Wednesday, August 24, 2011

A Whole Lot of Cooking Going On

Sometimes I take on too many things.  ("No!" you say, incredulously.  Or is that sarcastically?)

We had lunch at my friend's house and I brought a stepstool so we could get more of those crabapples.  We specifically picked those which had no holes, rotten spots, or anything that looked remotely like a bug had been at it.  I was canning these ones whole.  We picked a little over 4 pounds.  I used the Spiced Crabapple recipe in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and made 2 quarts and 2 pints.  I will give a quart to my friend and I expect to give away 2 more of the jars.  It has cinnamon, allspice, and clove in it.  They smell lovely!

If that had been the only canning/cooking project for the day it would have been plenty.  But I had a few other things in the works.  I had set up a double batch of stroganoff in the slow cooker this morning.  But, since the slow cooker isn't big enough for 2 batches, I put the meat, onions and half the liquid in and cooked it all day and when we got back at 5 pm I put it in a pot with the mushrooms and the rest of the liquid and let it simmer.

Then I made chocolate zucchini bread - finally tamed the last of the monster zucchinis.  It makes 2 loaves.  I probably could have left them in the oven a little longer - they are soft on the bottom.  That's OK.  It's amazing.  The 6 year old gobbled up a slice.  Shhh!  Don't say anything!
THEN I made the spiced crabapples.  I got distracted doing laundry and they overcooked a little so some of the apples burst.  But overall most of them are still apple-shaped.  While they were processing I got the pressure canner ready and heated up 2 more quart jars.  After the pot was cleaned I cooked the noodles for the stroganoff.  Then when I had room on the stove for the pressure canner I started warming that up and filled the 2 quart jars with stroganoff (take it out before you put the sour cream in) and got them going in the pressure canner.  They're now going strong.

We had dinner, we had the zucchini bread, and now I'm going to go play Blokus with the family.

Whew!

4 comments:

  1. I have a tendency to get too many cooking things going at once also. Last Sunday, I canned tomatoes, carrots, made pickled quail eggs and made yogurt. It was a LONG day.

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  2. Yeah. And then I start complaining that I need a bigger kitchen....

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  3. You do need a bigger kitchen. ;-)

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  4. "Why aren't you eating the chocolate bread? I thought you liked it."
    "Well, I do... but there are these green strings in it. I don't like the green strings."
    "You ate it before with the green strings."
    "I know, but I don't like them."

    Thus ends the saga of the zucchini bread. The 6 year old is no longer allowed to wear eyeglasses when eating.

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