scratch

Apple Juice

2009-10-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

Jim's folks have owned an apple juice press for a lot of years. When our kids were little, we juiced nearly every year but the press has been idle for quite awhile now. This fall when we asked around if anyone wanted 'in' on juicing, we got some takers.

Here's Jim picking Spartans in the orchard of a guy he works with. He drove around with a pickup load of apples (about 840 pounds) for almost a week. Saturday he and Dawn picked Red Delicious apples, bringing home about 300 pounds. Breanne brought apples from her tree as well. We find we like a blend better than all one kind.

Today was juice pressing day. Quite cold, but thankfully very sunny and not windy. Here Hanna and Barbara run the grinder. The apples go in whole and are pushed against a spinning drum studded with nails using a wooden paddle.

Apple pulp comes out the bottom. See all the boxes of apples in the back of the truck awaiting their turn!

From there the pulp gets layered into the press itself, about 12 cups into each cloth, which is then folded, another set of slats put on top, repeated until all six of the cloths are loaded.

Then a small jack is placed in the press to squeeze the juice down into a bucket waiting to catch it. Here Breanne is running the jack.

Want to see the full scale?

Yes, the gang filled all three of those garbage cans (kept only for this purpose!) with fresh pressed apple juice. From here, it was divvied up for each family. Some have freezer space and poured the juice into empty pop bottles and milk jugs to freeze, leaving lots of space for expansion. And some of us are going to can the juice.

Is home-pressed juice worth doing? Well, it IS a lot of work. But here's one small person's opinion:

Raspberry Vinegar

2009-09-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

Although raspberry vinaigrette is all the rage these days, not a lot of people are familiar with the cool refreshing drink that is Raspberry Vinegar. This is something Jim's mom has made for years--and so have I. Our kids' friends refused to try it when they were young. They didn't want to drink vinegar! But when we called it Raspberry Punch, everyone loved it.

It's very simple to make, but you do need to have a good supply of fresh raspberries. During the season, I picked off berries and just kept adding them to the buckets living in the freezer until last week when Hanna came home for a week of canning.

The first thing you do is add one part of vinegar to six parts of raspberries. Just regular old vinegar does fine. Snap the lids back on the buckets and let this brew for 2-3 days. It's not picky...it's pickling!

Then it's time to strain out the pulp and seeds so the juice will be clear and sparkling.

But there's still a lot of juice in the berries, so we hang them in an old pillowcase overnight, catching the remainder of the juice in a large bowl.

In the morning, we measure out the juice into a large pot and add an EQUAL amount of sugar.

Heat this up enough so all the sugar is dissolved. Then pour into canning jars, snap on boiling hot lids and screw bands. Can for about 15 minutes in a boiling water bath.

How much does it make? Each gallon bucket (ice cream bucket) of berries makes about three quarts of juice concentrate. Our batch this week made 14 quarts.

How to serve? This is super-concentrated. Each one quart jar makes about two gallons of refreshing goodness. Or you can pour your glass about one-eighth full of concentrate, add some ice cubes, and top off the glass with cold water:

Nothing better on a hot summer day, so we're ready for next year!

Honey Extraction Day

2009-08-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

Our mentor, Lew, came down this morning to walk us through our first honey extraction. The first order of business is getting the bees out of the supers that we wanted to extract honey from. Lew sprinkled a chemical on this board, then placed it on top of one of the hives. The idea is that the bees will go down the hive to get away from it. However, this requires a warm sunny day and we (quite thankfully, as the extracting shed was HOT) had a slightly cooler overcast day today and the chemical didn't heat enough to work.

This means that Lew fired up the leaf blower, tipped each super, and blasted the bees out of it. They weren't very happy, but they did as they were told.

We removed the ones with honey and got down to the supers with brood (home of the next generation of bees). These we left, of course!

Jim loaded the supers with honey onto the back of Lew's truck for the trip to his extracting shed.

Here the first order of business is to remove the capped comb from the outsides of each frame. Lew has a machine that does this. The knife that cuts it off is heated with steam. The capped comb (which has some honey still in it) drops to a stainless steel plate and drains into a heated vat. The honey sinks and the comb and other residue rises, so nothing is wasted.

From there the frames are placed in the extractor, basically a large centrifuge. Lew's holds something like 60 frames. (We've been given parts to build one that holds four at a time!)

It takes about fifteen minutes of spin time to extract the honey. Then Lew opens the valve at the bottom of the extractor tank, starts another little pump that sucks the honey up into the vat, where it runs through a filter before we filled our containers.

And here's the truck loaded with our empty supers (ready to be stored until next June) and the honey. Each of the small buckets holds seven pounds. A good day's work!

Is it delicious? You betcha. :D

Roasted Tomato Sauce

2009-08-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

This is a very versatile sauce that I use in soups, pastas, or as a pizza base. I make mega-batches this time of year when roma tomatoes are ripe. I have 2 large broiler pans that came with my gas range, and alternate them through the oven--when it's really hot I do the roasting in my barbecue!

For each broiler pan, I use about:
15 ripe roma tomatoes (more if they're small!), washed, cut in half
1/2 a large onion, chunked
5 cloves of garlic, peeled
A good drizzle of olive oil
Salt and Pepper

Run your hands through it so everything is well coated with oil.

Then roast for 30-40 minutes at about 375. You want the edges to be browning a bit, and for the aroma of ROASTED veggies to come through. Give them a stir every 10-15 minutes.

Then I just scoop the mess into my blender and give it a whiz.

From there I pour the sauce into canning jars and process in hot water bath for 30 minutes. Or you could always freeze the sauce.

Tomatillos

2009-08-28T16:49:00.001-07:00

Tomatillos are a fun little fruit that is often used in Mexican cooking. They grow on a bush somewhat similar to a tomato, but they're not really that similar.

They are covered with a little husk and are ready to pick when the green husk begins to warm to a yellowish hue.

The husk peels off very easily, leaving a slightly sticky, smooth green pingpong ball sized fruit. They taste a wee bit sweet and a wee bit citrusy and are somewhat crisp.

