Spaghetti Sauce

 I have never actually made spaghetti sauce at home but we still had a lot of tomatoes and I know the basic idea so ....I winged it. 

I used my old Presto strainer. It is so easy to use. It takes out the seeds and skins and just leaves you with the sauce. I added some onion, a few small banana peppers, basil, and oregano from the garden, salt and pepper, and some minced garlic. 

Then I just simmered it for a couple hours until it looked thick enough. It maybe isn't as thick as store bought but we tried it out and it was pretty good. It only made enough for maybe 3 meals but that is three jars of spaghetti sauce that I don't have to buy and it used up most of the tomatoes. 

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes...

 So far my 9 plants have produced 62 tomatoes and the plants are still loaded with green ones. They don't all ripen at once and a lot of them are still on the windowsill getting their last bit of red. I am picking them a little early this year because there is a caterpillar (or worm of some kind) making holes in the red ones. 
Now we have used several in salads (along with the garden lettuce and cucumbers) and on hamburgers but that still leaves a lot and I wait until I have a decent bunch and cook them up for Phil. We usually buy canned tomatoes because Phil likes them in his spaghetti and mac n' cheese and a few other things. Of course, the fresh ones are just so much better.

So you start by putting them in boiling water for a few minutes and getting the peel off. Peeling tomatoes such a messy job! 

Then I added a little salt and cooked them in the pan until they were nice and juicy but still had some form. Our tomatoes this year are mostly Roma with a few Homestead. The Roma's worked really well and I think we will stick with those from now on. 

That's pretty much all there is to it. Let them cool a bit, put them in containers and pop them in the fridge. 

Yes, just three containers this time but that is 3 cans of tomatoes that I didn't have to buy at the store and those tomatoes sitting on my island didn't go to waste. I imagine by this weekend I will have so many tomatoes that I will have to do it all again. I love putting up things from the garden even if it is just three containers of tomatoes.

Remember make the most of what you have. 

Sauerkraut Day

 I haven't made sauerkraut in a very long time but my little garden produced four cabbages this year and while we LOVE cabbage, my digestion doesn't love it as much so I eat it on Saturday because I don't go back to work until Monday. This week I had a nice big cabbage harvested but we had a lot to do Saturday and we just didn't get around working it into our meal. So today it started its journey into becoming sauerkraut. 
The recipe link is there on the right under No Crock Sauerkraut or you can just click here. Making sauerkraut in a jar is simple and easy. There were no pictures of me making it on that link so I decided to take some this time. 
So here is our cabbage fresh from the garden with the outside leaves stripped off. 

Here it is all cut up. I, for some reason, could not find my grater anywhere so ended up having to use my old Oster meat slicer. Seriously it worked great and I probably would do the same next time. 



This is where the salt is added and the cabbage is allowed to rest for about an hour. Then it is just put in the jars add cold water and put on the lids and leave it for 6-8 weeks before you can it. I got 8 jars from just one cabbage. 

I was going to can some carrots I had as well (leftovers from a barbeque we had) but I am out of jars at the moment. Maybe I'll run to the store. Never can have too many jars. 

More Pandemic Canning--Canning Pork

Today's adventure was in canning pork. I really had never canned pork before but I am trying to get one freezer cleaned out so my brother can have it and I am trying to have more meat stored, so two birds with one stone. I had bought one pork loin and when I checked the freezer I found 5 more packages of cut up pork loin. I thawed those over a couple days.

Then I cut as much of the fat off of them as I could.

The meat was then cut up into large chunks.



They were then packed in the sterilized quart jars. I added 1/2 tsp of hickory smoke salt to half the jars and a teaspoon of barbecue spice to the other half. Then filled with boiling water. You really have to be careful to get all the air out because the meat is packed in and traps air pockets.

Then in the pressure canner for 90 minutes.

They smell so good that they are making me hungry now!

The Rest of the Chicken

I was much more organized with my canning this morning and got the chicken cooked and put in the jars fairly early. I did the chicken first but it only made 8 jars so I added two jars of stock to fill the canner. Later I did a load with the rest of the stock.

While the canner was going, I got outside and planted some flowers. I had some marigolds and petunias that needed planting. 

There are rocks and thorny twigs in this last one to try to keep the cats from laying in it. It also has some coleus that I started in the house under the grow lights.

