canned goodies

my pantry was getting bare so i stopped by my moms house and restocked. we do most of the canning at her house and leave the jars there to cool. you're not supposed to move the jars until they're cool so as not to mess up the seal, and cooling takes hours. then later on i raid her pantry when i want to fill mine.

left to right:
applesauce, triple berry jam from two years ago, pears, pickles, peaches, cherries, pickles slices, and four berry jam from last year.

canning peaches and pickle slices

back on august 2, i canned peaches and pickles with my mom.

while we were visiting my gramma in a small town in the middle of rural minnesota, we found faye elberta peaches in the little local grocery store.


my mom says faye elberta peaches are the absolute best for canning. but she hasnt been able to find them for years. so she bought two lugs (boxes) of 50 peaches each. they cost $16.99 a lug, which is HALF the cost of what we've been able to find at farmers markets or the grocery stores here in the cities.


clean sterilized jars


gorgeous ripe peaches


the stove setup. starting with the little tiny pan and moving clockwise, the water to heat and sterilize the lids, the canner, the pot of boiling water to blanch the peaches, and the pot of homemade syrup.


the counter setup. the towel is where i slice up the peaches and fill the jars. the yellow bowl is clean water for 'holding' the peaches that have been peeled and are awaiting slicing. they'll turn brown if exposed to air. the green bowl is right next to the pan of boiling water for blanching. the peaches go from boiling water to cool water and my mom rubs the peels off. that water gets dirty fast with all the peels, and has to be changed often.


we used ball "fruit fresh" to help prevent browning. it contains ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and citric acid. we only put it in the bowls of water, but apparently you're supposed to put it in the syrup as well.


blanch


peel (the peels just rub right off)


it takes me longer to slice and pit the peaches than it does to blanch and peel, so mom gets ahead of me now and then and stops to help slice. when my brother helps slice then the two of us can keep up.


i didnt get any pictures of the slicing and filling the jars because my hands are always wet and sticky thru that part of it. dont want to touch my camera.



this years our syrup was made of 24 cups of water and 4 cups of sugar.
we used around 87 of the 100 peaches in canning
processed the first canner full for 5 minutes (the water was already boiling)
processed the second and third batches for 7 minutes each.
one jar didnt seal.
12 quarts, 7 pints.


on to pickle slicers!!

first you must have cucumbers, all washed up


and plenty of garlic peeled


cut the heads off plenty of dill. we use a mandolin to get all the slices to be the same thickness. we like slightly thicker slices. skip the ends, they dont pickle well.


stuff the jars. we used two cloves of garlic in each pint, on the bottom with a large head of dill. stuff the slices in, and put a small head of dill on top. then pour in the brine.


we always seem to buy too many cucumbers. this is what was leftover after filling all our jars


for the compost bin, along with the peach peels and pits


our haul of goodies


our brine this time was 18 c water, 6 cups vinegar, 3/4 cup canning salt.
1 bushel of cucumbers (too many!)
we bought 3 bunches of dill
and used 5 bulbs of garlic
we processed 5 minutes in the canner.
we made 3 quarts and 18 pints.

and now they'll have to sit and pickle at least 3 months before we can even touch them.

canning asparagus, beans, and pickle slices

on 7/28/12 my mom and i went to my brothers friends house to do some canning. his friend has a lovely kitchen, and i didnt take any pictures of it!



last weekend my mom picked me up and took me to the farmers market. we bought 5 bunches of dill and some smaller cucumbers. my brother and his friend picked up 8 large bunches of asparagus from sams club, along with pre-peeled garlic and a few green beans.

all ready peeled garlic, how awesome and time saving is that! we used about 2/3 of the bag.


five bunches of dill (last time we ran out, so we wanted to make sure we had plenty. we used most of it.


asparagus and beans


smaller cucumbers


pickle slicers! because my mom and i really enjoyed the ones we'd made two years ago (the last time we pickled stuff).


mmmm, pickles


dilly asparagus


ends and leftovers. they trimmed and discarded the raw ends off all the asparagus to clean them up. but then they had to cut another inch or two off the bottoms to make them fit in the quart jars. they made a jar of the ends last time we did this and they were just as good as the whole stems. so this year they pickled all the extra end pieces. and one of their friends really liked the pickled garlic, so they threw in a bunch of extra of that too.


we had one jar blow out. this happens occasionally with older jars. we also had one jar crack, but not come apart. it just didnt seal. this one dumped its guts all over the inside of the canner. at least it was the last round of jars.


pickle slices in back, dilly beans in front, asparagus on the right.


all told, we had
2 containers of cucumbers
5 bunches of dill
8 bunches of asparagus
2 bags green beans
1 three pound bag of pre-peeled garlic

we ended up with
9 pint jars of pickle slicers (minus one jar that cracked)
9 pint jars of dilly beans
2 pints cut ends of dilly beans
1 pt of asparagus
14 quarts of asparagus (minus one jar that broke)

our brine recipe was
5 cups vinegar
5 cups water
1/2 cup pickling salt

every pint got two smaller sprigs of dill and one clove garlic. every quart jar got two larger sprigs of dill and two garlic cloves.

the dilly beans and asparagus got 1/2 tsp cayenne, 1/4 tsp red pepper flake, and also a pinch of yellow and brown mustard seed. Then we put some dried jalepeno in too. thats for a pint jar, double it for the quart.

pictures from 2011 minnesota state fair

my mom and i went to the minnesota state fair last month.

deep fried pickle slices, the best thing ever from the fair. two slices of pickles with cream cheese in between, breaded and fried. SOOOOOO good.


i think there were 6 of them to start with. they gave ranch dipping sauce, but it wasnt really needed. they also had ones with salsa in the middle, and a third kind with something else but i forgot. and you could get a sampler with all three kinds in it. but the cream cheese ones were the best. we demolished them.


funnel cake fries, which are WAY easier to eat than regular funnel cake. i love funnel cake but its so damn messy and theres way too much of it for one person. these fries had the same awesome funnel cake flavor in a much easier to eat package, and in a smaller, more realistic portion. it came with chocolate dipping sauce, but they didnt need that.


cheesecake on a stick, not so good. the chocolate around it was pretty gross.


all these pictures were made with seeds








bees wax sculptures


i liked the plants that made up the horses hair


i couldnt get a picture in focus thru the glass, but this is all cross stitch



handmade wooden toy train


wooden semi hauling a bulldozer


a SNORT! (reference from the kids book 'are you my mother?')


a tinker toy model of the midway at the fair


frankenstein, cross stitch


very intricate very small scale cross stitch


norwegian wedding cake


painted dinosaur



i wondered what kind of plants these were


they made up the pillar around the bell


now i want more deep fried pickle slices!