Dinner 112011

Dinner: florence potatoes (named after a woman named florence) home canned green beans, pickled beets, and honey orange marmalade ginger glazed smoked ham.  Here's the ham sitting atop my 1952 kenmore stove, even though we baked it out on the grill.

Organic Soy Beans

Organic Soy Beans, I'll be demoing how to make soy milk in an upcoming online class via The Natural Surface Network  More information later this evening.

Snowy Garden

Soon, soon the snow will be melted, the ground thawed and I'll be able to retrieve last years remaining root crops!  The plans for this garden, this summer, are sugar snap peas and then eventually tomatoes and yellow wax beans.

Bean Field - Iowa

Pickles

Wow it's been awhile since I've posted so to update

We've eaten two tomatoes out of our garden, they were very tasty and we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of more ripe tomatoes hopefully in the next week or so. First up on the list of canned tomato goods is salsa, it's been years since I've canned any because well it's been years since I've had any "real" tomatoes to speak of!!! We'll also make up and can our own spagetti sauce, pizza sauce, and if there are enough tomatoes ketchup and bbq sauce. I have plans, at the end of the season , to can green tomato slices for my fried green tomato cravings over the winter months.

I've been picking green beans, planted Top Crop, and cucumbers like crazy. So far we've put up 31 pints of green beans and have eaten several pickings of beans - they are best fresh what can I say!

The cucumbers, I planted a pickler varitety, are coming on strong, this year I plan to make lots of lime pickles as these were a hit here this past winter and I'm hoping to try my hand at my first ever batch of dill pickle relish!

I found out why my potatoes were size of peas, not enough water, turns out they need a half inch a week or so, soooooooo I've upped my watering routine. Turns out this is why ALL of my root crops are doing poorly, lack of water. I have some really pretty green tops though ;-)

John replanted Rhutabegas and Beets tonight there's still plenty of growing time in our season for the year yet. While he was weeding the garden he found two volunteer tomato plants, one looks to be a Rutgers the other some sort of cherry tomato. Barring any rain I'll plant Kale tomorrow and maybe some more chard and lettuce., in fact I think it's early enough to replant cucumbers and maybe even a zucchini plant or two.

Summer in Iowa

Garden Update

Well we are almost done with the garden fencing, one little bit left to be done tomorrow night - the kolrabi box at the base of our cherry tree. The green beans are popping up after the heavy rain we had last night. My lettuce looks like it'll be ready to pick in a week, can't wait!

Beans to Soak or not to Soak

I didn't soak the red beans for the Red Bean Soup but did soak them for the Black Bean Soup, the consensus is next time soak the beans! Also I will leave out the ham flavoring the next time I make Red Bean Soup. NOTE: I've heard that adding salt to the soaking beans prevents them from softening properly I don't know if this is true or not.

Tonights Menu

Black bean soup most excellent on a cold snowy day.

John's bowl of black bean soup, over corn bread.

Cranberry Applesauce over corn bread, this is royally delicious!

Black Bean Soup with fresh hot Corn Bread and Cranberry Applesauce.

Black Bean Soup - canned

Soaked black beans that have been drained and rinsed. Partially cooked pork butt roast - it's ok to partially cook as it will be pressure canned for 90 plus minutes under 10 +/- pounds of pressure which yeilds a very tender meat.

I love this old jar it unfortunately had a chip in the rip and I didn't catch that so the jar didn't seal. I guess I have no choice but to take it to my studio and store buttons and beads in it now!

Fill the jars half way with black beans. I soaked the beans for two days, draining and rinsing them once a day.

Add cubed pork to the jars, about a half cups worth more or less.

Got pork?

Top off with pork broth, I had broth left over from roasting the meat, or just warm water.

Black Bean Soup ready to be pressure canned.

We had left over pork so we canned it up in quart jars (made two quarts) and canned it along side the Black Bean Soup. In retrospect I should have put the meat into pint jars. Oh well it'll make excellent bbq pork!

