Friday, April 24, 2009

Canning Cherries & Stuff

Finally figured out how to can the cherries that have been languishing in the freezer since last year. They were some of the best we've ever had -- I made sure to get the farmer's name & cell number. Young guy, but he sure seems to know what he's doing! We almost missed out -- flew over to meet him in the next town after work one afternoon, and bought all that he had left. And they were so good, I've been "saving them" for something special. Did use some for homemade ice cream a while back, which they really made sing! But they've been in there long enough that I knew I'd better do something with them, or I'd end up having to toss them -- which would be a real shame! It's been in the back of my mind for a while, and when I was looking through the Ball book tonight, I came across a recipe. Didn't end up using it, exactly, because I didn't have almond extract, but it freed me up. So I made a syrup of honey & water, added a tiny bit of raspberry flavoring (to "goose" the cherry flavor a little, just for fun), and a couple teaspoons of natural cherry flavoring. Came out pretty good, though I think I'll leave the raspberry out next time, just for fun. Ended up with 5 pints of cherries & juice, and 2 half-pints of just juice. (Couldn't bring myself to pour it down the drain -- I'll find a use for it, eventually.) Thickened up a little, they'll make a nice topping for cheesecake, or filling for anything baked. It's lovely to finally start getting the full benefit from the time I've spent learning to can!! I still can't decide if I'm more pleased with the variety of things I'm able to put into our food storage, or the quality of the food we're now able to store, or how little is going to waste around here these days, or the money we're saving on groceries (and eating out, when it's not convenient to cook), or the convenience of having really good stuff ready to throw together in a few minutes' time... In any case, I know this is something I'll be doing for the rest of my life!! Read more!

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Canning Creatively

I'm finally able to get creative with canning!! When I first learned this art, I knew there was a whole world of cool things waiting for me to explore. But I got as far as pickles, tomatoes and salsa, and got stuck. When I started using my new pressure canner, I realized that it was time to add a good canning book to my reference library. Boy, am I glad I did!!! The "Ball Complete Guide to Home Preserving", has opened up LOTS of new possibilities. That, and the food acidity list I found online (don't remember exactly where I found it, but it's from the FDA, Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition). It's a 6-page list called the "Bad Bug Book: Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Handbook".

Having "the Ball Book" handy has already helped me a lot -- the recipes are amazing!! It has a jam recipe that calls for both high- and low-acid ingredients ("Carrot Cake Jam", page 39). But I don't especially care for pineapple, at least not in carrot cake, and wanted to leave it out. So I looked on the acidity list, and selected another high-acid fruit -- raisins. Lovely recipe -- the house smells like Christmas!! I also had to adapt it -- like almost all of the jam / jelly recipes, it calls for sugar -- which I can't tolerate at all. So I converted it to honey, but ended up using 'way less than the converted recipe called for. Good thing the jars are sealed -- or I'd probably have a hard time keeping my husband out of it!!

I'm planning to try some of the sauces and other condiments in the book, as I come across the ingredients for them. That's the approach I'm using -- buy whatever's on sale (or, reasonably priced and interesting or unusual), and find a way to fit it into my food storage. For example, one of the local stores has chicken leg quarters on sale right now for $.49 a pound. Over the past three days, I've bought & canned 40 pounds. Our dogs will appreciate it -- and it's cheaper, and better for them, than the canned dog food we often mix with their dry. Another local store had ham for $.88 a pound, so I have a load of pints in the pressure canner now. (I just did 21 pints last weekend, but I'm making it a point to take advantage of sales -- anything under $1.00/pound is fair game.) Last night we had some of the ham I canned last weekend, and it was excellent. Very nice, after a long day, to throw together some instant garlic mashed potatoes, steam some veggies & warm up a jar of ham. Put it right into the microwave, and we ate it right out of the jar -- no extra dish to wash! And, if & when we ever do have to live on our food storage, I'll be able to pop a jar of it into the solar oven (assuming it's a sunny day) to warm it up.