I used a handful of them in this delicious salad, Tomato and Herb Salad with Fresh Chive Cheese. I happened to have some homemade lemon cheese on hand (with dill in it) so used that. I'd recommend feta if you don't make your own cheese. This is a great summer salad when the tomatoes and herbs are going strong. Mmm.

Ratatouille!

2009-08-26T22:09:00.001-07:00

No, not the movie. Though that was fun, wasn't it?

My daughter Hanna made mega batches of ratatouille last fall and froze them in ziploc bags. Her method (in winter) is to let a package thaw a bit, empty it into a casserole dish, add a couple of sausages (Mennonite farmer is good, or Italian), and put it in the oven for half an hour.

Here's the basic ingredient list:

Olive oil
Onion
Zucchini/Eggplant
Red/Yellow Peppers
Garlic
Tomatoes
Salt & Pepper
Red Pepper Flakes

Cook for about 20 minutes until nice and saucey. Cool, then freeze.

So I saute the vegetables in my wok in as much olive oil as it needs. The ratio of tomatoes to *other* that I've been doing is about half. I don't have any peppers in the garden (and am not overly fond of them cooked, anyway!) but I do have both zucchini and eggplant. I don't have red pepper flakes at the moment so added a couple shots of tobasco sauce.

Here's what it looks like while cooking down:

Honey!

2009-08-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

This morning our beekeeping mentor, Lew, stopped by to visit 'his' bees. (The guy that never wears a bee suit!)

He says they're doing really well! He put his finger into one of the combs and let some liquid honey drip onto my finger. Oh. My. Word! Have you ever had honey THAT fresh? Delightful. Warm from the sun, gentle sweetness. Oh, wow. I can hardly wait to extract some of it and start using our very own honey!! (Our old honey, purchased from other local beekeepers, will probably land up in new batches of mead, lol!)

Here Jim and Lew are looking over the supers already in place.

Yup. They've been busy little bees!

In fact, they then placed our very last supers in place. This means we either need to buy more supers...or extract honey in the next week or so in order to reuse the ones we have. Yay!

Chamomile Tea

2009-07-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

As I posted up the photo of the chamomile, it occurred to me to wonder what part of the plant is used for tea. A quick search proved that it's the blossoms! Well, we have lots of those.

So...I went out and snipped them off and will allow them to dry. I think in this weather they don't need to be in the dehydrator! This is pretty much all of the flowers here, so it's not a lot. Still, it's enough to try out and see if I want to grow more German Chamomile next year. It's a self-seeding annual but I don't think I left enough to self-seed!

The info says it has to be German chamomile, that the common roadside chamomile is virtually scent-free, and the Roman chamomile (which is a perennial) isn't the right kind for tea either.

Wikipedia provided this photo and the idea to mix the dry chamomile blossoms with cinnamon and dried apple bits. Might have to try that!

Garden Mayhem

2009-07-18T15:19:00.001-07:00

It occurs to me that we haven't talked garden for a few weeks. Everything's growing really well. Except, of course, the things that aren't such as my green pole beans, which didn't germinate, I replanted, and still didn't germinate. Had poor carrot germination also.

No ripe tomatoes yet at our house.

The pumpkin plant thinks that not only should it produce giant pumpkins, the plant itself should be giant.

I've had several pickings of raspberries.

The dill and the chamomile are new best friends.

We're regularly eating beets/beet tops, swiss chard, and lettuce. We've begun stealing baby potatoes from under the plants. We've eaten one fennel and the other one needs picking. The kohlrabi-from-seed is doing well. Must thin the rutabagas soon. A few bush bean plants are doing well, but I don't know that they'll supply even one meal at a time. :(

The bees are happy and making honey, and we added another set of supers one evening last week. The current estimate (two hives) is about 120 pounds of honey.

We're finally getting typical hot July weather, which means Jim is out cutting hay. We're about two weeks behind on that because there hasn't been a rain-free window long enough in the forecast until now. The local farmers' market is in full swing (too bad they don't seem to have anything not in my garden--except ripe tomatoes!) and our friends' cherry trees are bowed under from the weight. Bad year for cherries because they've split from all the rain. But for someone willing to put them straight in the freezer or dehydrator, it's not so bad. The orchards that depend on shipping out are suffering.

That's about where things are in our 'scratch' world!

Rhubarb Melomel (Mead) -- Part 3

2009-07-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

Today we racked both the amarone wine and the rhubarb mead. For the amarone, which is a kit wine, we followed the directions. For the mead, we made up our own :)

The mead's specific gravity today was .998. .004 down from the first racking. Apparently this is good. (The amarone was also .004 down.)

No photos today, because, well--nothing looks different than last time. We racked the rhubarb mead into a fermenter, then Jim 'degassed' it by agitating it vigorously with an attachment to his drill. Meanwhile I'd mixed 1/2 teaspoon of potassium metabisulphite into 1/2 cup of cool water. We then mixed this thoroughly into the mead, then let it sit 20-30 minutes before re-racking it back into the glass carboy. (We understand the purpose of the PM to be making sure the fermentation is turned off, or complete.)

With fermentation locks in place, both carboys are now out in our mudroom (cooler than under the dining room table where they've been living until now!) with a garbage bag over each to keep them in the dark. And there they shall sit for 2-3 weeks until we do it all again.

Again, the taste tests on both were positive.

First Meal from the Garden :)

2009-06-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

We may have been on vacation, but the garden was busy growing (so were the weeds!) and tonight we had our first fresh produce of the season. What was ready first? Well, the salad greens might've been ready, but they didn't come in tonight. Instead, we went for swiss chard and kohlrabi to enjoy with a pork steak.

I usually grow rhubarb chard and plant it from seed. You can also get plain green chard or rainbow chard (in which the stems are yellow, green, orange, or red). It tastes a lot like spinach but doesn't bolt (go to seed) nearly as early in the season. And you can cut it off just above the ground and it will grow a new batch of leaves that will take a couple of weeks or so to be ready to harvest. I cut about 1/6 of my little patch tonight.

As for kohlrabi, it's a member of the cabbage family. I planted four seedlings I bought at the garden center and a bunch more from seed. This one is from a seedling. These don't regrow but are worth the space anyway as they are slightly sweet and crunchy. Sort of like broccoli stems, but a nicer texture.

