Replenished

It hasn't been a great year for canning, evidenced by my lack of blogging. I never entered anything in the fair this year because I didn't have anything to enter. I'm canning so infrequently I don't want to give any of my products away! The farm share, while adequate for our needs, doesn't give the opportunity to go pick unlimited tomatoes at the end of season or anything like that. And it's been ages since I foraged.

But while the produce hasn't been plentiful, at least not for me, I did have a freezer full of chicken and turkey bones from the last year. Last Friday I made a huge batch of stock - over two gallons. Some has been used already but the rest got canned into 17 pint jars today. We've been out of chicken stock for a while and it was time to replenish the pantry.

Congrats to my friend and fellow canner who DID enter things in the fair, and won Best in Show this year! It's quite the accomplishment and I am happy for her.

A Whole Lotta No, and a Surprising Yes

Several people asked me recently if I was entering canned goods in the fair - sadly, No. I just didn't can enough things to make it worthwhile. It hasn't been a great year for wild produce. Even the elderberries I have been eyeing all summer seem to have been eaten before I could get to them. 

Then, yesterday, I was supposed to have an in-home macaron making class that I won at a silent auction. I was ready - even though my mixer died earlier in the week, my husband was able to replace the worn out gear in my first dead mixer and get that one working, I had all the eggs, the elderchild was heading home from college to participate. Everything was ready! So I took a COVID test. Just in case, you know?

Shockingly, it was positive! 

I have been working directly with COVID positive patients since the pandemic started. This is the first time I have ever tested positive, and I don't even really know how I was exposed. Strangely, I have zero symptoms. I'm now just stuck at home for a few days and trying not to infect anyone. (Elderchild turned around and left, without getting exposed, thankfully.)

So, macaron class? No. For now.

Crabapples at Work

At my new(ish) job, I get a lunch break. It's still a novelty. I've taken to going for walks. The loop around the building and the parking lot takes about 15 minutes so it's just enough to feel refreshed. The other day, while walking, I discovered a couple of crabapple trees. After work, I went back and picked all the crabapples that looked reasonably okay. They're not as large as the ones I picked years ago which were at an apartment complex and better cared for but they're still crabapples and they will still make jelly.

Today I took the 7 cups of crabapple juice I extracted and made jelly. I haven't bought pectin in forever and I don't have any currently so I did this the old fashioned way, using the natural pectin in the apples to make the jelly. It seems to have worked. I ended up with eight jars of jelly. For six of them, I placed into each jar a star anise pod, half a cinnamon stick, one clove, two peppercorns, and a dried cayenne pepper. 

In case I do enter them in the fair, here's the recipe:

7 cups crabapple juice

7 cups sugar

1.5 T lemon juice

Boiled until 220˚F

There aren't too many other forage-able things at work that I've identified otherwise, so this may be the only work related project for a while. 

Fair in the Rain

We went up to the Fair two days ago, the weather was rainy but not super windy. It was the little bit of Hurricane Ian that reached New England, I guess. Generally, I prefer to be at the Fair in the rain because fewer people go so it doesn't feel as crowded. 

From the canning perspective, I won first place for sauerkraut and for tomato (pizza) sauce, and second place for the mulberry jelly, raspberry jam, and salsa verde. I didn't bake anything for the baking competition, but I did spend Friday baking a cake for the elderchild's birthday. More on that later.

One of the most fun parts for us is seeing the rabbits, and this year we spent some time watching the judging of some larger rabbits. There are these little stalls with wire doors that flip up so the rabbits are put in one side and the judge takes them out the other side and examines them. The rest of the rabbits, though, are all trying to get out of the stalls, and so every so often a rabbit's head pokes up above the stalls and a person has to hurry and push it back down before it jumps out. It's like whack-a-mole, but gently and with rabbits. It was so funny to watch!

After about four hours, we headed home, and I spent the rest of the afternoon frosting the cake I'd made and making chile rellenos for dinner.

