What Are You Preserving, and How Are You Doing It? (2016–)

[Okanagancook]

I discovered I had a ton of garden garlic from last year in the cold room.  Many were starting to sprout slightly.  I broke some of them down into cloves with the skin still on.  Put the cloves on double foil with a squirt of oil and salt.  They were covered up and baked in a 400 f oven along with some butternut squash.  Not sure how long they were in there but it was too long.  Many cloves were dried out but smelled delicious.  I took the skins off and added a bit of water to the pot.  They simmered gently for 15 minutes and that was enough to rehydrate them.  I puréed them and put them in a thin layer in a vac bag...thin enough that aliquots can be broken off.  They are in the freezer.  I see roasted garlic mashed potatoes in my future.

it would have been very bad to have thrown them out.

[blue_dolphin]

Max Halley's Piccalilli.  Recipe available online here. 

I made a half recipe and ended up with about a quart and a half.  Based on availability, I used sugar snap peas instead of broad beans, Brussels sprouts instead of broccoli and yellow onion instead of red but otherwise followed the recipe. 

I didn't process it in any way, it's just going in the fridge.  

Tasty stuff. 

 

[chromedome]

On 8/17/2020 at 10:45 AM, chromedome said:

Not a huge pickle-eater but the grandkids are, and it's that time of the year, so I made up a couple of batches. Three pints of bread-and-butter and eight pints of a quick dill pickle, both from my dad's copy of The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving (this is my first time trying anything from the book, so no personal feedback, but 87% of the reviews on Amazon are 4- and 5-star).
 

 

 

 

Just to follow up on this, since I'd neglected to do so in the fall. The dill pickles were perfectly fine, the bread and butter needed a bit more sugar (to my taste). I'm happy enough with the results to this point, have amended the bread-and-butter recipe in my copy of the book, and will doubtless try a few others in the course of the summer.

 

[chromedome]

Also, I was down to the last pint of the applesauce I put up last autumn (27 pints) so I grabbed 20 lbs of apples from the local grower before he closed his storefront for the season. Less a few that I ate out of hand, and a few more that spoiled while waiting for me to get down to business, that still gave me 11 pints.

 

As a bonus, having never done the math before, I now know that I get through 50-60 pints of applesauce a year or roughly a pint a week. That's handy to know for reference purposes (a canner load of 9 pints takes about 13 pounds of apples, so keeping me supplied with applesauce requires roughly 70-80 lbs of apples/year).

[SLB]

With an acknowledgment that this may be a separate thread -- what are you doing with alla that appleseauce?  Do you eat a pint a week, straight?  

[chromedome]

My nearly-invariable breakfast is steel-cut oatmeal, and I put a healthy glop of applesauce on it in lieu of other sweeteners. I also sometimes have it on toast as a breakfast (on mornings when I wake up and realize I've forgotten to make oatmeal...) and I like it with yogurt as a snack/dessert at random intervals. That accounts for most of my usage, though I'll also occasionally have it on pancakes or waffles, or incorporated into muffins or a cake.

 

Oh, and I'll also turn a few pints a year into fruit leather for the grandkids.

[heidih]

And you are probably using quite flavorful apples not grocery store blah

[chromedome]

8 hours ago, heidih said:

And you are probably using quite flavorful apples not grocery store blah

I use a mix of whatever's available from the grower, during the months they're open, but usually try to mix at least 2-3 varieties for broader flavor and sweet-tart balance. In autumn I also gather apples from the "feral" trees growing in my neighbourhood, some of which produce surprisingly good apples at nearly market size.

I'll need to make more from supermarket apples before the summer is over, but supermarkets here stock local NB/NS apples most of the year, as well. In fairness, when I *do* need to get apples trucked in from across the continent, I mostly taste the difference when eating them out of hand. In the applesauce it's much less apparent.

[teonzo]

11 hours ago, chromedome said:

so keeping me supplied with applesauce requires roughly 70-80 lbs of apples/year

 

Time to plant your own tree.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[chromedome]

6 minutes ago, teonzo said:

 

Time to plant your own tree.

 

 

 

Teo

 

When we get our own place, yeah...that's in the plan.

[ElsieD]

When possible, I make applesauce and freeze it in the portion sizes we use.  We normally (pre-pandemic) have a family gathering in the fall and my SIL would bring me a batch of apples from their wild trees.  They'd get chucked in the pot skins and all and after they are cooked, put through a food mill, catching the bad bits.  Such wonderful applesauce!  It is sweet but has no added sugar and a lovely rosy hue.  Wonderful stuff.

[chromedome]

21 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

When possible, I make applesauce and freeze it in the portion sizes we use.  We normally (pre-pandemic) have a family gathering in the fall and my SIL would bring me a batch of apples from their wild trees.  They'd get chucked in the pot skins and all and after they are cooked, put through a food mill, catching the bad bits.  Such wonderful applesauce!  It is sweet but has no added sugar and a lovely rosy hue.  Wonderful stuff.