I trimmed off the kohlrabi leaves off over the compost pile.

Here I've washed the swiss chard and torn out the toughest (thickest) stems. It's a good idea to wash each leaf, turning over and checking the other side also. I once did a poor job of that and served Jim a large cooked slug attached to the back of a chard leaf. Not recommended.

While we waited for the chard and the pork steaks to cook, I peeled the kohlrabi and made it into sticks. We polished it off as an appy :) This is the pottery plate I purchased from Mussels and More on vacation.

Just to show you how much the swiss chard wilts while cooking.

Ah, supper. Serve the chard with a little butter, salt and pepper. Melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

Middle Mountain Mead

2009-06-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

While we were on vacation last week, we paid a visit to Middle Mountain Mead on Hornby Island.

It crosses our mind that adding value to the honey our bees (and the additional hives we expect to buy) will produce might be a good idea. In our area there is no shortage of places one can purchase local honey. There may well be room in the market for more; I haven't yet done the research to make an educated decision. But right now we're looking at options, and opening a meadery is one such option.

We called ahead for an appointment because Hornby Island isn't into its summer schedule yet in June, and with two ferries to catch to get there, we didn't want to make the side trip if seeing the meadery wasn't a possibility. We were greeted by this young gentleman, whose name I forgot to get. Bad me.

Their tasting room is charming, and adorned with vast swaths of drying lavender.

The mead display area is simply made to suit the setting.

A large deck off the tasting room offers comfort and a spectacular view.

Our guide willingly showed us around, answered all our questions and encouraged me to take photos. Here he and Jim are discussing the fermentation process.

Then we wandered through their gardens for awhile. These aren't show gardens, but rather bee gardens. The beauty of mead, in my opinion, is that the bees make honey out of your flowers and fruit blossoms, then you can use the fruit itself, added to the honey, to make mead. Seems like a good use of resources to me!

Anyone know what this flower is (below)? See the busy bee? :) (You might need to click on the photo to enlarge it in order to see the bee.)

So the grounds below the meadery/tasting room are filled with ingredients for honey and ingredients for mead.

Here's the view they have to suffer through every day. Ah, bliss...

And, yes, we tucked a few bottles of various flavors into the car for special occasions over the next while. An Olde Mead, Cranberry Lavender Mead, Cyser (apple mead), and Green Tea Elixir.

Rhubarb Melomel (Mead) -- Part 2

2009-06-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

Last night we checked the specific gravity of the mead in the fermentation vessel. It was at 1.02, which is right where it should be.

I scooped out the majority of the rhubarb chunks, then we racked the mead. This basically means we siphoned it into a glass carboy, leaving behind the majority of the sediment and bits of fruit. You can see a vessel of amarone wine waiting for its turn to be racked.

Here's the carboy nearly full.

I forgot to take a photo once we'd put the fermentation lock on top. If you're not sure what that looks like, I found a photo here. You can see the mead is quite cloudy. Subsequent rackings should help with that, but if it doesn't clear, the taste isn't affected.

And I'm here to tell you that the sip of raw mead I had last night was quite good already, not nearly as astringent as the first taste of the plum wine we did in the fall of '07 at this stage. So far it is looking like this experiment will be a grand success :)

The Bees are Settling In :)

2009-06-11T15:11:00.001-07:00

Here are the two hives on a sunny summer day. The hedge behind them is a caragana, which will help shelter them from the east wind (our nastiest weather is from the east). It also gives the bees a handy place to go should they decide to swarm.

Just to the south of the hives is a mass of wild roses, which they've definitely discovered!

Because we're leaving on vacation Friday morning, it was imperative for us to set up a self-watering system right away. It's not a good idea for them to be drinking out of the cow troughs! Here's what we've got:

The barrel is full of water with the tap set to a slight drip. An old hubcap is beneath it with a folded up towel in it. The saturated towel allows the bees to have something to walk on without drowning while they drink. Now our farm babysitter will only have to check the level of the barrel, which probably won't need topping off while we're gone.

The farm sitter will also want to keep an eye on the farm cats. Here's Mary, who was slightly tame when she arrived a month ago but has decided to raise her three kittens in the *wild*.

The Bees are Here :)

2009-06-08T21:44:00.000-07:00

We have our own hives now! I'm so excited! Jim's been in touch with a local beekeeper for the last couple of weeks and arranged to purchase two hives from him. This evening was deemed "Bee Weather" (not too windy or rainy) and so the transfer took place. Here Jim and Lew are getting ready to off-load the hives.

Two guys can lift the hives quite readily.

Here Lew is introducing Jim to OUR bees :)

Then they off-loaded a stack of supers, which we'll add to the hives as needed for honey storage. We're headed off for a week's vacation this coming weekend (yeah I know, great timing!) and we'll leave a super on each hive before we go.

We've got a temporary water supply set up but will need to have a drip set up for them for while we're gone. Jim's folks can keep an eye, but the least they have to do (besides water the garden) the easier it will be for them.

Yay! We have bees!!

Herbs: Oregano

2009-06-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

Oregano is a versatile plant and it grows like a weed. I'm certain there's an Oregano Master Mind somewhere with the desire to take over the world. I snip mine back all summer long and add it to just about anything that sounds good with fresh herbs. (I even tried oregano tea once, but we won't repeat that one...)

But it's nice to have oregano year round, so this weekend I harvested some to dehydrate for winter use. Jim bought me a Berron Food Dehydrator in 1985 when all our friends were purchasing their first microwaves. It took us another four years to get to the microwave, and meanwhile we'd dried a lot of things in the dehydrator. Sadly, they don't seem to have a website, though I believe they're still in business in BC's Greater Vancouver area.

Anyway. Oregano.

Because it's in a clean area of my yard, I just cut down a clump, pulled the bits of grass out of it, and spread the stalks out on dehydrator trays.

Turned it to 95 degrees, the recommended temperature for herbs, and left it for about 36 hours. When the leaves were crumbly to touch, I pulled out the racks.

I just picked up a few stems at a time and ran my fingers down to dislodge the dried leaves. I'll put these in a canning jar with a LABELED lid to use all winter long, but for now I'll keep going outside to snip fresh for salads, stir-fries, and focaccia bread.

