strawberries and pistachios. Makes about four servings.

This recipe, done well, will knock your socks off. :-) Enjoy

TTFN

BTR

New Pressure Canner

So I have a few canning session under my belt and I decided to get a pressure canner. Actually, as I am writing this blog I am canning Gramma and Grampa's pasta sauce. Little pressure noises are eminating from the kitchen. I went to my favorite kitchen gadget store and priced this 22 quart model at around $100. I also noticed their Ball jars were about $3 dollars more than the country store where I grew up, so I left there and made my way south and was rewarded with a $20 savings on the pressure canner at the country store. Kaching! This should provide some more blogging material. Hasta.

BTR

Chinese 5 Color Pepper Plant

  A good friend of mine got me this Chinese 5 Color Hot Pepper plant. These are very beautiful ornamental hot pepper plants. The fruit is edible and comes in green, purple, yellow, orange and red. It appears the peppers change color as they mature. I am told the little peppers pack quite punch too. I am going to see if I can save some seeds for next year. What an awesome gift. :-)

TTFN

BTR

Garden Update 2

  Well, I guess the garden is in full production now. In the last two days we got two large bowls of produce. The tomatoes and peppers are coming in large quantities. The zuchini and squash have dropped off a bit. They may be getting too much water between the everyday watering they get from me and the large amount of rain we got in a short period recently. I have three softball sized watermellons and two butternut squash on the way as well. None of the root vegetable did very well in the buckets. I will probably skip those next year.

Both bowls are destined for the sauce pot. The tomatoes will be used for my mom's family pasta sauce recipe and the hot peppers will be used for hot sauce.

TTFN

BTR

Refrigerator Pickled Hot Peppers

This started out as more of an experiment than anything because of the shear number of hot peppers my plants are producing. I was afraid they would go to waste if I didn't find something to do with them. I like pickled hot pepper rings, so I thought I would try to make my own. Note: This process is not suitable for storing the jars outside of a refrigerator.

Refrigerator Pickled Hot Peppers

2 medium cucumbers sliced lengthwise and halved to fit in the jars

5 pints mixed hot peppers

8 c distilled vinegar

8 c water

1 c pickling salt

16 whole cloves garlic peeled

8 tsp whole peppercorns

8 tsp dried onion

4 tsp dried dill

8 pint canning jars with lids

ice

The trick to crunchy pickles is an ice bath before jarring. The cucumbers were cut into spears and sized to fit in the pint jars. The peppers were cut into rings where appropriate and long skinny peppers were cut to fit in the pint jars longwise. We used Cowhorn, Jalepeno, Cayenne and Hungarian Wax peppers. Once the peppers and cucumbers were cut and sized, they all went in to a pot slightly bigger than the volume of the vegetables and were covered with ice. Add enough water so that icy water covers all the vegetables. Leave in the ice bath for 2 hours. Add more ice if needed.

All jars and lids should be cleaned and sanitized. Boiling water can be used to sanitize. At about the 1.5 hour mark line the jars up and in each one add 2 cloves garlic, 1 tsp peppercorns, 1 tsp dried onion and 1/2 tsp dried dill. Combine the vinegar, water and pickling salt in a sauce pot and bring it to a boil. Drain ice and water off the peppers and cucumbers and begin to pack them into the jars leaving 3/4 of an inch space at the top. Put a wide mouthed canning funnel in the first jar and ladel enough of the boiling brine into the jar to cover the vegetables but leaving 1/2 inch of space at the top. Immediatly put a lid on the jar. Follow this process for each jar. After a few hours of cooling, the lids should all have 'popped' in. Check each one to make sure they have formed a vacuum seal. After about 8 hours they should be cool enough to store in your refrigerator.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the flavor and crunchy texture of the pickled goodies. I only waited 2 days before sampling the first jar and I thought they were pretty good. I will be trying this technique on some other vegetables as well. If I had it to do over I would use bigger jars because the pint jars were a little too fiddly trying to pack enough stuff in to each one. From the information available on the internet it looks like these sealed jars should keep in the refrigerator for 6 months.