Ah, the cake. The elderchild requested a red velvet cake like the one on this season's Great British Bake Off (the technical challenge). I looked up their recipe and, after making a run up to Saugus to get 6" cake pans which I discovered I needed right when I was about to start preparing the ingredients, followed the recipe to the letter. It SANK. I'm not sure why. So I cleaned up, went back out to the store to get more red food coloring and cocoa, and used a different recipe, which worked. And tasted really good, I might add. I did use the frosting from the GBBO recipe, which tasted great, but it was so runny. I had to put a skewer in the cake to keep it upright while I tried to frost it. There was a lot of cursing. 

Ultimately, the cake tasted fantastic, even if it was not as smoothly frosted as the ones on TV. 

Happy Birthday!

Unlimited Tomatoes

This past week at the farm, we were instructed we could pick unlimited tomatoes. Turns out, the limiting factor was how much I could carry. Between the plum tomatoes I've frozen from prior weeks and the tomatoes I lugged across the field, I had enough purée to make a full batch of pizza sauce. 13 cups of purée, 1/2 cup lemon juice, spices (I used Ferla Spice, salt, pepper, and garlic powder) and time. I ended up with four 12-ounce jars and four 8-ounce jars. I followed the recipe in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

After checking with the woman who runs the canning competition at the fair, I will enter this in the "Tomato Sauce" category, rather than the "Spaghetti Sauce" category. 

As of today, I have five things to enter. Last year I had four. The maximum a person can enter is ten classes (it used to be fifteen, I am not sure when that changed). I think I'm done, and can spend the next few days getting everything labeled correctly. They need to be dropped off on Saturday. 

If there are more tomatoes next week at the farm, I will try to get some to make a batch of regular tomato sauce, as I've been out of that for a while as well. 

Disappointing

We've been picking raspberries at the local farm for years. In the past few years, they have taken out most of the raspberry bushes in favor of expanding to a more broad selection of crops and a farm stand. Which is fine, but that means fewer raspberries. Recently they've taken to limiting the amount of raspberries a group can pick. This morning three of us went, and we were only able to pick three pints.

What that means is I was unable to make raspberry jam without pectin and had just enough berries to make a batch of jam with pectin. There were no berries left over for snacking. I guess it'll have to do. 

End of Summer

School has started for the kids, and the farm share has gone into high production mode. Considering how dry it has been lately, it's surprising how much I brought home yesterday. Time to get canning!

Today I made five half-pint jars of salsa verde, with the intention of entering it in the fair. I think my proportions might have been a little off because it was fairly watery, so I strained out some of the liquid before canning it. Likely the tomatillos had more water in them than I was expecting.

I have many pounds of plum tomatoes to run through the food mill tomorrow, so I can make a large batch of pizza sauce. I am not sure I will enter pizza sauce in the fair partly because I don't know if it falls into the "tomato sauce" or "spaghetti sauce" categories, and partly because I'm not sure if I even want to sacrifice a jar because this is one of the things that gets used up quickly.

In Between

As in, I am in between jobs. After just under three years I left my most current position providing urgent care and will be starting a new job in a pediatric office, with better hours and fewer weekend shifts. (About the latter my family says, "It's about time!") It will take a little while to finish all the credentialing and get oriented, so that leaves me some time for canning. 

Today I checked the sauerkraut, and it was tasty, and the pH was <4, so it was ready. This time I hot packed it as I'm tired of cracking jars and losing product. The difference is that since the sauerkraut is already heated up, it takes less time in the canner to process. 10 minutes, instead of 20. Works for me.

The 7ish pounds of cabbage and 2 leeks made almost 6 pints of sauerkraut, once it was all packed down in jars. I even have enough that I will enter some in the fair. Maybe I can pull some more things together in the next few weeks to have a respectable entry. It would be weird to miss it!

Peaches

Last week, we visited family in Ohio. As with the prior year's trip, my in-laws got two big boxes of peaches from the Georgia Peach Truck. I had ambitions to make pies, crisps, jam, and other peachy things. But chaos ensued, as it usually does. I couldn't find a rolling pin so rather than a pie I made one crisp. And one batch of jam. But since my in-laws weren't sure where the canning pot that I'm positive we bought on a prior trip ended up, I did the "flip the jars over" thing to seal them. It worked, and it won't take them long to work through the 5 and a half jars of jam I made for them. 

