Hosting Honeybees, Yeasty Banana Bread

Our garden is playing host to bees. And, considering what we know about the plight of the honeybee, I find this very reassuring. When I was a child, the mere sight of a bee anywhere near me was enough to send me flying toward the next county, screaming all the way. I knew that, beyond being painful, a sting would probably send me to the family doctor, or at least to the couch, very swollen appendage slathered in baking soda paste and wrapped in an ice pack.

But I'm grown now, and haven't been stung in years. And I understand that those winged ladies are just doing their job, and really not interested in bothering anyone so long as they aren't disturbed. In fact, I can't help but notice how many of them our flowering cucumber, cantaloupe and tomato vines attract, and sincerely
hope that the renewed national interest in vegetable gardening will help encourage them. I understand there is some mysterious ailment they are suffering, and that whole hives sometimes have to be wiped out because of it. But I still hope that, as more of us reclaim responsibility for the production of our own food, the bee population will grow. I feel comforted to know that, at our house at least, we're doing our part.

Been kind of bored with my favorite wheat-oatmeal bread, and the usual raisin- (or date-) nut variation. Reread the appropriate section of the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book (excellent book!!) for inspiration. Ended up adding a half-cup of chopped (scissored, actually -- how did I ever cook before I discovered kitchen shears?!) dried bananas & some walnuts. We both love banana bread, but I don't make it very often because it's a quick bread, and yeasted breads offer so much more -- both nutritionally and flavor-wise.

So I decided to adapt the wheat-oatmeal bread, using dried bananas which were still somewhat leathery. (I make it a habit to slice & dehydrate bananas when they're getting very ripe and in danger of going to waste. DH thought it was kind of silly -- 'what're you ever gonna use those for?!' -- but he may change his tune, if this experiment works out.) The recipe, designed for use in a bread machine, calls for 7-1/2 ounces water. An odd amount, and, as the bananas will absorb some of the liquid in the dough, I decided to add another half-ounce. (I mentally compared the bananas to raisins, which don't require extra liquid, but the bananas were a bit drier. The half-ounce (1 tbsp), should be enough to make up the difference, but not so much as to throw the moisture content off.) I'm planning to bake these in pint jars, which are already prepped and waiting on the counter. (If you make jar bread, remember to wipe the rims with vinegar to remove the shortening or other lubricant, which could prevent the lids from sealing.) Without the bananas & nuts, the recipe usually makes a generous 4 pints, so I prepped 5. I'm very interested to see how this will turn out!!

Ok. Bread out of the oven. Has a mild banana flavor. Not quite sweet enough, though. Next time, I'll try adding the bananas to a sweet bread recipe...
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Blackberry Jam; Homemade Sweet Pickle Relish

I've been thinking in the back of my mind lately that I'd really like to make some blackberry jam. I have jars and jars of strawberry, apricot, even somewhat off-the-path things like cherry and kiwi. But I've been thinking it'd be really nice to make something special, and blackberry jam would definitely qualify. Funny how these things work -- as I was in town for my haircut today, my hairdresser mentioned that her mother recently bought some blackberries at a stand nearby. I resolved to hit that particular fruit stand (a new one for me) on my way out of town, and was delighted to find that they still had a few of the purplish-black berries. Scooped them up, along with some plums for a sauce I spotted in the Ball book, and headed home with my loot.

A couple of hours later, 7 half-pint jars of the rich, speckly purple jam are cooling on the counter. And, with the lovely ripe cherries I also bought at the stand, I'll be able to scrape together one more batch -- cherry-berry, this time. I'm very glad to have a good selection of candy flavoring oils on hand -- they can really round out the flavor nicely if the jam doesn't quite sparkle on its own. (And why would I bother with jam that doesn't?!)

Finally beginning to harvest a few pickling cucumbers from our garden. I've been inspired to try this because the pickles I've bought lately (only brand I can find at the "big box" grocery store) seem to have a distinctly chemical scent and flavor to them. We use a good bit of sweet pickle relish in salad dressing, so I need to make a couple dozen pints over the course of the summer. Don't quite have enough cucumbers ready on our own yet, so I bought some at the farmers market to round out the first batch. Found several promising looking recipes online; will share that experience in a future post. Read more!