I'm trying to go about this canning (and food storage) business in an organized way, and so recently spent a little time putting the ingredients & quantities for the things I want to try into my Palm. That way, if I come across a good deal on plums, for example, I can get them, along with the other ingredients I need for Plum Sauce.

It is incredible, and extremely satisfying, to have the ability to accomplish whatever I want to, in the kitchen. And I can finally try new & unusual things, which is expanding our food storage options -- both for now and the future. In fact, a wonderful side benefit of all the food storage work I've been doing is that we're eating even better now! And not only do I always have more (and more interesting) things available, we almost never end up running out to buy a meal because there isn't anything in the house that's quick & easy to throw together -- so we're saving money all the way around!!

Now, if I could just figure out how to add about a half-dozen hours to the day...
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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Saving Lots of $$$ & Making Real Progress!!!

Spending Less, Saving More (Food)

I've always considered myself to be a pretty frugal shopper, and thought I was getting the biggest "bang" for our food "buck". But over the past several months, I've learned some new tricks. Tonight I took a minute to do some quick math, and realized that I'm spending at least 30% less than I used to on groceries. Not only that, but I'm actually building up our food storage much faster than I ever have before.

A lot of this has to do with learning even better places to find food bargains. The other factor, and it's huge, is having the equipment necessary to prepare what I'm buying for long-term storage. In fact, I'm sort of amazed at the impact that having, and learning to use, the various food storage equipment I've accumulated has made on the cost, and quality, of what I feed my family.

A great example: Today, I bought 10# of chicken leg quarters at $.49 per pound (with bones & skin). Brought it home, raw-packed it into quart jars, and will use it to "jazz up" the dry food my two dogs (and cat) get, at some point in the future. Each jar has two leg quarters (drumsticks & thighs), so I figure they're good for at least a meal, if not two, each. That works out to $.70 per jar ($.35 per meal, if we get two from them), plus a few cents for the gas to run the pressure canner, although I would have had to use some gas to cook it, whether I canned it or not. Compared to the $1.00 per can you pay in the store for dog food (if you buy it on sale), and keeping in mind all the preservatives, fillers & other junk in that can, this ends up being a real bargain -- even with the skin & bones. And although they don't get the bones, they certainly don't mind the skin, or anything else that comes along with it!

The Ball Book

Bought the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving recently, and sat down with it & immediately marked a bunch of recipes. I wish I'd bought this book years ago!!! Not only does it give some excellent basic canning info, it has terrific recipes!!! Anyone who's working on their food storage, and does any canning at all, will be interested in this information. I am especially intrigued by the various sauce and condiment recipes -- a selection of these would certainly be an excellent way to enhance and add variety to the items folks normally store! I've also been looking for a way around buying those expensive little yogurt cups (although they're awfully convenient), and the fruit sauces & syrups look like they'll be just the thing! I'll have to adjust the recipes a little, though -- I can't tolerate white or brown sugar (or molasses) at all, and most of the recipes call for it. Fortunately, this is something I've done a bit of, and so am confident that I'll be able to obtain acceptable results.

I am extremely pleased with the progress I'm making, and the things I'm learning. I'm looking forward to continuing to learn new things, saving money, and expanding my food storage horizons, for some time to come!
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Monday, April 13, 2009

Ok, so I've learned to pressure can, and now have a stock of various kinds of meat in pint jars. I've expanded my food storage options in a lot of other ways, as well. Which is all wonderful -- except that it means I need to re-think my whole approach to our food storage. Because I originally designed it with things already available in mind, many of the things on the list have changed. That's actually a good thing, because it means we're saving A LOT of money -- and getting better quality food in the process. I had several cases of Spam on the list, for example, which sells for about $17 for a case of 8 (12-ounce cans) at Costco. I just canned 21 pints of shank-cut ham for a little over $1 each -- a savings of about $1.80 per pound. So I'm loving the cost savings, as well as the increased VARIETY, but it's causing me to reorganize my whole approach.