Because I didn't have huge amounts of time I intended to bring home enough peaches for another two batches of jam, thinking I could make some to enter in the fair (and seal in a boiling water canner, the preferred way). But the peaches got bruised, and even though we put them in a fridge at the B&B we stayed at en route, the next morning we discovered they were starting to rot. 

We managed to find 5 good ones which we left with our lovely hosts and they kindly threw out the rest for us. I felt badly that didn't work, but we still had a lot of time in the car to go and it was almost 100˚F outside and the trunk wasn't as cool as I'd hoped it would be. So they really wouldn't have made it the rest of the way. 

Speaking of the Fair, it's really snuck up on me. I'm not done with the shawl I'd hoped to enter. It turns out, you have to actually knit in order for knitted items to be completed. Who knew? But I haven't gotten to it in a while. I only have the mulberry jelly to enter, having missed strawberry season and not having any peach jam. I haven't even made any pickles as the farm share hasn't had as many as prior years. So between the lack of produce and my general lack of energy, I'm not sure I'll manage to get anything else made by the time I have to enter. 

Mulberry Jelly

After a few trips to the mulberry tree I had enough juice to make a batch of mulberry jelly, which I did this morning. I decided to put aside 2 jars for the fair, and the rest of the jelly is in 4-ounce jars so I can get started on that gift stash. While I was picking berries yesterday, a chipmunk sat in the branches and gave me its best angry face as it chittered away at me. It was adorable. 

This is the first batch of canning I've done in quite some time. It's not been a convenient year for picking berries yet. Our usual strawberry place had 2 days of picking, on weekdays, and then it was too cool for the berries to ripen so they didn't have any more. They do have cherry picking but, again, it hasn't really worked out that we can go as a family. I'm not sure what's going to come from the farm share in the next few weeks, I haven't seen any mention of strawberries from them, either. We still have so much jam from previous batches that I don't need to make much. I'll just have to keep an eye out for what's available. 

Now You're Thinking

For the elderchild's birthday, something made me think about the video game they all used to play called Portal. There were these blue and orange portals that one creates to solve puzzles, with a promise of cake at the end. It's been a long time since anyone played Portal in this house, but when I mentioned making a Portal-themed cake to the elderchild the response was, "Ooh, I'd love to see that!"

It took me a couple of tries to make the portals. I knew I was going to make them out of sugar, and after a few experiments I used Jolly Ranchers melted in the oven in my cake rings on greased parchment. 

After that, it was a relatively simple matter to make a chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting. After we got back from the Fair today, I frosted the cake, pressed Cocoa Krispies on the sides, and topped with cherries. Then for the hard part - cutting the cake to make it look like it was passing through a portal.

And that is how we served it, with the appropriate number of candles spread out on both parts. The elderchild was quite pleased.

Did I mention the Fair was today? It actually started yesterday and will go through the 11th, but we always go on the first Saturday since I can never wait longer than that to find out how my entries did. I only entered 4 classes this year, but got first place in 2 (elderberry jelly and salsa verde) and second in the other 2 (dill pickles and bread and butter pickles). I do wish we got more specific feedback about our entries so we can improve, but still, I'm happy with the results, of course! We checked out the rabbit, bird, vegetable and flower competitions, watched a stunt show, ate a bunch of Fair food, and oohed and aahed over all the beautiful crafts on display. The bee house was PACKED so we didn't really go through it, but that was alright. We had plenty to do. 

Salsa Verde

Yesterday, which was an uneventfully rainy day, I picked up the farm share.

I say uneventful because often when I am at the farm and it rains it takes the form of a tremendous downpour, complete with lightning; it's like a curtain of rain is drawn across the field. Yesterday it was more steady - no significant hazards, but still drenched at the end. So I can be forgiven for not picking the flowers, or the tiny handful of raspberries in our allotted share. But I did grab a bunch of tomatillos and tomatoes, before the wet weather destroys those crops.

The tomatoes still have some ripening to do, but the tomatillos were enough to make four cups of salsa verde. Since I only had three jars, there is more in the fridge to do something with. I did get three decent sized poblano peppers in the share and so I might make chile rellenos and top with salsa verde. Something like this recipe, in fact. 

Also today I prepped my four entries for the fair. I have to take them in tomorrow before work. 