Ashley Kate's First Batch of Jam

This is how it's supposed to work -- each generation hands down knowledge and life skills to the one coming behind. I introduced my niece to the art of making jam today. I remember, when I was a little younger than she is now, helping to pick the fruit (pomegranates, in particular), then, wearing old clothes, helping to peel it. My mother extracted the juice, and spent hours in the hot kitchen, making jelly. I remember the steam rising out of the big pan, the purple-stained tea towels on the counter and in the sink, and my mother's absolute focus as she turned that sweet, purple liquid into jelly. Later, that jelly would find its way into sandwiches for our lunchboxes. And now it's come full circle.

Ashley and I made apricot-pineapple jam (her choice). It came out beautiful, and she was thrilled to be allowed to take all but one of the jars home (I wasn't about to let all of her first effort go out the door!!). Walked up and proudly handed it to her dad and stepmom, receiving appropriate praise in the process. Seeing the pride on her face, I'm grateful -- the next generation tucks another skill under its belt, and this is, indeed, how it's supposed to work. Read more!

Pressure Canning Chicken Soup, Saving $$$

Been meaning to can some chicken soup, and picking up chicken for less than $.80 a pound finally gave me opportunity / inspiration to do it. I intend to make some chicken stock, too, one of these days, but I'm glad I started with the soup. I wasn't sure how much chicken it would take, so I made sure we had several on hand.

As it turns out, one 3 - 4 pound chicken will yield more than enough for soup, plus a good bit of skin and scraps for the dogs -- not to mention the innards! Those were quite popular, cooked & chopped up. Very nice topping for kibble.

So it took a chicken, an onion, a couple of carrots, a couple of stalks of celery, and some chicken boullion. Some herbs & a little salt to round out the flavor... Less than $4 worth of ingredients, plus a few cents' worth of gas to cook it, and, viola -- eight pints of real, homemade chicken soup. It will need starch of some kind (rice, potatoes, pasta) when it's served, but for about $.50 a jar, I'll be able to put a nice lunch or dinner on the table (in a hurry!) one of these days. And I haven't bought canned chicken soup lately, but I know it costs more than $.50 a pint!!

The sloppy joe recipe I found online (seems every site I looked at had exactly the same one) is excellent. I bought the meat (pork cushion steak -- neither of us is a big beef fan) for less than $1 a pound, put it through the grinder, added the onions, garlic (already prepped -- see tips), ketchup, chili sauce & a few other assorted things, and for about $1 each, we'll have a nice dinner one of these days.

So, although I felt a little guilty when I spent the money on it (about $200) earlier this year, we have more than recouped the investment I made in the pressure canner. And not only are we saving money and building our food storage very quickly, what we're storing is the highest quality possible! Read more!

Homemade Cup-a-Soup

Finally got an impromptu chance to try my hand at homemade cup-a-soups!! Our dinner plans changed unexpectedly, and I found myself with an extra chicken and a good bit of leftover rice. I've done enough reading to know that (health conscious or thrifty, or both) backpackers often dehydrate their own trail food, and now that I'm set up for it, this sudden overabundance of cooked food seemed the ideal excuse to try it myself. The chicken was cooked in the crock pot, and was so well done that I didn't want to can it. So what better solution than to dry it, toss it into pint jars with the rice (also dried), drop in a few dried veggies (onions, celery, carrots, mushrooms...) and vacuum pack it! Should make an ideal lunch, or even dinner, one of these days. I'll post about it again, once I've had a chance to put it together & try it out.

7/5/09

Sampled the cup-a-soup the other day. Hadn't gotten around to packing it into individual pint jars (although now that I've tried it, I will take the time to do that) so I just tossed a bit of the chicken and some of the rice, along with some dehydrated garlic, mushrooms and carrots, into a bowl with some hot water & soy sauce. Takes about twice as long as you wait for commercial cup-a-soups, but the quality is 'way better. So I'll be making it a point to dehydrate leftovers to use in this way from here on. Read more!

