Drawing Table

From this, gobs of canning jars in my way...

To this, squash and pumpkin heaven!  I'll be spending some time tomorrow drawing pumpkins, etc., now that my other drawnig table has been emptied of Falls bounty.

Cucumbers!!!

I now have enough cucumbers, about four gallons worth, to make a batch of Lisa's Garlicky Dill Relish!

Pineapples

Went to Aldi's tonight they had pineapples on sale for $1.49 each.  I'm planning to put up another batch of pineapple sauce.

Swine Flu Update

Well I'm recovering, finally, from the swine man swamp flu!  I still have a cough hanging on.  The canning came to a near screaching halt, John took 4 days off from work but the reality is 1. I'm more organized than he is, which isn't saying much btw, and 2. there was way more that needed canning than one person could do alone!  He did get a dozen or so pints of pear butter put up and a dozen or so quarts of tomatoes canned.  I'm feeling better but not by much, a simple drive across town  and back still wears me out and I need a nap just to recover from the experience.  To make matters worse I have a show coming up this weekend and I"m no where near being ready for the event.  More later from the kitchen!!!

Potato Leek Soup

Tonights Dinner Menu

Potato Leek Soup

(the extra will be canned up in quart jars)

Ciabatta Bread

Todays Activities

*5 quarts and 13 pints of pork loin in the pressure canner.
*Wash the outsides of 11 quarts of beef chili, label them, and find shelf space to store them on (ok that one may take a miracle). 11 in 121 seal rate not bad.
*Chinese for dinner, made by moi' of course!
*Rescue my wind beaten tomato plants, convince them they want to grow on the trellis' instead using tomato tape to reinforce that idea!
*Celebrate because I sold two art quilts today!!!

Orange Marmalade

Ok after an agonizing hour of boiling it all down I forgot, yes I forgot, to photograph the final result before we put it in the jars. Trust me when I say it was much darker than the photos below and looked like orange Marmalade!

Orange Marmalade

French Onion Soup

We didn't have any of the fancy cheese so we used the three cheese pizza cheese on top of the soup - it turned out to be a most excellent choice! That's a slice of toasted whole wheat baguette you seen in my bowl.

A close up.

Six pints of French Onion Soup for future dinners~!

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

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.

This weekends canning short list

First up can the remaining unsalted butter and then start in on the salted butter - in half pints.

I have five heads of green cabbage that need to be canned up as cole slaw and then if I have any time or energy left I'm going to try my hand at canning a batch of carmalized onions.

A picture of the neighbors crabapple tree, the squirrels like this tree better than ours, the neighbors crabapples are sweeter.

Cranberry Applesauce

Or saucy applesauce as we like to call it, unforutnately it didn't come out nearly as chunky as we like it, frustrated with the sauce sticking to the bottom of the pan I buckled under and used the stick blender to break the sauce down even further. Well... you know what they say about good intentions right. So it's mostly very creamy sauce, it tastes wonderful and looks beautiful but...

I also fell short on the cranberries, the sauce really needed about four more pounds of cranberries to give it that tart flavor we like and so well. I have one jar that didn't seal for some reason I guess we will have to make the ultimate sacrifice and eat that jar of sauce now!!! As you can see I enjoyed a cinnamon roll with some sauce.

Lid Lifter

The magnet is strong enough to pick up three or four lids at a whack.

Steam coming off of the boiling water.

Damaged lid used for demonstrating this technique - it was this or throw it away.

Dh came up with this idea it's a strong magnet attached to my tongs it does a nifty job of removing lids from the hot water w/o getting burned. He bought the magnet at Radio Shack back in the dark ages, circa 1982, for a whole fifty cents.

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