Later I went out to put bird seed in one of the feeders and heard lots of baby cheeping from the bird house. I have never really seen any birds use it. I pulled up a yard chair and sat there forever with my camera until I saw that it was a tufted titmouse nest. We have a lot of those here. I hope they are successful in keeping their babies and that none of my stupid cats get any.

Anyway, it's been a pretty good day. Back to work tomorrow....unfortunately...but at least we are still working.

Pandemic Canning and Things

I know I haven't posted in... forever and it is mostly because I really haven't been doing anything self sufficient in all this time but the recent worries about future meat availability had me digging out my canner today (after I finally found it).

I had gotten a good deal on 20 lbs of chicken leg quarters and also got 20 lbs of potatoes. I have definitely missed my canned potatoes but with the kids gone it just seemed a waste to can food just for Phil and I....but now seems like a good time to be storing more food.
I cooked 5 lbs of the chicken in my pressure cooker (I thought it would make more than 3 jars!), took the meat off the bone and then put it in the jars to be canned. I also saved all the chicken stock to be canned as well (might as well fill the canner). I love homemade chicken stock. So much better than store bought and makes the BEST chicken soup. The chicken and stock went in the canner for 90 minutes.

The potatoes were peeled and cut into large chunks, washed and then boiled for just a short time, put in the jars and canned for 40 minutes. If you would like more specific directions use the search for this blog and put in Canning Potatoes and it will come up with a post I did years ago on it.

The pictures is a little reddish because there are grow lights over the bar. It is filled with plants, mostly house plants, but there are some herbs (thyme, basil, chives) and a few pepper plants up there as well. Plus some flower seeds that I started for outdoor flowers.

The rest of the time during this pandemic, I have been working. Wal-mart did not take time off. I made masks to sell to my co-workers for $3 and $5. I know a lot of people have made them to give away but my money has gone into our "Buy a House of Our Own" fund and I am just not going to feel bad about that. Besides my co-workers were very happy to get them at the price I was selling them for.

Tomorrow is another canning day. I have 15 more pounds of chicken to do and I also have a bunch of flowers to plant. I won't make promises to blog more often. We'll just see how it goes.

Dehydrated Cranberries

The cranberries were finally marked down at the store (although not as cheap as they usually are) and I bought three bags thinking I would make cranberry sauce again but then never had time for it. When you buy produced marked down here it is usually perfectly good if used soon...so I needed to use these. I decided to dehydrate them thinking they would end up like dried cranberries I had seen in the stores...kind of like raisins. That isn't what happened when I dehydrated them however.

They did not shrivel up, most of them kept their shape but feel hollow inside and they are brittle and break up when crushed. It is very odd and not at all what I expected. 

So I have some experimenting to do with these cranberries to see what I can make with them. I am thinking of rehydrating them in water and using them in bread or muffins. I also suppose there could be the option of making cranberry powder of some kind and using that in recipes but I am thinking I likely won't use it so I will try the first option and let you all know how it goes.

Slicing the Homemade Bacon

Phil found another hunk of our homemade bacon in one of the freezers and took it out to thaw but because he was helping Michelle move furniture in her room last week, he never got around to slicing it so that was one of my jobs today.
I still use that cheap little Oster slicer that I got at the thrift store and it still works great. This hunk of bacon was a bit fatty so it must have been from that second hog who got too big. I sure could smell that plum wood we used to smoke it with from that plum tree that died in the yard. I don't think I'll ever look at a dead fruit tree the same way again, that wood will always be something to save for smoking. That wood from the plum tree had a much better taste than any wood smoking chips that we could get from the store.
This made several packages of bacon for us. I believe we will have breakfast for supper tonight and use some of it up.

In other news, I am still crocheting and knitting and selling what I can...and maybe a little ribbon embroidery just because I had never done it before. These are some fingerless gloves that I made.

Let's see what else....Miss Suzie...well, she turned into Poozie..and that just stuck and no one remembers that her name was Suzie now. So Poozie has gotten big and she is definitely the most challenging of the dogs we have. She manages to get out of the fenced in backyard all the time...either by jumping higher than we thought she could or fitting through smaller spaces than we thought she could. How I wish I had known about Jack Russell behavior when I got her...though I am sure I would have still taken her. the other three dogs are fine as well, just growing older and dealing with what comes with that. 

My chicks have all grown into adults now and all are laying. There are roosters to give away and hens who are stealing nest (viciously!) again. I believe I will have chicks to sell this spring but that will be an interesting venture too, I'm sure.
Spring is coming though this winter has been so mild, it is as if we never had winter. I'm hoping we can find house to buy this year. Will keep you all informed on that as we go along.

