A Trip to the Grocery Store

Last week we had some friends come over for dinner so they could harvest our hops that we won't be using. I thawed out hamburger from the freezer cow and contemplated giving bun making another shot. I do quite well with bread making, but every bun recipe I've tried just doesn't work out.

So I decided to go to Kroger's to just buy some hamburger buns. I took our 4 year old son with me.

As we were walking up to the building he asked me,-What is this place? The dentist?

-No, it's the grocery store.

-What's inside there?

-Food, baby.

It's only been 2 1/2 months since we've been serious about eating local. And granted, before eating local, we often shopped at the food co-op, the farmer's market and Trader Joe's. Yet once inside Kroger's, my boy was all Oooos and Aaaahs! Too funny!

He begged for a box of crackers. The previous night at bed time he asked for crackers. My husband and I realized we hadn't had crackers- that all time, favorite kid snack- in a very long time. Our little guy moaned,-We haven't had crackers in a long, long time!
So at Kroger's, I granted his wish, broke down and bought him a box of CheezIts along with our hamburger buns. We had a load of kids at the house that afternoon, so the crackers were devoured in about 12 minutes.

Who knew the grocery store could be so quickly forgotten?

The New Toy

The pressure canner has proved amazing. We've been canning a lot more things in a shorter amount of time. We've done around 12 pints tomatoes, 12-14 more pints peaches, 12 quarts veggie quinoa soup (vegetables from the garden, quinoa from an ancient, unopened pack I've had in the pantry for 3 years). We've also done more freezer bag things like collards and corn.

Last Thursday Greg and my dad took 20 chickens in dog crates to Boyer's Meat Processing (Barr Rd. off Geddes, for you local folks). We picked them up that evening, each in their own bag for only $45. Money well spent,for sure. Greg had already processed around 14 himself a couple weeks back. We still have 6 more to be processed, and that will be that for the meat birds.

We need to get on the ball with making a coop for the egg layers we want to bring home. Hopefully in the next few weeks...

The tomatoes pictured above are gorgeous! My friend gave me a few seedlings of various things this spring in exchange for 20 onion sets. That crazy tomato plant was one of them. It's some sort of heirloom Italian paste tomato, I believe. I keep thinking she said the name was Fortunato, but my subconscious could be completely making that up. That word has been in my brain for weeks. Fortunato. Hmmmm.

Aside from wishing it would rain a bit more often than never, the garden and eating has been great. The chest freezer is nearly full, now that we have so many chickens in there. There's still a lot of steaks and roast from the 1/4 cow we bought this spring, as well as a few hunks of lamb that I just can't stomach!

Hopefully I can post pictures of a chicken run in the very near future!

It's Arrived!

This is what I meant to order the first time around! We'll be going to the market today to get a lot of low-acid local loveliness to can. The only thing ready in the garden at this time are tomatoes and collards.

In fact, it looks like spring in the garden after our second planting. Everything is coming up nicely though.

And we've decided to spend the extra money to have the rest of the meat birds processed so that Greg doesn't have to spend an hour or two a day killing a few birds after work. It's only $2.25 a bird. Very worth it. Even if it entails borrowing my dad's truck, Greg taking the day off work, and scooping 25 chickens into dog cages at 7am.

Hey, I'm actually remembering to water the garden in the morning! I usually remember about 3pm when the soil looks like dust under the sun. It's amazing anything grows out there.

Cool weather brings productivity

Today has been lovely. No more than 70 degrees or so. I've been wearing jeans and my sweater most of the day. Perfect weather in my opinion. Got a lot done in the garden this afternoon. More canning too, without sweating like a pig over the cauldron of boiling water bath.

The garden looks a little bare again. With all the potatoes out, we've had a lot of room open up for new plantings. We have in the bare places, black eyed peas, some kind of Japanese carrots, French Breakfast radishes, candy-cane striped beets, lots and lots of shelling peas, bok choy and turnips.

The edamame are filling in nicely. Cucumbers are doing their thing. I just canned 3 qt jars of cuke pickles this afternoon, using pumpkin pie type spices and apple cider vinegar, garlic and dill.

The wee little eggplant are finally growing! They're super cute. Hopefully I can keep little hands from picking them too early.
Yesterday we used all the ripe tomatoes we had for drying. The Excalibur works beautifully! The tomatoes dried perfectly and smell really good despite being totally dehydrated.
I have 4 shelves of basil drying in there right now. Also hung lemon balm, catnip, mint, parsley and yarrow down stairs to dry.

We bagged up the second batch of sauerkraut today. I think we got around 8 qt. bags of that. No more kraut. I can't honestly think we'll eat it all over the winter. Then again, if we really stay local, we might be coming up with fancy sauerkraut recipes. Holiday cookies topped with roasted kraut. Kraut omelettes. Kraut bread.

