SLB

Can you do one of each? Then tell us how it turns out?

rotuts, where are you on the 5-tray?

I've been reading up on dehydrating, and apparently some folks store their dehydrated produce in mason jars. I could see the half-gallons coming in handy for that, in addition to the aforementioned fermentation.

Sister, preach. I don't get it at all. I first encountered them on salad bars too. I tried it -- I'll try anything. It was . . . not a good outcome.

I completely understand. I mean, I couldn't hold onto okra for two years, I can barely keep it around for two weeks. But I understand how sometimes you gotta throw stuff away. Meanwhile, I'm preparing for a fall/winter in which I will have an unusually heavy workload, and so my cooking theory is ultra simple steaks-burgers-chops, beans on the side, plus basic-lettuce-salad. All amped up by pickles. So, small-batch pickle-palooza this weekend: L-to-r, back: fermenting green beans (likely jacked due to accidental use of kinda-hot brine, which apparently kills the bacteria needed for fermentation; also due to my perhaps-misguided unwillingness to use as much brine as the recipe prescribed (a GALLON for two pounds of green beans?); and finally due to my concession to the recipe's call for a huge amount of dill seed. I'm ok with fresh dill fronds, but dill seed is . . . well, I haven't really known it to make stuff good, I don't know what I was thinking, this could be way bad) the pickled eggplant from upthread (honestly, it wasn't as amazing at the outset as I expected, in fact it was rather bland; we shall see how it goes over a few days) pickled mushrooms onions steeping in seasoned vinegar (the point here is not the onions, it's the vinegar) Front: Fermenting garlic paste, which is seasoned with cumin, pepper, and lemon. Fermenting lipstick peppers. Two different jars of the same vinegar-pickled jalapenos with horseradish. (I enjoy peppers in just about everything, pickled or unpickled). It's been two hundred degrees in here, which apparently is about as functional for pickles as it is for rising bread. But I thought I'd try to take advantage of the cool-ish week we're having to get the party started.

I KNOW RIGHT??? It's such an inspiring thread, it's been a long time since I've been so excited to take on a new angle on food.

I hauled my uptown behind down there today looking for a vendor who had strawberries last week. Alas, strawberry-man was gone. But -- that NO-PESTICIDE dude was selling okra at $8/lb. Repeat: eight.dollars.per.pound. I mean . . . is there really a market for okra at that price??? I just . . . can't.

I took a class on canning safety this past weekend, and now I'm fit for canning with gusto! The training projects: Peaches; tomato blender salsa; zucchini relish; peach ketchup; plum jelly; low-sugar apricot jam; regular apricot jam; sauerkraut. We also did a peach butter, some non-fermented pickles, dehydrated stone fruits, and pressure-canned beans, but I had to leave before those projects were done. If you're using a tested recipe, none of it is rocket science; but I did want to make sure I was understanding the safety precautions with precision. And it was nice to just go through the motions over and over with someone correcting/reminding. I've learned a lot from books, but this seems to be getting harder as I get older. A whole 'nother topic . . . . On the home front -- I admit, my resistance to air conditioning may fail in the face of late-summer canning. I know that my grandmas canned without air conditioning, ruthlessly. My cousins still talk about the wonders to be stolen out of the pantry in my paternal grandma's house. But it seems like some serious suffering. Anyway. Squee! [Please do ignore that backpacking Charmin roll back left on the junk plate. I promise there is no toilet-anything in my kitchen, that was an extra NEW packet which for whatever reason didn't make it into my pack for my last hiking trip -- where it was missed, natch -- but it's not something that's ever got near a toilet scene before it landed on my countertop. Just wanted to reassure folk . . . 😳]

@kayb, just confirming, they don't dry out that way (over time)?

Agreed on the casserole/lasagna need. That said, the truth is that I rest everything, because I don't like my food to be super hot when I eat it. I feel that mostly everything tastes better closer to warm than hot. Soup can go in the bowl hot, and eggs of course come out of the pan; but most of my stuff sits out awhile.

@Shelby what I want to know is, how do you do the canning in the heat?!? What about the pickles??? That might be a different thread . . .

Here it's 78, no detectable humidity, and breezy. I've got the oven fired up for high-heat chicken. After weeks of fish and meatballs and restaurants, I'm giddy for some crispy skin. Of course, tomorrow is August. This can't hold.

I soak all the greens greens in saltwater. This is not about pesticides -- this is about bugs with legs that you can see. The only reason I do all of that is because it's how my mama did it! Then I spin dry in a salad spinner, something my mother never would've even considered spending money on. Everything else I rinse. I should do better -- I admit, I'm not that concerned about pesticides, but I definitely do not want e.coli. I should. But I don't.

So, having been so thoroughly inspired here, I'm getting ready to do some non-freezer preserving in earnest, as a middle-aged neophyte to the practice. I'm very excited, not in small part because I'm expecting to be totally swamped through the winter with my day job, and like the idea of having a lot of canned components to work from. So I've been reviewing this thread, and was reminded of something I'd meant to post. A year or two ago someone (Shelby?) posted about a pickled eggplant recipe that subsequent members raved about. I like eggplant a lot, but I tire of it long before its season has faded here in New York, so was intrigued at the idea of canning it at peak for eating later in the winter. In that discussion, @ElainaA had expressed concern that the recipe called for canning in oil, which she indicated was disfavored by expert preservers as too risky for botulism. I read something on point in "Putting Food By" (Greene, J.; Hertzberg, R; Vaughan, B.; Schmidt, S, ed.), a respected treatise. At p. 333 of the 5th edition of the paperback, a recipe for pickled mushrooms notes that products which are pickled in oil need to "first take up enough acid to become truly pickled before the oil is added to the mixture and the jar is capped. If the oil were added too early, it would inhibit the mushrooms' ability to take up the acid that pickles them (this acquired acidity makes them safe to be canned")." I the neophyte read this as speaking to ElainaA's concern -- if the item is truly pickled before it is greased-up, it is safe for canning. Just wanted to pass it along; I know you guys are expert canners, and don't necessarily need reports from the primers. But if there were nagging concerns over that eggplant recipe . . . anyway, I'm going to check out the state of eggplants at tomorrow's markets. It's a touch early, but who knows. The weather's been weird all year.

Dave Arnold gets heated about air frying, even in an outdoor setting: http://heritageradionetwork.org/podcast/keep-plucking-that-chicken/. This podcast is delightful, but the episodes are long. The fry rage begins at about 16:54. Meanwhile, I had fried artichokes tonight. Admittedly, it's cooled off -- mid-80s and low humidity.