As I typed all this, I looked up to see 5 monarch butterflies on my butterfly bush. That's the most I've ever seen here at one time. They're so beautiful!

Now I Have a Deadline

I finally checked out the exhibitors' guide for the Topsfield Fair and I have until September 7 to enter. I think I will enter the dill pickles and elderberry jelly I have already made, plus today's Salsa Verde and Bread and Butter pickles. The farm share was full of pickling cukes, onions and tomatillos today and I was able to make a batch of the salsa and 4 pints of Bread and Butter pickles.

Given the time constraints I have over the next few weeks, this may be it for my entries. I don't think I'm going to try to bake for the fair this year, either. I want to see how this year goes. 

Dill Pickles

Provided things don't change too much, the Topsfield Fair is supposed to be happening this year. It seems like I should get a few things ready although I haven't really been making anything with the fair in mind until this week. Today's farm share had a lot of pickling cucumbers and I took my allotment (10) and made dill pickles.

The recipe I use, "Favorite Dill Pickles," from The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving, is nice because it has a little sugar and mustard seeds which temper the acidity of the vinegar. It's also really quick to make. In about an hour I converted most of the cucumbers to six jars of pickles. I say "most" because one was hiding under the bok choy and I didn't see it until it was too late. 

Elderberries

It's been four years since I made elderberry jelly. For some reason, I am always busy while they are in season and their season is relatively short. This year, I managed to catch them between travel and work, and so got enough berries to make a batch of jelly. Just like before, 5 cups of elderberry juice, 1/3 cup lemon juice, 6-1/2 cups sugar and 1 box of powdered pectin. If I decide to enter things in the fair this year which, so far, is going ahead as scheduled, I will enter this.

Fair News

After baking for days, this morning I had everything almost ready to bring up to the fair. I'd made bread, again, and an apple pie, and apricot ginger muffins, and my favorite pie, chocolate sweet potato with maple candied bacon and bourbon whipped cream. I finished the whipped cream, crumbled the bacon onto the pie and then coated it with whipped cream and a last little sprinkle of bacon. Then we were off to Topsfield.

After dropping off the baked goods we checked out the canning winners. I'm pleased to report that, out of 15 entries, I placed in all 15! Best in show went to my friend for a mango conserve that sounds really tasty. Here's my list:

1. First Place for sauerkraut, salsa verde, sweet relish (the pepper one), stone fruit jam, mulberry ginger jelly, and peach jam. I was really hoping that peach jam would win, it was, in my opinion, terrific.
2. Second Place for canned whole tomatoes, dill pickles, pickled beets and sliced peaches in syrup.
3. Third Place for the peach salsa, sweet pickles and blackberry jam.
4. Honorable Mention for the spicy cranberry rhubarb conserve and the zucchini bread and butter pickles.

Next we went to the beekeeping exhibits and checked out the baking with honey competition. Of all my entries (five in total) the scones, brownies, bread and peach salsa all won Second Place and the banana bread won Third.

Then it was time for the judging of the entries in the food department. I was hopeful because for the last two years I'd entered one category each year and placed first. This time I entered four categories and crossed my fingers. In the muffin category I received an Honorable Mention (there were only four entries, so at first I thought it was just because I came in fourth but later I discovered that not all classes had an Honorable Mention awarded so the judges did feel it was worthy enough for that). In the two-crust pie competition I placed third out of five entries. In the bread category I placed third out of eight. Sadly, my favorite pie, the sweet potato one, didn't win anything at all. I must admit I was disappointed, particularly because that is the one I worked the most on. The one thing I wish they'd change is to give an opportunity for feedback. I'm not sure how we can improve if we don't know what the judges liked or didn't like about an entry.

Anyway, that's about all we did other than watch a duck race and see the bunnies. Then it was time to head home so the youngerchild could do homework. 

Almost Ready

Not pictured: Banana Bread

The Baking with Honey entries have been delivered to the fairgrounds. I have been up since 5 am baking bread, making Earl Grey white chocolate ganache (for the scones) and generally getting everything ready. I'm super tired, as I only went to bed at 1 am!