Rhubarb Melomel (Mead) -- Part 1

2009-05-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I want to get into beekeeping is to experiment with making meads, which are basically wines made with honey instead of sugar. You can make a grape mead, which is called a pyment, a fruit mead, which is called a melomel, or herbal or spice mead, called metheglin.

We own the book Making Wild Wines & Meads, but true to our form, the first one we wanted to try wasn't in the book: Rhubarb Mead. We hunted the internet and found this recipe, but the method didn't match up to the book. So, a blended method.

First, the list of ingredients:
18 cups chopped rhubarb
1 package champagne yeast
12 cups honey
48 cups water
1 lemon
1 tea bag

So here's what we've done so far, along with what we expect will happen over the next few months if all goes according to plan. Here's my rhubarb plant!

Eighteen cups of chopped rhubarb, coming right up.

It takes a long time to bring all that honey and half the water to boiling. Almost an hour. Then I boiled it for 20 minutes. As you can see, the waxy impurities floated to the top and needed to be skimmed off. (If you're buying pasteurized honey, this will already be done, but I bought mine from a local apiary's farm stand.)

Once the honey/water blend had been boiled and skimmed, I dumped in the chopped rhubarb and stirred.

Once it had cooled a bit, we poured the blend into the primary (large plastic tub) and added the remainder of the water, stirred well, and put the lid on it to sit for 24 hours. That was yesterday.

So this evening I juiced the lemon, warmed the juice to baby bottle temperature, and sprinkled the packet of champagne yeast over the top.

15 minutes later, I stirred it thoroughly. Then we added it to the rhubarb/honey/water blend in the primary along with one tea bag (I tossed in an Earl Grey) for the tannin. Stir well to distribute the yeast.

Here's what we expect to happen next:

Allow to ferment for ten days, during which the temperature needs to remain between 68-77 degrees and we need to stir several times a day.

Then transfer to an airlock carboy for three months, then rack. (This basically means the liquid is siphoned off and the solids discarded.) Rack again every month or two as needed to clarify.

Six months from now it can be bottled, and six months after THAT we'll have an idea if we'd ever make this kind again! We'll keep you updated as we go through the various steps.

Bee Day

2009-05-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I coerced Jim into writing a blog post about the beekeeping course he's been taking. After his second classroom instruction day, he didn't have a lot to say about it. On Saturday was his hands-on day. He'd asked if I could come along to participate, and they were happy to have me come. Also didn't mind that I brought the camera and stuck it many places!

We met on the property of Lance, the bee inspector for our region (and the teacher). Here he is expounding on the parts of the hive:

He'd set up various stations around his property with activities, and split the class up into groups to go through the stations. Everything from identifying disease, to learning how to set skunk traps, to treating bee diseases, to learning to build an electric fence to keep bears away from the hives, etc. And, of course, everyone got their chance to suit up and have a demonstration right in the bee yard.

Here's Jim:

Yep, I suited up and went in the bee yard also. It didn't occur to me how many people would be horrified that I'd do that, knowing I get allergic reactions from stings. But I felt quite comfortable in the suit--other than hot. The bees buzzing around didn't really *bug* me.

Not everyone suits up. The fellow on the right of this photo has been running bees for 45 years and says he hasn't suited up for over half that time. He did get a couple stings that day, but just gently flicked the bee away. Amazing.

He was in charge of the bee yard demonstrations and lifted frames out of the supers--yes, bare-handed--then handed them around so everyone could see the pollen, the larvae, etc.

Here the White Lab Overalls examine all.

Bees!!

So, now we have a bit of an idea what beekeeping entails and are on to the next steps: preparing our own bee yard and looking for hives to purchase. Will keep you updated!

The Garden is IN!

2009-05-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

We've got a fairly large garden that is being used by three families this summer, so it seemed wise to prune back the golden willow on the north side of the garden. It grows like a weed and provides too much shade, so every few years Jim gives it a good hair cut. His brother-in-law gave him a hand. Or some advice.

Once the branches had been hauled off, Jim brought in the heavy equipment, first bringing in numerous loads of manure while the manure-makers looked on.

Then the rotovator got hooked up to the tractor.

Then black plastic. Saves a lot of weeding, and the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant in particular appreciate the extra heat.

This is one of the Manitoba plants we grew from seed. About half the tomatoes I planted we grew ourselves, the rest came from a greenhouse a couple miles up the road.

We place a piece of brick or rock to the north side of every bedding plant in the plastic, and as you may have seen in the above picture, boards and tires are part of the plan as well. All of these keep the wind from whipping up the plastic and ripping up the plants. Often the tomatoes in the middle of the tires grow even better than the ones just on the plastic! We put old boards along the edges of the plastic, especially along the outside edge of the garden. There I can run the wheels of the riding mower on the boards and save a lot of hand trimming.

So now that everything is in, it's just a matter of keeping things watered. We'll be weeding and mulching the un-plasticked areas over the next few weeks as things start to sprout.

Asparagus!

2009-05-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

For six weeks from the beginning of May to the middle of June, I see this sight on my drive home from work:

And for six weeks I stop by several times a week and buy some asparagus picked that very morning.

Yep, that means we eat asparagus nearly every day, one way or another. I have to be honest. By the end of the season, it's pretty much okay that we can't have fresh, local asparagus again for ten and a half months!

I usually buy the *skinnies*--so juicy and tender. Mmm. But what to do with them day after day? Well, here's one idea, a fajita stir-fry:

Basically I use the asparagus in place of peppers in the recipe, using Old El Paso fajita mix. If you're looking for a more *from scratch* recipe, try this one by our daughter.

I also use asparagus in any recipe that calls for green beans. This recipe for Garlicky Green Beans is our favorite August recipe, but it's also very common with asparagus in May and June. Mmmm. Try it!

There's nothing in the world like vegetables picked this very morning. The asparagus fields are less than two miles from my front door. It doesn't get much better than that.

About Pressure Canners

2009-04-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

While Jim was at the beekeeping course in a nearby town, I spent the day with my niece, Barbara. She'd invited me to teach her how to pressure can the chicken soup she's been making from the Coop to Soup day a couple of weeks ago.