So now I need to redo my spreadsheet. That'll take some time, but it will certainly be worth it, because the quality of my food storage is so much better -- much more variety, and far less cost. And instead of basing it on what I can find already prepared and ready to store, I'm starting with whatever's on sale. My rule: Any meat on sale for $1.00 a pound or less is a candidate. So, instead of deciding what to buy & budgeting out when to purchase it, I'm picking up main dish items (meat, pasta, legumes) and building around them. Which means that I'll be adjusting my spreadsheet pretty frequently -- but I'll trade that for the variety, quality and cost savings, any day!

So far, I've been working pretty steadily (and, as my husband has patiently pointed out, single-mindedly) toward my food storage goal. At this point, I've accumulated a good number of pints of meat, as well as some grain, veggies and other stuff, so I feel I can relax a bit. So now my goal is to do one thing each week toward getting our food storage in order. My plan, then, is to watch the sales (whether on meat, fruit, veggies, paper goods...), and pick things up accordingly. This should allow me to move forward, picking up a reasonably balanced selection of things, and still have time to do the rest of life!
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Sunday, April 12, 2009

Marinated Mushrooms

Lucked into some mushrooms at a great price yesterday. Found a good recipe (on Recipezaar, I believe -- "Laurel's Marinated Mushrooms (Easy Canning)" for marinating & canning them in a water bath, like pickles -- which they basically are. It was good to use the water-bath canner, for a change. I've done so much pressure canning lately (just finished canning 21 pints of ham) that it's a good refresher. The recipe indicates it makes 12 - 15 half-pints, but I ended up with way too many mushrooms prepped. So I'll have to can the rest of them tomorrow. I'll probably end up with close to a couple dozen, which is fine with me -- they'll make great gifts!

I have to admit that I did modify the recipe a little, though. It calls for miniature mushrooms, no larger than 1-1/4 inches, with the stems trimmed even with the bottom. Well, I didn't have tiny mushrooms, and I just can't bring myself to toss out perfectly good food -- and I knew I'd never find a use for just the stems -- so I quartered what I had. As it turned out, 1 pound will fill 3 half-pint jars.

I'm a little surprised at how little I'm spending on groceries, these days. Guess buying in bulk (and at the super-duper discount places) really does make a difference. I have had to invest in quite a few canning jars, and will need to buy more, but that's ok -- as long as we don't drop them, they can be used over & over.

Had a magnificent flop tonight. I realized this a.m. that I still had the last 7 or so pounds of a 25# bag of carrots languishing in the bottom of the fridge (already dehydrated the rest). Went online, looking for a candied carrot recipe for canning. (Found one -- carrots, a little fresh or frozen fruit juice -- it also called for butter, although that's controversial.) In the process, I ran across a glazed carrot recipe that called for vanilla. That caused me to "shift gears", and think about something to dehydrate. I tried to make a carrot-applesauce-yogurt "chew" (like fruit leather), but inadvertently used an ingredient that had gone rancid. Just about curl your hair! So I tossed that, and ended up making fruit leather with applesauce and yogurt (1:1 ratio). Put some coconut extract & a little honey in, just for fun. Sure smells better than the mushrooms I dehydrated earlier (my husband asked if I was dehydrating liver for the dogs again...). If that works out, I may try it again later, adding some carrots, just for fun.
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Saturday, April 11, 2009

Canning Ham, Dehydrating Sour Cream, Freezing Garlic

Bought some ham on super-duper special; the second batch is in the pressure canner now. It's true that it doesn't make much liquid, but I'm going to take Wendy DeWitt's advice & not worry about it. I'm very pleased to be able to add it to our food storage -- it'll be a nice way to break things up a bit, if & when we ever need to rely on it.