Much Ripe Fruit & One Freezer Down

There is something inspirational about the perfume of very ripe strawberries. The kitchen is full of this lovely smell, and I'm frantically trying to get them into the freezer, until I can devise some new ways to use them. The problem is that we've just lost one of our fridges, and I couldn't pass up the overripe peaches, either. Ah, the joys of summer produce!! My niece is coming for the weekend, and I can't see an overripe peach without recalling the first time I offered her peaches and cream. She wasn't any more than 7 or 8, but she managed to put away several kid-sized bowls. What a wonderful, old-fashioned, summer ritual. Of course, telling her, as I set it in front of her, that my grandmother used to make it for me, didn't do much to dampen her enthusiasm!

But now I'm facing a counter full of extremely ripe strawberries, a batch of jam's worth of overripe peaches, plus the frozen meat that survived the freezer meltdown. (The latter is now distributed among the two remaining freezers, one of which I'd been meaning to clean out anyway, but my ultimate goal for the meat all along has been to can it, and I want to get it done asap. Found a terrific recipe for sloppy joes online...) There is also some meat that thawed, that needs to be cooked & dehydrated for the dogs.

The Ball book has some good recipes for the fruit, a few of which I've already tried. I think I'll try strawberry pie filling next. Seems a quick & easy way to put up a fair few of them at once. In fact, I'm ready now to branch out from jam to canning fruit in syrup or as pie filling. And I'm not even opposed to adding a bit of food coloring (gasp!!), or even candy flavoring, if it'll make the end product more appealing. My time (and shelf space!) is far too valuable to me to invest, if all I'll end up with is a mediocre end product.

The death of the fridge/freezer underscores another reason I'm glad I'm a canner. My ultimate goal is to arrange our food storage so that it can all be stored at room temperature, because we just don't know what might "come down the pike" for us. It could be as simple as an appliance on the fritz (as so clearly illustrated by my current situation), or as major as a local or regional disaster. In any case, I want to be able to feed the people I love, even if it's just cold meat, jar bread and canned fruit from the pantry. So I'm working very hard to obtain things (fruits & veggies, at this time of year, with the odd bit of meat thrown in, along with some wheat & other grain) in quantity, at the best possible price, then break them into smaller portions and can or dry them.
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Keeping Up

Canning season is suddenly in full swing, and I find myself facing boxes of strawberries, cherries and apricots. (I always think, at this time of year, about balance -- the cold months that allow us a welcome break from the frenetic pace of the planting, weeding, harvesting, canning, freezing and drying that I'm eager to get to, while waiting for the weather to warm up...) I've replaced what we used to call my "Walkman", and have checked out some of my favorite books on CD from the library. So now it's time to get busy. The Ball book has some excellent recipes, and I'm looking forward to trying some of them. As always, my goal where our food storage is concerned is variety...

Ended up with the better part of a case of strawberries, and as I already have about 3 cases of strawberry jam (including a little pepper jam and a little balsamic, both from the Ball book), wanted to make something different. The Ball book does have some interesting options, but I ended up making a regular batch and adding a bit of the flavoring oil I use for making candy at Christmas time. Very nice!! In fact, though in my younger, "purist" days I would have considered it cheating, I've lately decided it's ok to salvage a less-than-perfect batch of jam by adding a tiny bit of flavoring, to supply the "notes" that are missing. Not enough to overpower, just enough to round out the flavor and turn a mediocre jam into an excellent one.