By expressing an interest in pressure canning, she was able to score the 'family' pressure canner that her husband's grandmother had owned, then passed down to his mom. Imagine our surprise when we found the pressure gauge still sealed into its original package! That pressure canner had been sitting in its box for at least thirty years by the looks of the packaging and accompanying booklet, though there was no copyright date anywhere in sight.

I'd taken my camera, intending to write a How To on canning with a pressure canner. Instead, the main focus will be about pressure canners themselves and what to look for if you're thinking of purchasing one.

First, the reasons for owning one. If you would like to can (or, as it's called in Europe, 'bottle') food that is non-acidic in nature, a hot water bath canner is not sufficient. Most of you are familiar with a hot water bath canner. They are thin and are typically made of lightweight black metal with a loose-fitting lid. This type of canner is perfect for processing tomatoes (usually adding a small amount of acid to each jar is a good idea, either vinegar or lemon juice), pretty much any fruit, pickles, fruit juice, jam or jelly. The acid enables these foods to seal safely if immersed under boiling water for a specified period of time, which varies by product and jar size.

I used to borrow my mother-in-law's pressure canner for a few weeks once or twice a year until Jim and I found one at a flea market and picked it up. We've added a second one since then, both the same brand and style, though one is big enough for regular one-quart jars, and the other holds taller two-quart jars. I use my pressure canners mainly for meat-based products such as soups, stews, fish, and chilis; for legumes such as black beans, kidney beans, and garbanzos; and for other garden produce such as carrots or beans. These foods don't contain acid; even the soups that contain tomatoes don't have enough acid to safely can using the hot water bath canner. Enter the pressure canner, which uses pressure to raise the temperature at which the jars seal, increasing the safety margin for home preservation.

A pressure cooker is not the same thing as a pressure canner. Cookers are great for quickly cooking potatoes or for softening tough stewing meat, but the amount of pressure cannot be regulated, so they aren't safe for canning foods for storing in the pantry.

The pressure canner that my niece has inherited looks like this:

It seals with a rubber gasket, and the lid turns and locks into place.

My pressure canners are made by All American and has these features.

The lid on mine also turns and locks into place, but there is no rubber gasket. Instead the metal of the lid tapers into the metal of the pot itself, and the six toggles swing into place and tighten the lid into place.

Another important difference is the gauge on each. Here's the gauge on the Wearever pressure canner:

The gauge has three ways it can be mounted on the vent hole: as five pounds, ten pounds, and fifteen pounds pressure. Now it's all one gauge, so the weight of the gadget does not vary. Instead, each has a different depth of hole that covers the vent hole to a different height. The five pound hole in the gauge is shallower, allowing more of the vent hole to vent steam, where the fifteen pound hole is the deepest, sealing in more of the steam.

Here's the gauge on the All American pressure canner:

It has a gauge that shows you exactly how much pressure is currently being amassed inside the canner. I got out my canner just for these photos, so the needle is pointing at zero, as it is not under pressure.

The key to pressure canning is to hold the correct pressure for a specified period of time--check your canner's guide for details. On the Wearever, you need to listen to the amount of steam sputtering from the gauge. The directions say that there will be between one and four 'sputters' a minute if the pressure is correct. On the All American, you just look at the gauge and see if the pressure is right or not.

In either case, the temperature on your stove will need to be adjusted, possibly many times, in order to keep the pressure within the correct range for the specified time. Here's where I love my gas range, as the heat change is instantaneous. An electric range's elements take noticeable time to heat and cool, making the fine-tuning of the temperature a much greater hassle. Flat-glass range tops are not recommended for either variety due to the weight of the loaded canner.

Once the time has expired, you turn off the heat and allow the canner to reduce pressure naturally. This can take quite awhile, maybe half an hour. On the All American, I can play with the vent cock a little to allow the steam to dissipate faster. On the Wearever, I popped a fork under the gauge and lifted it ever so slightly to speed the venting. When there is no more pressured steam (and on the All American, the gauge reads zero), you can remove the lid carefully, tilting it away from yourself so you don't get scalded by whatever steam remains. Remove your jars with a lifter, and place them on a padded surface away from any draft until they seal and cool.

The upshot of which style of pressure canner to purchase should you desire one? Truly, I would stay with All American. I like the toggle bolts that hold down my lid (they make me feel secure!), I like that there is no rubber gasket that may fail, and I LOVE the fact that I can read the gauge and see exactly how much pressure has built up.

Beekeeping

2009-04-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

Today I took the first of three days of a beekeeping course. It covered the development of the bee, hive construction and comb types. About bees and drones and how the hives work. There's the queen and all the workers which are female (as it should be). All the drones have to do is fly, catch a queen, have sex, and die. What a way to go. Drones don't sting, they have no defenses. If the workers are full of honey they can't sting either, because they have to bend their abdomen to sting.

I didn't know that honeybees were not native to North America. They were brought over by the Europeans when they brought over fruit trees and orchards which are not native to North America, either. There was no natural pollinator for the fruit. Bumblebees were too busy with their natural niche of berries and crabapples to be interested in the new varieties. I didn't know that and I thought it was kind of cool.

Sometimes wasps kill honeybees. One guy in our area lost a whole hive to wasps. Can you have organic honey? Unless you own thousands of acres that you know you keep organic, it's virtually impossible to claim organic honey. I kind of figured that. Bees go out about five miles from the hive so you'd need to have ten miles you know is organic. You can say it's natural honey. Made by bees for bees.

Interesting stuff. Something we're looking at doing on our farm. You need a permit in B.C. and your hives have to be inspected. I'll keep you posted after next week's lesson. There's lots more to learn. I've always been interested in entomology. It's interesting when you can mix food production with something else you enjoy.

Val found an interesting YouTube on beekeeping:

Coop to Soup

2009-04-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

This weekend was chicken soup weekend at the farm. Forty laying hens should've kept laying eggs regularly because the ones that don't? Off with their heads. That's a fact of life and food down home on the farm. When we got the opportunity to attain these birds, we called in the troops. Hanna and Craig (daughter and son-in-law) and my niece Barbara and her husband Blair came for the day. (I got to be B&B's baby Micah's babysitter!)

