Forgot to tell you all:
This recipe was taken from The Doubleday Cookbook by Jean Anderson, published 1972 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.-------------one of the best cookbooks I have ever used.
Monday, September 8, 2008
The House Smells Soooo Good!
This is where I start my canning. I purchase the very best products. These really do make a difference in how your end product tastes. That is the reason I can. Because I like my food better than anything I can buy.I'm going to demonstrate here Pickled red cabbage. It actually is more a sweet and sour red cabbage. Right now you can buy red cabbage for practically a song, especially at the local farmers markets. Or try www.localharvest.org and look for a farm in your area.
Last night I thinly sliced 5 quarts of red cabbage and put all in a large stainless steel bowl with 2 1/2 quarts of water and 1/2 cup of kosher salt (pickling salt-NEVER iodized salt). I let that soak overnight.
Today I washed 8 pint jars and put them in the oven at 250 degrees to sterilize them until I needed them.
.The lids I put into boiling water and then turned it off.
I then proceeded to make my syrup of 2 1/2 quarts of vinegar, 2 1/2 cups of organic cane sugar, and 5 tablespoon of pickling spices (4 broken cinnamon sticks, 2 Tbl. mustard seed, 4 tsp. peppercorns, 2 tsp cloves, 2 tsp whole allspice, 2 tsp dill seed, 4 bay leaves) that I put in a small muslin bag. (You can also wrap it all in cheesecloth or tulle or whate
ver)in a stainless steel container. NEVER use aluminum.
I brought that to a boil for 10 minutes. While that was boiling I filled my jars.
Never pack too tightly nor too lightly. Too tight and air gets trapped. Too lightly and you use too much syrup and there is 2 inches of juice on the bottom.
Next I turned off the syrup and quickly filled the jars with syrup within
1/4 inch of the top.
Working quickly to prevent the jars from cooling off I wiped the rims, put on the hot lids, and sealed with the rings tightly.
Now I will cool them overnight and check in the morning to see if all the lids have compressed in the middle. If they haven't I would pour it into a pan and bring it to a boil, resterilize my jar and a NEW lid and put it all back into the jar again, cap it, and see if it works that time. Tomorrow I will label them and put them in a dark, cool, dry place for 4-6 weeks. That will give them the time they need to pickle. Yummy!
I then proceeded to make my syrup of 2 1/2 quarts of vinegar, 2 1/2 cups of organic cane sugar, and 5 tablespoon of pickling spices (4 broken cinnamon sticks, 2 Tbl. mustard seed, 4 tsp. peppercorns, 2 tsp cloves, 2 tsp whole allspice, 2 tsp dill seed, 4 bay leaves) that I put in a small muslin bag. (You can also wrap it all in cheesecloth or tulle or whate
ver)in a stainless steel container. NEVER use aluminum.
I brought that to a boil for 10 minutes. While that was boiling I filled my jars.
Never pack too tightly nor too lightly. Too tight and air gets trapped. Too lightly and you use too much syrup and there is 2 inches of juice on the bottom.
Next I turned off the syrup and quickly filled the jars with syrup within
1/4 inch of the top.
Working quickly to prevent the jars from cooling off I wiped the rims, put on the hot lids, and sealed with the rings tightly.
Now I will cool them overnight and check in the morning to see if all the lids have compressed in the middle. If they haven't I would pour it into a pan and bring it to a boil, resterilize my jar and a NEW lid and put it all back into the jar again, cap it, and see if it works that time. Tomorrow I will label them and put them in a dark, cool, dry place for 4-6 weeks. That will give them the time they need to pickle. Yummy!
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Woah Nellie!
I have been so busy! Canning has taken over my life! Every year I am getting better at stocking up the harvest. I hate to let anything go to waste. But then in a sustainable garden nothing ever goes to waste. It goes to compost! I'm desperate to get everything from the garden in before the apples and pears have to be put up. Because WOW! there's a ton of them.
I don't need anymore jams but I will probably make apple butter and pear butter just to do it. I want to dry alot of apple slices and make spiced cinnamon apple rings and spiced pears. I also came across a recipe for spiced crabapples.
I usually take Brandy for her walk about a mile and a half from here. There are monstrous athletic fields with trails through the bordering woods. It is there that I found all my black raspberries (quarts and quarts) and wild grapes. And the wild crabapple. Also I discovered hackberries and one other fruit tree I am working on identifying. I read a quote today that said, "90% of yellow and white berries are poisonous, 90% of blue or black are not, and with red it is 50-50. This is a tree with black fruit like small cherries clustered tightly together. It could be choke cherry I suppose, but then I have to wonder what I was seeing just a few weeks ago in the same area. Those could have been a wild cherry(quite bitter) and these could be choke cherries.
Guess what? It's a choke cherry! I just found it online. I'll have to go back and find a small twig with leaves from the "other" tree and compare that with pictures online.
There is one other tree I am interested in. It reminds me of the Russian olive trees from New Mexico. It is even putting out what look like olives. I understand that they are edible, kind of sweet, but mealy. We'll see. It is an invasive plant but I do love the sweet fragrance of its spring blooms.I'll take pictures tomorrow and see if anyone knows what they are.
All this to say that I am driving myself crazy trying to keep up with getting everything done. I need children!
I usually take Brandy for her walk about a mile and a half from here. There are monstrous athletic fields with trails through the bordering woods. It is there that I found all my black raspberries (quarts and quarts) and wild grapes. And the wild crabapple. Also I discovered hackberries and one other fruit tree I am working on identifying. I read a quote today that said, "90% of yellow and white berries are poisonous, 90% of blue or black are not, and with red it is 50-50. This is a tree with black fruit like small cherries clustered tightly together. It could be choke cherry I suppose, but then I have to wonder what I was seeing just a few weeks ago in the same area. Those could have been a wild cherry(quite bitter) and these could be choke cherries.
Guess what? It's a choke cherry! I just found it online. I'll have to go back and find a small twig with leaves from the "other" tree and compare that with pictures online.
There is one other tree I am interested in. It reminds me of the Russian olive trees from New Mexico. It is even putting out what look like olives. I understand that they are edible, kind of sweet, but mealy. We'll see. It is an invasive plant but I do love the sweet fragrance of its spring blooms.I'll take pictures tomorrow and see if anyone knows what they are.
All this to say that I am driving myself crazy trying to keep up with getting everything done. I need children!
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