sarahbyrdd

7ish pounds of crispins & spencers from Lymans Orchards.
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice

7 pints + of apple sauce at roughly $1.20/jar.

I like to prove to myself that it's economical to home-can.  

This year we're making only salsa with our tomato box, since that's what we used the most.

This recipe for roasted tomato salsa: http://delectablemusings.com/2012/08/tomato-salsa-for-canning.html

And this year's pepper mix was 4 anaheims, 2 jalapeños, and 2 dried chiplotles per batch.
EDIT:  Apparently we forgot to add the roasted peppers.  So we've got 20 pints of mildly mexican spiced tomatoes.  I guess it'll be like Rotel.  Still useful, but not what I was after.  Damn.







Yield 20 pints of salsa, plus 1.5 quarts of crushed roasted tomatoes that we'll use during the week.
Materials per pint work out to around $1.25.

Using up things we had in the house.  Bunch of baby carrots, check!  No pistachios, but yes pistachio oil.  Add some nigella seed to the spice mix because.  Also 1/2 a sweet onion sautéed in olive oil.  Taste test without yogurt for our non-dairy guest is a thumbs up finished with the spice mix and a drizzle of pistachio oil.  http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Carrot-Soup-with-Dukkah-Spice-and-Yogurt-51134010
The spice mix is crazy good.  I added a little bit of nigella seed which is giving it an unexpected lemony note.


I made a salad of blanched green and yellow beans, yellow and red tomatoes, a crazy crispy orange cucumber, roasted summer squash slices, charred asian eggplant, chopped parsley, and sweet onion soaked in red wine vinegar.  The dressing was just olive oil and the vinegar from the onions.  I really like chopped salads without lettuce in the summer when the leafy greens have started to turn bitter.

The protein was chicken roasted with a pomegranate molasses/garlic/zaatar rub.  It was pronounced seriously tasty by our guest.

Dessert (breakfast because we didn't get to it) is a mixed cherry/berry gallette with a shortening crust, also using up fruit we had in the fridge. http://www.marthastewart.com/312433/cornmeal-pate-brisee

Obligatory Market Picture:

This year's jam has been made following last year's recipe, with the only change being that I let the berries macerate for 2 days because of schedule issues.  I made a HUGE batch with 5 quarts of berries, which got a little dicey when I was waiting for it to get to gel, and just barely fit into my big dutch oven, but it seems to have worked out.

With berries at $5.50 a quart, the jam has come out to around $3.50 per pint, with a yield of a little over 8 pints for the batch.  Not bad for a superior product.  

2.25 lbs of clementines
1 oz of fresh ginger peeled and sliced thin across the grain
peel of one lemon
1 cup lemon juice
4 cups water
2 lbs. Sugar

Put whole clementines in a pot with enough water to cover and bring to a boil.  Discard water.  Repeat.

When the clementines are cool enough to handle, chop and return to pot with the ginger, lemon peel, juice, and 4 cups water.  Bring to a boil and let simmer for about a half an hour until the ginger and peels are tender.  Blitz with a stick blender if you want smaller chunks than you've already made.

Add 2 lbs of sugar and bring to a boil.  Cook until mixture reaches gel point (220 degrees or sets up on a chilled saucer).  This may take a while.

Ladle in to hot clean jars and water process for 10 minutes to make shelf stable.

Yield: 12 4oz jars plus 8oz for the fridge.

Right out of the pot I'm not really tasting the ginger, except maybe on the finish.  With any luck it'll come out more as it sits.  Next year more ginger. 

Inspired by http://www.onetomato-twotomato.com/Main/Blog/Entries/2012/9/30_Indian_Summer_Giardiniera_Pickle.html
and the mixed vegetable pickle in the Ball Book

1 eggplant
2 yellow squash
1 zucchini
5 round italian hot peppers
2 small onions
3 red bell peppers
2 cups green beans
1 cauliflower head
5 small carrots

Cut eggplant, squash, zucchini, onions, bell peppers and cauliflower in to 1 inch chunks, cut carrots thinner on diagonal, cut hot peppers in to thin rounds, stem the green beans and cut in half if they're long.
Soak the above in water with 1 cup salt overnight.  You may want to wear gloves to push the veg into jars to avoid discomfort from the hot peppers.