A case in point: A colander full of apricots, on their way to becomng jam and ranging from a-good-bit-greener-than-I-like-to-use to overripe, needed a little help after it was blended with the pectin and lemon juice. Once it boiled, I added the honey & waited until it was at the can't-be-stirred-down stage. Then I threw in some blueberries (stirring carefully from here on, so as to avoid crushing them). But it was still lacklustre. So I added a tiny bit of apricot flavor oil, but tasted it & thought that might have been a mistake. After considering a few flavors, I settled on the tiniest drop of raspberry. Success! Bottled it, processed it for 10 minutes in the water bath, and it's now cooling on the counter. The recipe called for 4 pounds of apricots & said I'd get 3 pints of jam, but I added about 2 cups of blueberries, and had to add a good bit more honey (because of the unripe fruit) -- ended up with 13 half-pints of jam. (DH is always quick to point out that I can never seem to follow a recipe "to the letter" -- but where's the fun in that?!)
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Storing Meat for our Animal Friends

As I've been preparing things for our food storage, I've tried to take our animal friends into account. After experimenting with canning, as well as cooking-chopping-dehydrating (a messy proposition!!), I've finally settled on what I think is best.

It happened partly because I realized the freezer door had inadvertently been left open, and some of the meat had partially thawed, then re-frozen. Our loss is the dogs' gain!! I cleaned out the freezer, and thawed out the meat. The best way to deal with it, I've discovered, is to grind it, fry it, then dehydrate it. It'll keep fine for quite a while this way, even longer in the fridge or freezer. I happened to have chicken, pork and beef from the freezer, all of which I ground up and fried together. The dogs wouldn't leave the kitchen until the last of it had been put away -- they've learned it can be quite rewarding to "help" me when I'm working...

The meat is much easier and faster to deal with once it's ground, and it's cleaner and neater, too. As a bonus, you can pour off the liquid and put it in the fridge until the fat solidifies. Skim it off, and what's left is a nice broth to warm up & pour over their kibble!

If you don't have a grinder, you can chop it, either raw or cooked, in the food processor. It'll be easier if you put it in the freezer until it's partially frozen first. Or you can chop it by hand. If you're chopping by hand, again you'll want to either partially freeze or cook it. And if you don't have a dehydrator, you can use the oven, on the lowest possible setting. Either way, once it's dried and put into jars, it'll stay good at room temperature for quite a while. This is a great use for recycled jars -- I use the ones mayonnaise comes in, but any clean jar with a lid will do. If the meat has a relatively high fat content, like pork, you might want to store it in the fridge or freezer for a longer shelf life.

When you're ready to use it, you can either rehydrate it (equal parts meat & warm water) or use it as is -- but don't forget it's concentrated! You can also do as my husband did, and add some dried carrots or other veggies, for a little extra nutrition -- dogs are omnivores & a well-rounded diet is as good for them as it is for us -- but there are a number of things they shouldn't have, onions and garlic among others, so please check with your vet or other reliable source first. Either way, your animal friends will love it!! Read more!

Canning Raw-Packed vs Cooked Meat

Though no matter what method you choose you should always follow approved recipes and guidelines (and it goes without saying that meat must always be pressure-canned), after experimenting with both, I have come to the conclusion that I actually prefer to can cooked meat. Raw-packing is quicker and easier, but the end product has a flavor and odor to it that I don't care for (I've noticed this in tuna and other commercially canned meats, as well). And unless you are willing to take the time to re-cook it with seasonings of some sort, you'll end up eating a lot of plain meat. So from here on, I'll reserve that method for ham, and use the hot pack method for everything else.

Hot-packing actually allows for greater flexibility, because you cook the meat, then add hot liquid, and so can put up everything from plain meat to soup to stock. (Again, you should use recipes that have been approved. There are quite a number of recipes available online, which may or may not have been tested -- you'll want to use your best judgement on these.) The Ball "Complete Book of Home Preserving" has some good recipes to try. I picked up a load of pork cushion steak at a bargain, and so am looking forward to trying out a couple of the recipes. So my goal now is to put up things like chili and spaghetti sauce, that I can use to build a meal around later. The Ball chili recipe says you can alter the spices, so I might modify it slightly to make sloppy joes, as well.

Either way, raw packing or hot, it is very satisfying to be able to put together a supply of food, at a very reasonable cost, that will sustain us now and in the future -- and canned meat, in whatever guise, is definitely a part of that! Read more!