Here Blair and Craig admire the haul of birds:

Here Jim shows Blair where to chop:

Then the hen is immersed in not-quite-boiling water for a minute or so, which makes the feathers much easier to pluck:

Here a bird is losing her feathers (and then her guts, which apparently no one took a picture of):

From there the birds are rinsed out and then up to six at a time hit the big canner for cooking down into soup:

I brought the batch to a boil, then turned the element down low and left it overnight, about 14 hours. Once the birds were cool enough to handle, the tedious task of separating out meat from bones took place:

Then the meat and broth went back in the pot with onions, garlic, and spices and cooked for awhile longer before I began to put it in jars to pressure can it. Here's a photo of the first pot's worth of results:

This is the base for old-fashioned chicken noodle soup--meaning that just heating and adding noodles is a meal in itself. Or, of course, the cook can add vegetables, rice, or whatever else is desired on that day. There's nothing like the taste of home-made chicken noodle soup, but as you can see, it's a big job to get there!

If you're looking for recipe details, they're here.

Lemon Pepper Pasta

2009-04-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

Not only did we make mozzarella today, we borrowed the pasta rollers for the KitchenAid from Jim's folks and made a batch of lemon pepper fettucine. The basic recipe is 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup water (we could've substituted lemon juice for a bit of that water), the zest of one lemon, 1/2 teaspoon salt, a good grinding of black pepper, and 1 tablespoon olive oil.

Here's Hanna starting the pasta through the rollers:

She rolled the pasta through several times, adjusting the rollers tighter each time:

Here are the paper-thin pieces waiting for the next stage:

Then we changed to the cutting roller:

Here's the *nests* waiting for cooking:

Jim made a seafood sauce with butter, garlic, fresh garden chives and white wine with scallops and mussels to serve over the pasta.

We served this with fresh French bread and home-made mozzarella. Mmm, good.

30 minute mozzarella

2009-04-12T20:45:00.000-07:00

This weekend Hanna and Craig came over for Easter...and a variety of cooking experiences. After church today, we got busy starting supper. We started a batch of French bread and mozzarella using the 30 minute recipe from Home Cheese Making.

I have to admit to not following the directions. I used lemon juice instead of citric acid without looking up the ratio, and didn't put in enough. We added the rennet at the right temperature, nothing happened, Hanna looked it up online, we cooled the milk, added more lemon juice (3 ounces total), reheated it, added a few specks more rennet, and carried on reasonably successfully, all things considered.

Also, we'd bought our rennet (and all our current supplies) from Danlac Industries, our nearest cheese making supplier. Their ingredients don't translate straight across, so there was some guess work involved there too. Here Hanna is checking to see if the curds are starting to set.

The answer is yes!

Hanna squeezed out the excess whey:

And then began the process of folding it over and over with a wooden spoon, heating in between times:

Jim had taken about a fifth of the curds to do without salt at all (as an experiment for a family member with kidney disease). Here he is testing the stretchability of the mozz.

Working the cheese makes for hot, red hands!

Here's a bunch of tasty little mozza balls. Turned out pretty decent, if I do say so myself!

Smoked Ribs

2009-04-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

Jim's been asking for a Bradley Smoker for several years. At Christmas in '08 I broke down and got him one. Our weather has been so cold and nasty that yesterday was the first time we got it out and tried it.

I'd taken 2 slabs of pork ribs out of the deep freeze and Jim hunted around on the internet for the perfect recipe. He decided to try this one: Smoked Pork Ribs.

Check the recipe! We made up a wet rub and applied it.

We wrapped them back up to marinate in the fridge for a couple of hours, then into the smoker.

Jim loaded up more of the smoker *biscuits* (We used special blend.)

They stayed in the smoker for about four hours.

Check out this cross-cut!

This recipe got eight thumbs. Why yes, four people sat at the table! I found it a little hot, though still scrumptious.

If you have access to a smoker, our family totally recommends this recipe.

One Block Diet?

2009-04-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe in some parts of the world this is feasible! The folks at Sunset Magazine in California are doing this and blogging here. From what I can gather, they've divided their staff into *teams* for the various categories, which include Team Bee, Team Beer, Team Cheese, Team Chicken, Team Garden, Team Kitchen, Team Olive, Team Salt, Team Vinegar, and Team Wine. Each of the teams has their own blog, listed on the site's sidebar. Though they say they have an RSS reader, for some reason it doesn't seem to be compatible with our sidebar in order for recent posts to show here, so that's the main reason I'm featuring them here. (Do check some of the blogs in the sidebar, though. They're amusing and informative, not necessarily in that order.)

There's lots of great information and many hours worth of reading in the areas that might interest you. These aren't seasoned pros--they're regular folk with an interest in knowing where their food comes from and who've made a decision to experiment with growing it all themselves.

Kudos to Sunset Magazine and their staff.

Food Action Coalition Meeting

2009-04-10T09:43:00.000-07:00

This hasn't been a good week for me to blog, so I nearly forgot to tell you about the local food coalition meeting on Monday evening.

Our eyes were really opened as to what all is going on in our valley to support local agriculture. Here are some of the highlights.

If anyone reading is from the Kootenay region, you might want to get into purchasing grain shares for autumn 2009. What this means is that for $125.00 (paid by April 30, 2009) you get one *share* of local whole grain, which includes 20 pounds Hard Spring Wheat, 20 pounds Hard Winter Wheat, 20 pounds Spelt, 20 pounds Khorasan (also known as Polish Wheat or Kamut), and 20 pounds Oats. Your family can purchase more than one share, and there are additional shares available for lentils and red fife wheat. Sounds like I might need to purchase the grain mill attachment for the KitchenAid!

We have a community greenhouse. Now, this I didn't know. I know there's a community garden--it's just up a block from where I work. But it sounds like the greenhouse is involved in projects with schools and the senior center as well as having 55 participants in a winter harvest project. We need to find out more about this, methinks.

The farmer's markets have been running on Saturday mornings the past couple of summers, and we've gone into town a number of times to get fresh produce that we aren't growing ourselves. Good to know these will continue and that they are looking for ways to expand and be more efficient. I'd like to see them get off a gravel parking lot and into a venue that would offer shade, like a park.

