Spicy Salsa!

When I made the salsa to enter in the fair, I felt it was missing something. Pizazz, maybe. Certainly cilantro. Today I made another batch in which I used five jalapeños instead of three, and added 2T of cilantro. This made five cups of salsa and I gave one pint to my friend with whom I split the share. It has a nice kick this time. This will be the batch that goes to the fair.

Next I made salsa verde, using all the accumulated tomatillos and five serrano peppers. Also with a very nice kick! My friend got a 12-oz jar and I got the 8-oz jar.

Tomorrow I plan to make grape jelly. I have one other thing I want to make for the fair, a variation of toorshi, but to do that I have to get some other vegetables first. And I have to have time. That always helps...

Wee Little Beasties

It has been a very long day (note the time of this post...it's currently 1:00 am on Wednesday). My day technically started on Monday, when I worked an overnight shift. I did sleep a little, in between pages, and yesterday a little after 7:00 am I headed home. After I had some coffee I started a batch of bread dough using Legion (beastie #1: saccharomyces cerevesiae, aka yeast) and took another short nap. I got up to go riding but my lesson was canceled so instead I took the youngerchild to lunch. While we were out I got a text from a friend saying he had Concord grapes to share. When I got back, after a while I was able to muster up enough energy to make a batch of yogurt (beastie #2: lactobacillus) and a batch of granola while I waited for the grapes.

After dinner, my friend arrived with a half-bushel of grapes (plus beastie #3: drosophila, aka fruit flies). Apparently they are from his mother's backyard and she gave him about three times as much so he was sharing. As they had been picked a few days ago I needed to get them juiced right away But I didn't get started on washing until after 10:00 pm. I've just finished sorting through them, extracting over a gallon of juice from most of them (I still have another small pot full to make into juice tomorrow).

As soon as I got the grapes on the stove I punched down my bread dough and shaped the loaves. It's cooler this week so the bread took longer to ferment. I'm wondering if it'll be proofed by the time I get up tomorrow.

The yogurt is still hanging out on the heating pad. I thought about dealing with it now, but I'm just too tired and I don't think a few more hours of incubating will hurt it. At least, I hope not!

Project Completion

Today I finished a batch of sweet relish I started yesterday. First you have to salt the vegetables and let them sit overnight or, in this case, about a full day before you rinse them and boil them with the syrup. This is a variation of "Grandma's Golden Relish" from The Ball Complete Book of Canning. The changes were that I used half cucumbers (3 cups) and half zucchini (3 cups) and that all the peppers were green. This made 7.5 cups of relish.

I added the white wine to the sauerkraut and also added a little brine since there wasn't enough liquid to cover the cabbage. Now it can ferment for a few weeks in its crock and I shouldn't have to worry about it.

Lastly, I used up three eggplants making "Pickled Eggplant with Mint" from Preserving by the Pint. I didn't have red wine vinegar so I used up my tarragon and champagne vinegars and then made up the difference with cider vinegar. I hope that works - it might be a little harsh. For the mint, I harvested a bunch of stems from my pot of mint in the backyard. Supposedly this is good with some feta cheese and olive oil so I'll have to try that this winter.

After all this work, I can now see the back of the fridge again.

Another Big Day

Yesterday I picked up the farm share and I didn't have a lot of time to do anything with it. However, I have this entire afternoon to work through a few projects. I have one problem, though. Our computer died after a power failure (probably a power surge fried it) and I'm not sure how I'm going to print labels. So this quick post is just about the salsa that I made (4 cups, or half a recipe) and the canned beets I'm in the process of making (likely 3 quarts, but maybe 4, depending on how many beets fit in each jar). Then I'm going to test out the printer. For the record, this salsa is going to the fair, so here's the recipe:

1 quart tomatoes, cored and seeded

1 bell pepper

1 medium onion

3 jalapeno peppers, seeded

1 T. Kosher salt

2 t. sugar

2 T. vinegar

Broil the vegetables for about 10 minutes, turning once during the cooking time. When soft, add the salt, sugar and vinegar and process with an immersion blender to desired texture. Process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

The other thing I did this morning was start up a batch of sauerkraut using three heads of cabbage I have accumulated from the farm. I am considering entering sauerkraut in the fair, too, if it finishes its fermentation in time.

More Gifts

This afternoon I stopped by a friend's house as she had offered me some pears from her tree. Like everything else around here, the fruit has been prolific. I brought her a jar of peach jam and took home a bagful of pears which I promptly turned into five quarts of pears in light syrup. This time I left the pears in halves so they took up more space. That being said, I could have had maybe two more pears total, a couple of the quarts have fewer pears than the others.

The other thing I did today was pressure can tomatoes and celery which my mason had dropped by. This was pretty simple - peel, core and chop the tomatoes and cook them down with sliced celery, then put them in quart jars with a little salt and pressure can them. That gave me two quarts to be used for cooking at some point.

Nothing Wasted

This morning I got up and made apple jelly with the juice I extracted yesterday. Seven cups of juice plus nine cups of sugar and a box of powdered pectin made eleven jars of clear, pink apple jelly. I'm pleased with the color; when I entered this in the fair two years ago the judges specifically mentioned they liked that it was pink. I have managed to get a similar color this year.

Since there were two cups of juice left, I diluted that with some water and added a half a cup of sugar and the next thing into the canner will be two pints of apple juice.

All that was left of that huge pile of apples was about a pint of skins, seeds, and pulp. That's pretty efficient.

Being Neighborly

Two of my neighbors have apple trees and they both have given me apples in past years. This year, one of them got a bag full of peaches and they plan to give me some of their apples in return; theirs are like Granny Smith apples and they're great for cooking. My other neighbor contacted me last week and suggested I come and pick some of their apples, which are more like Macintoshes. Two years ago my apple jelly made from their tree's fruit won first place in its class at the Fair. I'm hoping that works in my favor again this year!

In return for a large amount of apples (I should have weighed them out of curiosity, but I didn't) I brought them a pint jar of peach jam. They were pleased. So was I, except for standing on a shaky stepladder on a slanted driveway to pick apples. But we managed! Here are all the apples:

I quartered them all and cooked them with some water in two large pots and then let them drain over cheesecloth to get the juice. I ended up with a little more than two quarts of juice. The solids were then passed through the food mill to make applesauce. For three quarts of applesauce I used 1.5 cups of sugar. I did contemplate adding my honey instead, to make this super-uber-local applesauce, but I couldn't bear to part with what little honey I have for something that would mask the taste.

Tomorrow I will take the juice and make jelly. I need 7 cups, and I have about 9 cups. Not sure what to do with the rest, except maybe add some sugar and can it just as juice. We'll see.