Leftovers!!

We have leftovers from two turkey's this year. One from our Thanksgiving dinner at home and one from our family Thanxmas dinner with the family. I didn't really realize how much was left until I looked at it today and realized I really needed to can some of it or we were just going to waste all that good turkey.
The spare room is kind of full right now. The big fish tank/brooder is still in there and several rather large presents, bags of smaller presents, empty boxes to send presents in or sent of Etsy orders, just a lot of stuff but I managed to reach the canner and find jars enough.
Canning meat is no more difficult than canning anything else. I did the 'hot pack' method with the turkey where you boil the meat first. I then packed it in the jars using the same liquid, added a little salt,  and pressure canned it for 75 minutes in pint jars.

I ended up with 7 full pints with some leftover. The leftover meat was in all that good juice too and there was no reason to let all that go to waste either so I poured it in the crock pot, added some onions, salt, pepper, a little sage and a jar of canned carrots. I will add some kind of pasta- maybe egg noodles-- later when it is close to time to eat so the noodles don't overcook.

Canning Peaches!

So the peaches on my one tree finally got ripe and it was time to pick them. Phil and I picked the ones we could reach and then we used the can (although we use the bottom of a Poweraid bottle) on a stick trick to try to get the ones we couldn't reach. It worked but not well so there was still a lot of peaches left even after we had a big basket and grocery bag full.
That problem was solved yesterday when some storms came through.

Yeah, half the tree just bent right over. Too many peaches, then water weight on the leaves and it was way too heavy. It did not break the tree but I will have to cut it back pretty good this year because those branches aren't going back up even though I have picked the peaches now.

Yes, three more bags of peaches.

It sounds so simple to can peaches when you read it on a website. Just pop them in boiling water, then cold water and the skins will just peel right off.......LIES! Ha, yeah, that only worked for the larger, riper peaches, the smaller, harder peaches (which was 75% of them) have skin that just doesn't come off and you spend forever peeling them. Then the website said just look for the line already on the peach and cut on it and most of the peaches will just break in half....LIES! I had one that broke in half.....some had oddly shaped pits, some had pits that weren't entirely in the center...most would not come away from the pits at ALL! In the end, once the big peaches were done and I was stuck with the smaller ones, I just sat down and peeled them with a paring knife and cut off all the good peach parts I could.  I used Fruit Fresh to keep the peaches from turning brown while I peeled (forever! a whole large bowl for ONE quart!).
I made a sugar syrup of 1 cup sugar to one quart of water and put the peeled peach pieces in the jars, added the syrup, made sure to remove the air bubbles but running a knife through it, cleaned the rims and then water bath canned for 20 minutes.

Yup, a whole 8 quarts for 5 hours (5 HOURS!) worth of work. Tomorrow I will have to do some more (I am thinking about peach jam ) because there are still 2 1/2 bags of small peaches left.

8 Jars of Organic Carrots

As some of you who are friends we me on facebook know, we finally bought a new, larger air conditioner that actually keeps the house nice and cool so now I am able to do more things inside...like canning...that I have been wanting to do but it was too hot to do before. Anyway, today was a canning day. I had gotten these bags of organic carrots this week marked down to $ .99 each plus I had gotten two vegetable "party" trays that also had two sections each of carrots in them (for $2.50 each. They also had a section of celery, broccoli and podded peas that I will use for other things). I took them all out of the bags and sliced them up mainly because Phil likes them this way.

That pan wasn't quite large enough and I had to switch to a bigger one. 

I brought them to a boil and boiled them a few minutes. Meanwhile the jars were put in the canner and were sterilizing.

Then I packed the carrots into the jars, ran a knife around the edges to remove air bubbles, added about a 1/4 tsp of salt to each jar and then into the pressure canner for 25 minutes.

After all eight jars were filled there was some left...

..I put it in a freezer bag. Just the right amount for a meal.

And here are all the jars. The tops have all popped down and they are ready to be dated and labeled and put on the shelf.