Greg pickled mushrooms yesterday. They're amazing! Also made another, yet different type of pickled eggs. It was my job to lance them before stuffing them into jars. They're not my thing, but they look pretty in the jars.

Off to go make an attempt at waking up little E, who fell asleep just before dinner and will now be up super late watching infomercials because everyone else in the house will be sleeping.

Who knew there'd be so much joy in canning?!

Those scrappy little carrots are cute, no? Clearly I didn't thin them enough, as you can tell by their twisted state, but I'm proud of them. They're also kind of small, but I needed carrots for the relish recipe we canned. Which by the way, is quite tasty. Carrots amaze me for their ability to grow in the dark like a little cave animal that evolves to have no sight, but still gets around amazingly well. You'd expect them to come out of the ground pale and white like parsnips, but then there's this brilliant orange sunshine as you shake the dirt off. Makes me smile every time. It doesn't take much to amuse me, I admit.

And the eggs! Since we're up to our eyeballs in eggs,Greg thought it'd be a great idea to pickle them. He found a recipe in our new pickling book that uses turmeric, shallots (we used those little red onion/shallots that we grew in the garden last month), vinegar and maybe curry powder? At any rate, in a week or so, they'll be ready for eating. I don't think I can get myself to try them, lovely as they look.

And the canning is coming along nicely. Who knew that canning could bring a husband and wife closer? Really, we've had quite the buddy system and shared enthusiasm as we clean hot jars and chop ingredients side by side. I'm loving it.

The storage shelf is just beginning to fill out with the fruits of our labor. More salsa verde, a dozen jars of the finally ripe peaches, and last night, a beautiful tasting batch of herb jelly. Again, something that would never occur to me to make or use, but the recipe looked good nonetheless. You can use any fresh herbs you have on hand. In our case, we used Genovese Basil, Thai Basil, Oregano and Thyme. (Or, BOT jelly, as I've labeled the jars.)You bring the herbs to a boil in a water, white wine, and vinegar base and then let it steep for 15 minutes. Then you remove the herbs and squeeze out all liquid from them. Add a packet of pectin and too much sugar and create your jelly, pack and process for 10 minutes. It's lovely. This batch is a pretty pink tint due to the Thai Basil. I have a little left over that I'm going to use on chicken breasts tonight. We'll see how it tastes.

I think I'll spend the day baking some things since it's only going to be in the mid-70s. I hope to update soon with pictures of more jars with questionable contents soon!

A time to relish

We're in ever-increasing food-preservation mode. I love it. It's working quite well with my pace, both mentally and physically. Since July was unexpectedly light from everyone having their babies early, I tried hard to live with intention~ intentionally slowing down, allowing myself to sleep in, being really chill and enjoying the kids on their time, making lots of pancakes, going to the pool, and drinking a beer now and then. I had intended on making some time to paint crappy, not-very-artisitc watercolors as well, but that hasn't happened yet.

August is a busier month. 5 Mamas due in a short period of time. More prenatals, and soon enough, more home visits after the babies come. It's also prime CANNING TIME!

Over the weekend, G and I finally dug out our boxes of dusty, cob-webby mason jars to wash them and take stock of what we had. Saturday I bought a bushel basket of peaches at the Farmer's Market for $20. They're lovely. And as I found out when we set up to can them, not quite ripe. So our peach halves are more like peach slivers. We took the ripest from the bushel basket and were able to can 3 pint jars of spiced peaches (in sliver form, but they're delicious). I think they'll be really tasty added to oatmeal in the winter, or yogurt, etc. We'll probably get to canning the rest, in proper halve form tonight or tomorrow, now that they're squishy-ripe.

We also made a batch of salsa verde using green tomatoes instead of tomatillos. It's really tasty! I would have never thought of putting any use to green tomatoes. I don't like them breaded and fried, but put them with loads of garlic, onions and cilantro and it rocks.

We've also got a brine full of various garden veg sitting on the counter to make a pickled relish recipe. We'll see how that tastes. I've never caught myself eating a meal and thinking to myself, "My, a salty, crunchy relish would make this meal complete!" But the Ball Book of Home Preserving seems to think the world isn't complete without relish, judging by the numerous recipes for the stuff.

My pal Amy came over last night and helped me do more freezer bags of corn with the freaky kernel-removal tool as she told me about her very recent, not kid-friendly family vacation. The toll is a circular sharpened knife type thing, attached to two hand grips, so that you run the circular knife down the shaft, removing all the kernels. I believe she found it remarkably therapeutic in some strange way.

Oh, and my much anticipated pressure canner came yesterday. Sadly, it is not what I thought it was. That's what I get for online shopping late at night when I'm really tired and my contacts are hazy. So it's going back. It's only a pressure cooker with extra canning utensils. It only works as a hot water bath type canner, and not the high pressure canner with a pressure gauge that I need and thought that I was buying. So it will be another week or so before I get the right product. Heavy sigh. I did that little happy dance for the UPS man for no good reason.