The Garden Hoe folks (I posted a photo of Barry--now I know his name!--on the Seedy Saturday post) talked about the challenges they face in their greenhouse and market garden business, namely time and weed management. They're excited because a group of about 30 regional restaurants are actively seeking local produce.

Jim and I have talked about raising chickens again for meat. We've really wanted to do this because we wanted to know where our meat was coming from and that it was naturally grown (if not organically). But it's a big undertaking, and we are always short on time and energy, so we're very pleased that we'll be able to purchase chickens from a new business start-up here in the valley who has built a poultry barn and fenced off an area for the birds to get outside. We've ordered 10 birds for June pickup and 10 more for October pickup. These will be roaster size (5-6 pounds) and the expectation is that the price will be similar to that of the grocery store. If anyone reading this is local and wants to get in on this, just ask us for the guy's phone number. He's still taking orders as far as I know.

The main presentation of the evening was by Susan, a local beekeeper and orchardist (cherries are the big local crop). She gave comprehensive insight into the challenges facing beekeepers and how to get into the business, saying that there is need for more hives locally to satisfy demand. Who knew that huge apiaries from the prairies bring truckloads of hives to over-winter here in our milder climate and then hire the bees out to pollinate the orchards? Her talk was extremely interesting to both of us in that this is an avenue we've seriously considered pursuing and now we have the information to evaluate.

Apparently these meetings are held monthly, with various local agribusinesses presenting their challenges at each one, as well as reports from the various arms of the coalition. Very interesting. I'm glad we went.

Seeds are up!

2009-04-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

And in other news, the snow is all gone and the rhubarb is peeking through.

Besides rhubarb crisp and rhubarb punch base, this year we're excited to try making some rhubarb mead. Looks like it won't be any week soon, though.

Planting Tomato Seed

2009-03-28T20:14:00.001-07:00

We probably should have done this a week or two ago, but we didn't. Today we got out the flats and pots from a previous year in order to plant the seeds we picked up at Seedy Saturday. We realized it was a bit early to plant the pumpkins, though. Jim was very excited to find Big Max Pumpkins. As near as he's concerned, small pumpkins just aren't any fun. So we'll plant those in a few weeks. (Instructions say 2-3 weeks before last frost.)

We worked outside, using our deep freeze as a work counter. Jim filled the pots with organic seed-starting soil, which is a finer grade than regular potting soil.

I planted a seed into each pot, 1/4" deep.

The seeds are very tiny! Well, YOU know. You've eaten a tomato!

We planted a flat and a half of Manitoba tomatoes. We grew some of these last year and enjoyed both the flavor and the fact that we were eating tomatoes weeks earlier than other years. They're a bit smaller, which means more work at canning time, though.

We also planted some Black Yum Yums and Duprava tomatoes. No idea what to expect on either of these!

Then we set this up on a table in front of the south window in our spare room. We put a long heating pad on low on the table, and straddled the three flats across the pad. Put water in the reservoirs, and covered with plastic. It will take a bit of time before we see what germinated.

Disclaimer: This is an experiment. We don't necessarily know what we're doing!

KA forums

2009-03-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

Jim went hunting for information online about the KitchenAid pasta extruders. KitchenAid has an entire forum to discuss issues with the machine and attachments. So maybe we will try this again. Not, however, today. :P

Here's a thread on making macaroni.
This thread is about spinach pasta and the proper dryness of the dough.
There's advice here about the extruder balling up the dough into big gloms.

KA--Pasta Extruder

2009-03-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

I don't normally do things by the book. Sometimes that works, and other times it bites me. My first experiment with making pasta using the extruder on the Kitchen Aid was to use my spinach pasta recipe. Disaster. Just so much green glue, really. That was before I decided to start this blog, so you were saved from having to witness it.

Still, one trial doesn't mean the whole system is faulty. Chastened, we made pasta this week using the basic recipe that came with the machine. So here it is getting mixed. I definitely made sure the dough was much stiffer, all the flour it could hold!

These are the extruder options. From the top, clockwise: fettucine, macaroni, spaghettini, spaghetti, and lasagna extruders.

Here's how it (sort of) works. We chose fettucine, and you can see we're already in trouble!

While the dough had been resting, I made the sauce: a basic cheesy (using the lemon cheese) white sauce with hot Italian sausages in it.

I cooked the noodles while Jim continued extruding. This is the result:

So, were we happy with the process and the end result? Not really. The taste of the noodles was fine. Good, really. But getting there was a royal pain. As you can see from the photo of the extrusion, the noodles badly wanted to glom together. It was difficult to separate them to cook, and I tossed a few back at Jim to re-extrude because I couldn't get them apart. Such a light touch was needed--any pressure and they stuck firmer. I also threw out a few globs that cooked together and wouldn't separate. Also, I must say cleaning the KA after the whole thing is also a pain, though it was easier this time than with the spinach glue. I did toss all the parts in soapy water in the sink until after we'd eaten, but the hard-to-get-to spots were still--hard to get to.

Being gluttons for punishment, no doubt we'll try the macaroni and lasagna extruders yet some time. Generally speaking, though, I don't see this being the way we will normally get pasta for dinner. It took two people a solid half hour of labor to make enough pasta for four servings, not including clean-up. However, if we ever decide on a pasta night and find the cupboard is bare, we do have a possible solution.

I'm sad. I wanted to like it.

Lemon Cheese

2009-03-15T18:10:00.000-07:00

We recently purchased the book Home Cheese Making. Today I tried my first recipe out of it, Lemon Cheese (page 79). It seemed a good choice because it doesn't require anything fancy, just milk, lemons, heat, and salt. I was thinking ahead yesterday and purchased some lemons. I juiced two on the glass juicer I got from my grandmother's estate.

I poured half a gallon of whole milk into a large pot and heated it to about 185F, stirring frequently with a whisk.

Then I turned off the heat and poured in 1/3 cup of the lemon juice. Immediately the curds began to separate from the whey:

The lid goes on so it can rest for 15 minutes, then I poured it through cloth in a colander:

Once the whey had poured through (just a few minutes), I tied the cloth into a bag to apply a bit of pressure to it and let it sit for a couple hours draining through the colander on the counter. By then the bread was done and I was getting hungry to try out this cheese, but it needed a bit of salt--I put in 1.5 teaspoons, 1/2 teaspoon at a time and tasting in between.