Cranberry Juice Again

If you have been following this blog for years now you may remember me making cranberry juice and jellied cranberry sauce from marked down cranberries. The post is here.  Well, yesterday the bags of cranberries happened to be $ .50 in the store and I got 8 bags of them. However I didn't get started until 3:00 in the afternoon because Phil and I had to go to town and then went to visit with my brother. Plus after we returned I noticed I didn't happen to have any pectin so the jellied cranberry sauce will have to wait until tomorrow or the next day but the juice did get made today.
You start with picking through the berries. These bags have sat in the store since Christmas it is only common sense that they aren't ALL going to be good. If they were all good, they wouldn't be selling them for $ .50. I pick out any of the berries that have any brown in them, because those I know have some kind of rot going on inside and any that are mushy and soft.
Then you add the water and they go in the pot to boil and pop.

Eight bags is a LOT of cranberries. 

After they cook I strain them. It is a messy job and I was running out of big pans so had to strain some in a pan then transfer it to a bowl and then strain more in the pan. Then you add the sugar (1 cup per bag) and they are put in the canning jars. 

Last time I boiling water bath canned these for 10 minutes but some of the jars didn't even make it a year before they started to become cloudy so this time I canned them for 20 minutes, just to be on the safe side.

I did a canner full of 7 quart jars then there was a whole pitcher (the same 2 quart pitcher in the other post) and 1 1/2 quart jars left which will go in the refrigerator to be drank in the next few days.

Canning and a Small Update

Yeah, I'm still here, just don't have a lot of time for blogging. Today I was canning so thought I would stop in an show you the results. Cranberries were finally marked down at the store this week which is great because over Christmas and Thanksgiving we used up the jars I had made last year. I purchased 5- 12 oz bags for a dollar each. When I make cranberry sauce I make juice as well. So  today we ended up with 7 quarts of juice and 5 pints of sauce. If you want to know how I made them you can find out on this post that I did last year and the link is also in the listing on the left under Popular Posts.

Carrots were also marked down this week. The ones in the bag that they sell as baby carrots, although they never really are baby carrots. I got two larger bags and two smaller bags. I sliced up all but one of the smaller bags and pressure canned them. There is a post on canning carrots on my blog here. I canned them the same way today except I did slice them instead of leaving them whole.

Those of you who are on my facebook page know that I got a newer car. After having driven such an old car for so long it is pretty amazing to have  power windows, locks and seats; lovely to have heat and air that works; nice sounding radio and CD player etc. etc. It also came with my first car payment which I worry about constantly.

You also might have seen on facebook that I found a violin teacher in the next town over. I was so excited and she is only charging me $20 for a half hour lesson once a week. I just went to her the first time this last Friday and she is such a nice person. She said she hadn't had a student who was so well outfitted with violin, bows, tuner, extra strings, extra bridge, and lots of music books. She also said that she could tell that I was really committed and practiced a lot because I was much better than she thought I would be since I had been just teaching myself.  It was great to have her there  to tell me, "no that note is too high", "that one is too low" "this is how you do slides" etc.  I am so looking forward to the next lesson!

As for gardening, I really haven't been down to the garden lately as I have been sick for almost 6 weeks and am just now getting over it. I still cough but only once in a while. Anyway, got down the garden today. We have had several very cold nights and some of the greens are a bit frosted but I am sure they will be fine.

Here are the spinach/mustard tendergreens. I really need to pick them but it won't be today after all that canning.

Yup, in amongst all that chickweed are some kale plants. I do love this Red Russian kale and none of it will go to waste.

Unfortunately, before we got real cold this week we had several weeks that were way too warm and the broccoli has formed small little heads. I will just have to pick them and wait for the side shoots.

If there is one thing you can grow in the winter here in Georgia it is turnip greens. There aren't making any bottoms but the tops are obviously doing great.

Here are the beets. They got frosted pretty good but should be fine. I am hoping to have more than greens from these but it will be spring before they make any actual beets. I do like the greens as well though.

Here are the radicchio. Some of them have small loose heads so we may have some to add to salads later on.

That's it for the garden right now. The last picture I took was of the pond. During the warm weeks we had the paperwhite's bloomed but are now falling over since the cold has come. Other bulbs I planted around it are poking out of the soil as well but only a little. The bowl of pink stuff beside it is just the leftover from making the cranberry sauce. I have put it out for the birds. I hope to get a chance to work on the pond a bit more and add more rocks to cover up the liner that is  sticking out and I need to make a smaller filter (under the rock). The fish are doing just fine though, you can see them around the floating plants in the center. Excuse all the leaves. I just raked a few weeks ago and I am tired of raking the back yard. The leaves seem never ending this year.

Well, that's it for now. Hope you all are staying warm!