Brine:
8 cups red wine vinegar (batch 2, 2 cups red, 4 cups white)
1/4 pickling spice mix
2 tsps hot pepper flakes
5 cloves garlic slivered
1 tbl oregano (batch 2 only)
1 cup sugar

Divide vegetables in to prepared jars, top with brine leaving headspace, dividing the spices equally, hot water process for 15 minutes for pints, 20 for quarts.

ARGH.  Ended up having to do two batches of brine and forgot to put the garlic and spices in the jars on the first round.  Meh.  It'll still be tasty dressed with oil as an antipasto or on a salad.

Yield: 2 quarts, 1 3/4-quart and 10 pints.  Love the retro blue pint jars.

This recipe http://www.pickyourown.org/greenbeans_pickled.htm in my nifty 1-1/2 pint jars.

Note, for 7 jars I needed 1.5 amount of brine.

http://littlemisscruciferous.com/2012/08/19/italian-plum-jam/

5.5 lbs is about a 1.2 peck sack of plums.  With the pits and trimmings it was more like 4.5 lbs.

yield = 8 1/2 pint jars plus about 6 oz for the fridge.

Two bushel boxes of tomatoes:

Whole tomatoes in acidulated water: 13 quarts (one blow out)
plus 3 quarts and 2 pints from the 2nd box.

Roasted Tomato salsa:
http://delectablemusings.com/2012/08/tomato-salsa-for-canning.html
I bought a variety of peppers 2 each: jalapeño, poblano, hot long, and anaheim, and roasted them all.
Looks like two trays of tomatoes will yield the volume needed for the salsa.  I'm way under pepper volume, but I'm not going to sweat it.  SPICY!  But good.
9 pints




Salsa 2 (milder)
http://akitchencanvas.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/canning-a-basic-homemade-salsa/
1 extra cup of tomatoes, no bell pepper, 3 small asian chills (because that's what I had by then)
6 pints

Bittman Tomato Jam (quadruple recipe):
http://www.thewednesdaychef.com/the_wednesday_chef/2011/09/mark-bittmans-tomato-jam.html
nine 8-oz jars

Bonus paste from scraps: 2 8-oz. jars (only the skins and cores from the 13 quarts of whole tomatoes).

When I ran out of burners, I tried pouring boiling water (electric kettle) over a bowl of tomatoes and letting it sit for a minute or two before shocking and peeling them.  It works pretty well.

Started this mess at about 10:30 A.M, last batch going in the water at 8:45 PM.
I'm pooped.

Today's project was strawberry jam.  I don't know what I did five? (six?)  years ago when I started playing with canning and managed to make some kick ass strawberry jam without pectin.  Subsequent batches have all been more runny.  I tried using regular pectin last year and got strawberry syrup.  This year I am determined to kick this thing and get a consistent product.  Okay, part of the issue is that the berries themselves aren't consistent and you have to allow for more/less ripe, supermarket vs. farm fresh and things like that.  Grrr.

This year:  2 quarts farm fresh strawberries, cleaned, hulled, rough cut, weighing about 1.75 pounds.  Add 2 Tbs. lemon juice, plus an equal amount by weight of sugar (4 cups scant*).  Mix gently and let macerate overnight.   Pour resulting syrup and a small amount of the fruit into a heavy pan and bring to a boil, stirring down the foam.  Add a pat of butter to cut down the foam. Boil boil boil.  Add reserved fruit, boil a bit more.  Add 1 Tbl. "no sugar" pectin, bring to a boil again.  Start testing the viscosity of the jam on a saucer you've stashed in the freezer.  When the viscosity looks good, take jam off heat skim off any remaining foam, spoon into sterilized jars and hot water process for 10 minutes.

I THINK this year the viscosity is going to be right.  This made four 8 oz. jars and one 4 oz. jar.  I threw a few grains of lavender into the 4 oz jar to see if that might be a good combo.  Given how strong lavender is, I figure just the processing would be enough heat to release the scent and perfume the jam.  If I like it I'll try another batch with the lavender in a tea ball or muslin.

* Believe it or not, that's about half the sugar usually called for in jam recipes.