That's generally how I do the autumn batch with the "feral" apples, because prepping them is otherwise a PITA. A few of the trees around here produce apples with a rosy blush to their flesh, and one small crabapple tree yields apples the size of a large cherry with a rich deep-pink hue, so I always include a few of those for color.

[lemniscate]

In a last ditch effort to make use of the very end of my lemons,  I attempted to make a lemon vanilla freezer jam? pie filling? etc....

It's a quart and a half and it didn't set, was more like a syrup.  There is no peel in this, I'm not a marmalade fan.

I reprocessed it today and added more sugar and held it a 210F for a couple minutes longer than normal  It darkened a bit from original, maybe the sugars were starting to caramelize a bit (?).  Frozen plate test shows a thicker product now.  A possible success.

 

 

 

 

[lemniscate]

Costco had pork loins on hot buy.  Bought a larger one and made cured pork loin/back bacon/Canadian bacon with  a mixture of Morton's Tender quick, sugar and spices.  3 days in the cure and sliced today for frying and freezing tomorrow.  Came out pretty good.  Mostly for egg sandwiches.

Edited May 15, 2021 by lemniscate
cap C (log)

[SLB]

So, asparagus season.  

 

In candor, I have not stumbled on a pickled asparagus recipe that I LOVE (although there are plenty that I like ok).  But I do eat a lot of pickles every whichaway, so I figured I may as well keep trying.  

 

[heidih]

ooh thse are too pretty to pickle in my world. Lie pickles but asparagus falls short of the mark for me.

[kayb]

@HungryChris used to do a great pickled asparagus and shared the recipe. As best I recall (I can't find his original post), he blanched the asparagus, put it in a jar into which he'd put salt, red pepper and a couple of crushed garlic cloves. Poured heated vinegar to the halfway point. Filled jar to shoulders with water; topped jar off with his favorite Italian dressing. Shook the whole thing and set it in the fridge.

 

At least, that's what I remember of it, and when I caught asparagus at $1.29 a pound right before Easter, that's what I did with it. Good stuff.

 

[SLB]

This sounds like the HC mushroom wonder, which I now make every fall.  Hmm . . . .

[heidih]

7 minutes ago, SLB said:

This sounds like the HC mushroom wonder, which I now make every fall.  Hmm . . . .

My exact reaction but maybe that is his go-to method for that texture of vegetable.

[BeeZee]

Quickle fennel bulb, really good

 

[heidih]

I am not a fruit eater. It makes me ravenous. So the Bing cherries were punky in the fridge. Pitted them and did a rough cracked black pepper, salt, sugar, balsamic, touch of my caramelized citrus marmalade, cane sugar as the soaking liquid. I think they will be nice as a compliment to savory plates. They have had an hour on the counter in 73F kitchen. Just tasted. I comd spoon the jar up now with good toasted bread and pate. Will restrain myself and give them a day or more to come together.

[Norm Matthews]

Stephensons Apple Farm Restaurant was a Kansas City icon until it wasn't. It closed about 15 years ago.  It was at their bar that I had their peach daiquiri  shortly after I turned 21.  I still have and use their recipe book.  The two items on this page are a couple of my favorite canning recipes.  I made the corn relish twice so far this year and plan to make the pickles later on. I always replace three or four of the cucumbers with yellow squash for color and  the squash usually get eaten out of a jar first.

 

 

[David Ross]

One of my favorite quick pickles, Sweet and Sour Cucumbers.  I'll use both fresh cucumbers from the farmer's market in summer and cucumbers in the fridge that are just starting to look a bit wrinkled.  

 

1 large cucumber

3 tbsp. chopped cilantro

2 tsp. honey

2 tbsp. rice vinegar

1 tsp. sesame oil

¼ tsp. each salt and black pepper

2 tsp. Vietnamese fried garlic

 

Peel strips from the cucumber using a citrus zester. Then cut the cucumber into 1 inch chunks. Cut each chunk into quarters lengthwise.

 

Place the cucumber chunks into a bowl and add the cilantro. In another bowl, mix the honey, rice vinegar, sesame oil, salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over the cucumbers.

Place the cucumbers in a container with a lid and refrigerate until ready to serve. When you're ready to serve, place the cucumbers in a bowl and garnish with fried garlic.

[jbates]

6 hours ago, David Ross said:

Peel strips from the cucumber using a citrus zester.

I assume you discard the zested skin? Or can you chop it fine and add back into the pickles?

[David Ross]

8 minutes ago, jbates said:

I assume you discard the zested skin? Or can you chop it fine and add back into the pickles?

I do discard it or sometimes save it to put in steamed rice, but you could add it back.