A little bit of a crumbly texture, but oh-so-delicious on fresh bread. And no, it doesn't taste the teensiest bit of lemon juice!

Kitchen Aid Whole-Wheat Bread

2009-03-15T15:15:00.000-07:00

Today's the first time I've made bread in the new Kitchen Aid.

The directions say that the largest batch this 375-watt machine can handle is a two-loaf size (about 8 cups flour max). We don't go through a lot of bread these days as we both have microwaves at work and usually take leftovers for our lunches, so I thought I'd try a two-loaf batch rather than a hand-kneaded four-loaf batch like I've done for years. (Used to do a six-loaf batch when everyone was taking sandwiches back a few years!) I might even go to single loaf batches sometimes if I can bake them well in the toaster oven. But that is not today's mission.

Here's what I did (as much for my own sake to check back on as for yours!)

5 cups whole-wheat flour (currently using Trojan by Ellisons brand)
1/2 tablespoon active-rise yeast (Fermipan)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon salt

Run KA with dough hook at Level 2 for 15 seconds to mix dry ingredients, then slowly add:
3 cups warm water
glug vinegar
1 Tablespoon olive oil

Keep machine on Level 2. When the liquids are mixed into the dry ingredients thoroughly, add more flour, 1/2 cup at a time. I probably added 2 more cups, maybe 2.5 before the sides of the bowl stayed clear and the mass of dough kept revolving evenly.

Then I kept it going for another 2-3 minutes until smooth and elastic, before putting it in a greased covered bowl and into the oven with only the oven light on. That's the easiest consistently temperatured place for me to rise bread; I've been doing that for years.

It rose really well, and I shaped it into two loaves. It rose again while the oven heated.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes. Voila!

Seedy Saturday

2009-03-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

We attended a one-hour workshop, followed by a seed exchange, on Seedy Saturday (yesterday). Sadly, though sponsored by College of the Rockies, the workshop was held in a church basement at the same time as a garage sale was going on in the other part of it. There were pillars (big enough to hide behind) marching down the center and no microphones, so all together it was extremely difficult to hear the speakers.

I'm not convinced that I'm going to get into saving my own seeds, anyway. (Would I have been if I could have heard everything? Who knows!) I'll definitely make a larger effort to buy open-pollinated seed, though, in the event I change my mind and also to help create demand for heritage varieties. Last summer Hanna and I planted several heritage seeds we'd found from Salt Spring Seeds we'd purchased on an adventureseome day on Salt Spring Island last May with Jen (who needs a blog to link to again...)

Strangely, there was a way better selection of Salt Spring Seeds at yesterday's workshop than the girls and I found on the island last year. We purchased several kinds to try in this year's garden.

For me, the highlight of Seedy Saturday was chatting up folks, including neighbors, Dan and Val, whose blog we'd already discovered, Grunt and Grungy's Garden. Dan was one of the speakers, as his area of expertise is saving tomato seeds. They currently have a seed bank of over 700 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and they'll mail them to you wherever you happen to live. Check it out if you're interested! I picked up a few. Does that mean I'm starting transplants? Eep!

Because I'd been unable to see or hear Dan's presentation, he gave me a quick run-down afterwards at his table.

Here's a close-up of tomato mush in various stages of seed harvest. It's a messy business:

The fellow from Garden Hoe Farm was there, obviously ready to have his picture taken, though I didn't catch his name:

He had a variety of seeds available for donations to the cancer society:

Creston Valley Food Action Coalition had a booth there as well:

Last year was their pilot year in providing local grains through Community Supported Agriculture. Area residents purchase grain shares in spring and receive bags of grain in the fall:

This is something we're interested in looking into as a direction for some of our own land: seeing what we might be able to produce that is in demand by this local organization.

All in all it was a good time of meeting neighbors and Talking the Talk.

Seed Exchange

2009-03-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

I've been reading about Seedy Saturdays on various blogs and sites lately, and it sounds fun. Creston is having the next best thing this coming Saturday, put on by the College of the Rockies from 1-3 pm. It will take place at the New Life Christian Church (sounds somewhat applicable, actually!) on Elm Street.

A one-hour workshop on saving, storing, cleaning and growing seeds and one hour of selling and trading--recommended entrance donation of ten dollars. This workshop focuses on open-pollinated seeds adapted to local conditions.

Guess where we'll be on Saturday afternoon! Don't know that I've got anything to trade though. Must see what's in the drawer.

Welcome to Scratch!

2009-03-07T19:04:00.000-08:00

Food from scratch might have a variety of connotations. It might be part of the slow food movement, it might be organic, it might be local. It should definitely be sustainable.

You may have heard of the 100 mile diet, the essence of a local food experience in Vancouver, BC, by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. A well-known variation (and book) is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by the Kingsolver/Hopp family of Virginia.

This blog is not about them. It's not about a stringent set of rules, no matter how well thought out and how well executed. It's not about denying ourselves every food that comes from somewhere else.

It's about awareness of where the food we consume comes from. It's about choosing fresh, local food when possible. It's about planning ahead...but mostly it is about doing.

We own a 40-acre farm in the fertile Creston Valley on which we currently grow a few cows and the hay to feed them, as well as a large garden with which to feed us. We've dabbled in sheep and chickens and pigs over the years, and who knows, some of those might come around again. We have a few plum trees, an apricot that blooms gorgeously but doesn't produce, a walnut, and a hazelnut. We're looking at a few other options as well, and decided that a new blog to record our journey might be fun for us and, perhaps, fun for you as well.

We're long-time do-it-yourselfers. Both of us were raised in families where bread came from the oven, not the grocery store. Where vegetables came from the garden and were frozen or canned for winter consumption. Where meat came from animals not far from the door. We're not strangers to this way of life as many of our generation are.

But with the newest version of the *back to the land movement* all around us, we've been challenged once again to think about what we're eating that could have come from our farm and garden and neighborhood.

Welcome to Food from Scratch. We hope you bookmark us or subscribe to our blog feed and enjoy the journey with us.