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Awesome Strawberry Daiquiri

I threw some of my favorite things into a blender and this came out. WOW! This was very tasty and refreshing.

Awesome Strawberry Daiquiri

1 c vodka (or rum)

1 c frozen cranberries

1 1/2 c frozen strawberries

1/2 c sugar

1 shot of lime juice

1/2 c grape juice

ice

In a 5 cup blender pitcher add vodka, cranberries, strawberries, sugar, lime juice and grape juice. Blend well. Add ice to fill the remainder of the pitcher. Blend until smooth. Serve in a glass with a shot of whipped cream.

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Vegetable Lasagna

  The continuing saga of trying to find ways to use up all the zuchini and squash the summer months provide. We used Mom's regular pasta lasagna recipe and swapped a few things out, most notable was the zuchini and squash for the pasta. We also use ground turkey instead of hamburger or sausage because that was what we had in the freezer.

Vegetable Lasagna
7-8 c good tomato sauce (recipe)
6 c mozzarella cheese shredded
2 lbs ricotta cheese
2 eggs
2 lbs ground turkey browned and seasoned
3 medium zuchini's
4 medium squash
3/4 c fresh parsley chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees farenheit. Slice zuchini and squash lengthwise in 1/4" thick pieces. Combine ricotta cheese, eggs, salt, pepper, parsley in a bowl. Mix well.

In a deep pyrex or stoneware baking dish layer the ingredients. We used a 13x9 stoneware baking dish. Put a layer of sauce (about a fourth), slices of zuchini and squash, meat (about a third), ricotta cheese mixture (about a third), mozarella (about a fourth). We got three layers in this pan. Finish with a layer of sauce and top with remaining mozzarella cheese. Bake covered with foil for 30 minutes then lower the temperature to 350 degrees farenheit and bake uncovered for 30 more minutes. Enjoy!

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Quick Tomato Sauce

My mother whipped this together one night and it was so good we will definitely make it again and put it on anything in need of a good tomato sauce.

Tomato Sauce
2 28 oz cans crushed tomatoes with basil
5 cloves garlic pressed
1 bay leaf
1 fresh rosemary branch
1/4 c chopped fresh basil
1/8 c chopped fresh oregano
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp sugar
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Saute garlic in a sauce pan on medium heat for about 2 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and cook on medium high heat until it starts to bubble then back off to medium low heat for about 30 minutes more. Remove the rosemary and bay leaf. Makes about 8 cups. Enjoy!

I was surprised at the depth of flavor and substance this sauce had after such a short time. Definitely a keeper.

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Fried Green Tomatoes

  Fried green tomatoes may be food related to usage of all those green tomatoes that will go to waste if not eaten at the end of the growing season, but I have a whole bunch right now and I don't want to wait for 3 months. I have eaten them fried before, but never made them myself until now. Once again I looked at everyone elses recipes and used that information as the basis for my own.

Fried Green Tomatoes

3 large green tomatoes cut into 3/8" to 1/2" slices

2 c canola oil for frying

1 c panko crumbs

1/2 c corn meal

1 c flour

1 c milk

2 eggs beaten

salt

pepper

  Lay tomato slices out onto a cookie sheet or similar surface, salt and pepper each side and let sit for 15 minutes. Heat oil in a skillet on medium high. Setup a four station assembly line: milk first, flour, egg followed by panko and corn meal mixture. Plates work well for the dry ingredients and bowls for the wet. Take each tomato slice through the assembly line. Coat each one with milk, dredge in flour, coat with egg and finally dredge in panko and corn meal mixture. Fry in hot oil until golden brown, about 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Remove from oil and drain on paper towel. Season with salt as soon as they are removed from the oil. Serve with lemon wedges and hot sauce. They are pretty good with ketchup too. :-)

  This version came out very crunchy and will definitely be served here again.

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