See, I got home from my first shift at my new job at 12:30 am and then I needed to form the loaves of bread and get them proofing. Prior experience has taught me they don't need that long to proof and so I set my alarm for 5 am. That was perfect timing. The bread got baked, it smelled lovely (tasted lovely, too. I may or may not have eaten almost half a loaf just now for lunch....) and I had enough time to coat the scones with ganache, cut the brownies, get everything wrapped up and loaded in the car.

After I dropped the youngerchild off at the bus stop I went to my riding lesson at which I almost got kicked; the horse I've been riding lately gets rather anxious when being tacked up but is fine basically the rest of the time so I'm learning how to avoid his teeth and hooves while still getting him ready. I was able to scoot out of the way this time! As soon as my lesson was over I drove straight to Topsfield and got all my entries checked in. Then I headed home and got cleaned up.

Now I have to plan the entries in the regular Foods Department competitions. I entered in 4 categories: yeast bread, muffins, 2-crust pie and 1-crust pie. All that baking will happen on Saturday. Sunday we'll head up to the fair and I'll see how well my entries did!

And So the Baking Begins

The Topsfield Fair opens this weekend. 

My canning entries have been in for weeks. The Beekeeping and Honey Division entries are due Thursday and the Foods Department entries will be brought up on Sunday when we go to the fair. we're going on Sunday this year because we do have school commitments on Saturday and each day of that first weekend has different baking categories in which to compete.

Regardless, I need to do the Baking with Honey entries as those are due first. Today I made a batch of Honey Fudge Brownies and also a loaf of Banana Bread. Both recipes are from The Vermont Beekeeper's Cookbook, from which I found last year's prizewinning Honey Cheesecake recipe. I won't cut the brownies until it's time to bring them up on Thursday. Each of these items seemed to be things I could cool and wrap and refrigerate without the flavor or texture being affected. Tomorrow I'll make the honey scones and start the bread dough. I already have a jar of Peach Salsa which was made with honey so I thought I'd try to enter that as well.

Trial Run

Next week I'll be doing a lot of baking for the fair. First of all, I want to enter a few things in the Baking With Honey competitions. I made scones with honey a few weeks ago which I'll do again but I wanted to try bread again. Last night I tweaked the bread recipe I use with Legion to increase the amount of honey as my previous attempt was described as "not enough honey."

The proportions are: 16 oz. Legion, 38 oz. bread flour, 1/2 cup honey, 2-1/2 cups water, and 2 T. salt.

I'm happy with the crumb, and an independent observer said she could taste the honey, as I can't right now (I have a cold). I'll make another batch in a week and have it ready to enter as of Thursday morning. It'll be tricky because I'm starting a new job and my first shift is Wednesday evening, getting out at midnight. Hopefully I can get it all together!

Lots More Tomatoes

This is just what isn't already in the fridge, in the canner, or on the counter!

Since last week I canned tomatoes whole and was reminded how easy it was, I grabbed a whole bunch more salad tomatoes (the uniform sized ones) and canned them in pints and quarts. I also added fresh basil to the jars. I am hoping to enter these in the fair instead of last week's batch because I managed to get one more tomato into each jar and I didn't use any salt in the hopes that they won't float as much. We shall see.

All told, this was what I brought home today:
2 cantaloupes, 1 yellow watermelon, 2 pounds of golden beets, 1 spaghetti squash, 1 kabocha squash, 1 black futsu squash, a lot of potatoes, 1 pound carrots, 2 shallots, 3 sweet onions, 3 yellow onions, 2 eggplant, 4 peppers, 1 head of cabbage, 1 large handful each of braising mix (greens) and arugula, 3 heirloom tomatoes, 4 regular tomatoes, 10 pints worth of salad tomatoes, 2.5 pounds of tomatillos, parsley, cilantro, basil, 5 serrano peppers, 9 sweet "lunchbox peppers," about a dozen leaves of kale, 1 quart of sungold cherry tomatoes, 1 bunch Hakurei turnips, and 2 heads of broccoli.

Here's what I skipped: dill, other herbs, flowers, blackberries, other hot peppers, husk cherries, green beans, plum tomatoes, and "slicing" tomatoes (likely something like beefsteak).

I think I need a root cellar. This is a bad time of year for my share-mate to be out of town for 2 weeks in a row!