Fun with canning

Mom (Therese) and I canned 7 more quarts of whole peeled tomatoes and made and canned 8- 1/2 pint jars of cinnamon pear jam from some free pears grandma gave us.

Canning Canning Canning Canning Canning

Food comes in fast and furious around now, and most idle moments are spent processing this food for storage. I know that I spend a large amount of time doing food prep, and I'm sure that the other people involved in the challenge are doing the same.

Therese traded me grapes for wheat not long ago. She asked me the day before she was going to pick them, 'How much do you want?'

'I don't know, get me like 2 gallons.'

Did she get me 2 gallons? No. She got me probably 6 gallons. I used them to make grape butter (same concept as apple butter but with grapes, it turned out more like syrup than anything,) grape jelly, raisins, and grape juice. I just build the dryer for the raisins yesterday; I finally turned the last of the grapes into juice today. The jelly wasn't 'challenge legal' so I've already started sharing jars with friends and family.

We had family dinner this past Thursday; I came home with a bag of tomatoes. Today I canned tomatoes, yellow squash, and a couple of jars of pickles (I saved the leftover sauce from the bread and butter pickles when Kathy and I canned.) I also froze cantaloupe from my garden, and winnowed several pounds of wheat.

Idle time watching TV is spent picking apart wheat grain heads. I have 15lbs of unprocessed grain yet to go.

I also made a bit of a discovery today. When I collected the elderberries a couple weeks ago I took about a third of them and just cooked them down, no sugar added. I was looking for a savory or herbal flavor instead of something sweet. When I processed them I squeezed the cooked pulp to get all the goodness out of it. Today I was scrounging around for as many jars as I could find, and looked at that jar of elderberry essence. I found a good layer of oil on top of the jar. I decanted it off - probably only a few tablespoons were there but it has a very distinct flavor profile. It is almost like olive oil but it has a more complex flavor. It has a floral front and a dry finish. One of my favorite things about these food challenges is getting the opportunity to experience foods that nobody really eats any more. I know where at least one more of these trees is, and plan to go pick the berries to make more oil.

Amber Piles of Grain

The three bags in the upper right of the picture are filled with the wheat I've separated so far. It is easy but very time consuming to separate the wheat by hand. I winnowed what I had this morning as it is cool and breezy outside. My current stores are 12lbs of grain, with an estimated 19lbs yet to process. There are a couple pounds of oats that need processed too.

Also pictured (top right, going counterclockwise,) 4 jars of apples in light syrup, 4 jars of dill pickles, 3 jars bread & butter pickles, some salted fish, 4 jars of blackberry jam, and 1 jar of whole peeled tomatoes.

In regards to foraging - I went out hunting at Spencer Lake, my favorite local hunting and fishing spot. There was a ranger there who was scolding a couple of hunters, I don't know what for. When he was done I told him about us getting kicked out of the metroparks for picking blackberries and asked if it was permitted there. He told me that picking berries, nuts, and mushrooms were permitted in the Spencer Lake wildlife area. It is good to know for sure that we have an area legal for foraging!