I've been dehydrating cottage cheese for some time now (see earlier post), and have recently started to dry sour cream, as well. You can buy it already powdered, but I'd rather do it myself. Saves the shipping charges, and I prefer not to pay for preservatives or other junk. (I prefer the regular, but you can dry low-fat, as well.) It's not hard to do, but there's an extra step, once the sour cream is dried. Like cottage cheese, it's easiest to deal with if you put it by the spoonful onto the mesh drying trays. (You can oil the trays, or use PAM, to make it come off easier, but it's not absolutely necessary). I don't use the leather trays under the mesh (except the bottom one) because it slows the drying down, but you can if you want to. Try to make each "lump" about the same size, and spread them out as evenly as you can, so that they'll dry evenly. Like cottage cheese, about 3/8" thick seems to work pretty well. Once it's dry, take it off the trays & put it into the freezer. When it's frozen, break it up and put it into a regular-mouth, half-pint canning jar (if your blender accepts them), and blend until powdered, or use the regular blender jar, or a food processor. Of course, you can use this freezing technique with other things that don't powder readily. (I suspect you could also get a finer grind on things like carrots and celery this way, but I haven't tried it.)

This doesn't happen to me often, but I actually ran out of fresh garlic recently. So I bought the industrial-sized container of peeled garlic yesterday at Costco. I'm going to mince it in the food processor (with a little oil mixed in to make it easier to work with later, but you can skip that if you prefer). I learned recently that you can freeze it in little "logs", and break off little clove-sized pieces when you need it. Shouldn't run out of garlic again for quite a while!!

Everything I'm doing has or will ultimately save us money, and I'm extremely grateful for that. I'm saving money now on meat and other perishables because I can stock up when they're on sale, I'm saving money by making sure fewer things go to waste, and I'm saving money (and making my life easier) by pretty much always having what I need on hand for whatever I'm in the mood to cook. I'm also finding that I'm not cooking the same old things out of habit, because I have a greater variety of things on hand & ready to use, and we're both enjoying that!!

I'm very grateful for the opportunity to build up our food storage. And I can't decide which I like better -- the adventure of learning all these new things, the satisfaction of seeing the results of my efforts adding up so quickly, or the money we're saving!! Any way I look at it, I really do feel blessed!!

Note: I added the word "pressure" in front of "canner" above. Even though the banner at the top of the blog reminds the reader that meat must always be pressure canned, I wanted to emphasize that fact and so added this clarification.
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Sunday, April 5, 2009

Taking Stock -- Making Progress!!

I'm a little shocked to realize how far I've come. In the middle of January, I set a goal to put together a food supply that would last us for a certain period of time. My goal was to have it in place by the end of the year. I was shocked yesterday to realize what substantial progress I've made toward my goal!!

Obtaining the equipment I needed (new dehydrator, pressure canner) has made a huge difference. So has obtaining a bit of knowledge. But most importantly, I've prayed for -- and received -- assistance.

Part of our goal is to become a good deal more self-sufficient. To that end, even though it's a little late, we're working on a garden. Our goal is to be able to harvest something all year. It can be done, if we plan carefully (and the weather cooperates). I'm intrigued by some of the concepts that can be applied to increase the yield of a given patch of ground -- "square foot gardening" in particular.

Great fun with the flour mill this weekend -- my niece was over, and she couldn't seem to stay away from it!! We ground the flour for the first loaf of bread together, then I turned her loose and she did enough by herself for a second loaf (which she took home). She wanted to do a third batch, so we agreed she would take it home, along with a little yeast, to bake in her stepmom's bread machine. I'm always very pleased when I can give her an experience she probably wouldn't have, otherwise.

Heard back from the Cooperative Extension folks. They sure don't want you to can anything that they haven't personally tested!! I can understand their caution, but it seems to me, if you understand and follow proper procedures, and apply correct principles, you ought to be able to get creative. The whole reason I invested in the pressure canner in the first place is to be able to can whatever I want to! Just the same, I've ordered the Ball book (the "last word" in home canning info). But of course, I couldn't wait -- canned some beef stew last night. Took a look at the beef stew recipe / instructions in the book that came with the canner first, of course. The jars all sealed (you can tell by gently tapping the lids -- a high-pitched "plink" means they're sealed; a low, dull sound means you need to refrigerate & consume in the next few days), so I'm assuming they're fine.


Very encouraging to realize the progress we're making!
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