Black bean soup with pork - canned at 10 pounds of pressure for 110 minutes (I forgot to shut it off in time). Canned pork (from a pork butt roast) NOTE: It is better to store your jars with the rings off, one removing them ensures that the jars are indeed sealed properly and two the rings cannot rust to the jars which is a common problem esp. in humid areas.

Bean Soup and Hot Corn Bread

Well I misread the directions and used only 1/3rd cup beans when in fact I was supposed to fill the jars 1/3rd full with beans.

So today we had bean soup and it was very juicey. To counter act the juiceyness John made corn bread with fresh ground wheat and fresh ground cornmeal - see Fannie Farmer cookbook for recipe. A canning buddy told me to add veggies to the bean soup and to use it as a soup base in the future - which is a totally brilliant idea - Thank you David!!!

Bean Soup

Dh and I made Bean Soup tonight, canned up 14 quarts to be exact. I'm anxious for it to be done as I hear something cracking inside of the canner and I'm worried one of the jars has broke, this could be interesting.
One third cup of beans in the bottom of the jars.

A mix of red beans and kidney beans - I mixed together one pound of each type in a large bowl.

I chopped up two larger onions, they were the size of a large orange.

Place a handful of chopped onion on top of the beans - about a half cups worth.

Looking good!

Cubed pork butt roast and juice.

One half cup of cubed pork plus a little bit extra to make a hearty soup.

Pork, onions, beans , now the jars are ready for the broth.

Plenty of pork juice/broth left over to top off the pork and beans - added flavor.

Jars topped off with broth water mixture the yellowis color is from the ham broth concentrate we added to the jars.

The jars are filled, cleaned, and the lids put in place and are ready to be pressured canned - 10 pounds of pressure for 90 minutes.

Canning Chili

I forgot to bring my camera to the kitchen so the in progress pics are limited this time. I made up my favorite recipe of chili x 10 and put it into hot jars, it'll be processed for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure in the All American. I under estimated on my recipe hoping for 40+ quarts but will be getting 28 quarts instead. These jars have yet to be processed.

I started with ten pounds of ground beef and 4 pounds of dried beans, 2 pounds kideny beans and 2 pounds small red beans. I used one #10 can of chopped tomatoes, one # 10 can tomato sauce, one # 10 can of pureed tomatoes, and one #10 can of Mrs. Grimes Chili with Beans. To this I added 2 very large minced Onions 2 cups minced garlic - comes in a jar at Sam's Club - spices, honey and mole. I browned my beef with the onion, garlic, and spices added. I browned all 10 pounds at once in my 23 quart BWB pan! I added the tomatoes and chili sauce to the browned ground beef etc., and simmered for about 4 hours. I turned the heat off and let it sit overnight - I was bad I left it on the stove and it was still very hot this morning at 6 am.

The beans were soaked overnight, drained this afternoon and added to the simmering pots. I divided the chili meat sauce between two BWB canners 24 cups per pot, approximately, and added the beans dividing them up equally which ended up being approximately 12 cups per canner

Chopping Green Beans

Dh's hand is next to the knife blade so you can see where it is at. The knife is longer than the width of the box. For the frozen beans a serrated bread knife works best.

End view of the box the box holds about 4 gallons of fresh beans.

To simplify this process we use a green bean board! We bought frozen beans for

our soup, they came unsnapped so dh chopped them into bite sized pieces.

Layered Chicken Vegetable Soup

1 Cup Chopped Potato - we used Russets

Fresh Chicken Broth made from cooking the chicken hind quarters.

1/4 Cup Cooked Chicken

1 Cup chopped Carrot.

2/3 Cup. Corn

2 T. Chopped Roma Tomatoes

2/3 Cup Chopped Green Beans

A tablespoon of chopped onion is added to each jar. Dh wanted to know where the garlic was???

Each jar gets half chicken bullion cube which is placed in the jar first on the bottom.

We experimented with the layering trying to find one that was visually pleasing.

In the AA and ready to be pressure canned - 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.