Canning Archives - Simply Me DIY

March 5, 2020March 5, 2020

Fermenting your Garden Bounty

It’s almost garden season again. Have you thought about how you’ll preserve all your garden bounty yet?

I only recently discovered fermented food and was surprised to find out how much I Iike it.

Fermenting food has been around for centuries.

Historians have found evidence of fermentation dating as far back as 7000BC.

Sauerkraut mixture. — Sauerkraut mixture ready to ferment.

While no one really knows how it came about, it’s likely that our ancestors figured out that they could store foods much longer with fermenting.

And around the time of the turn of the last century, fermented drinks were probably much less likely to make you sick than the water you drank.

There’s some really great benefits to eating fermented foods.

The bacteria that ferments your foods also makes the nutrients of that food much more readily available for your body to use.

The process of fermentation also produces additional vitamins for your body and enzymes that are highly beneficial for your digestion.

And good digestion can support everything from great skin to a strong immune system.

Some of the supplies you need to ferment.

It really doesn’t take much to get started fermenting. Here’s a list of the basics, in no particular order.

Canning jars. I have found wide mouthed jars easier to use.
Some kind of lid. There are several to choose from. You can be as basic or as fancy as you like. I’ve used sandwich baggies and I have special fermenting lids.
A sharp knife for chopping or (as I just discovered recently) a food processor. It all depends on what you’re fermenting and what you like.
Some kind of masher comes in handy if you’re making something like sauerkraut.
Water or apple cider vinegar. You probably won’t want to use city water from your tap if it has added chlorine or fluoride. See more on that below.
Salt for preservation
Veggies.
Last but not least all kinds of herbs and spices or onions, garlic and peppers. Be creative and try what you like. Make smaller batches with different mixtures to determine your favorite.

Pushing a puck down on sauerkraut. — I’m pushing a “puck” down over my sauerkraut to make sure my veggies stay submerged.

Now there are several types of fermentation. You can ferment grain or fruit as in beer or wine. You can ferment tea as in kombucha. And I’m sure you can ferment a number of other things but, what I’m talking about here is preserving your garden harvest and creating different flavors from all the veggies you’ll get from your garden.

A little about the water you use.

I have well water, so I never thought about this until I did the research.

City water generally has several additives like fluoride and chlorine. Some places add a chemical called chloramine too. Chlorine is not to much of a problem in that you can just let the water sit out for about 24 hours and it’ll evaporate. Or you can boil water to get rid of chlorine.

But, that doesn’t work with fluoride or chloramine. You can’t boil or charcoal filter these out of your water either.

If you have a home filtering system you can check what it says about what all it removes from your water. Otherwise, bottled water might be your best bet.

The fermenting process.

Fermenting takes a little time, but it’s not a hard process. It’s a great way to help preserve all of that garden bounty and give a your veggies a variety of tastes.

Step One

Clean whatever veggies you want to ferment well then chop them into bite sized pieces. In the case of a sauerkraut type ferment, you can shred them with a knife or better yet, with a food processor. I’m embarrassed to say I just realized the food processor thing. I’ve almost never use it….until now.

Step Two

Salt is the key. In most cases you’ll add 1-3 tablespoons of salt to a quart of water and allow it to dissolve. In the case of using cabbage or another high water content veggie you can use some of it’s own water content in place of what you would otherwise use. The salt will also help release the water from your veggies. I’ve got a recipe for sauerkraut here, if you’d like to give it a try.

Step Three

Fill the quart jars with your veggies. You can combine many different kinds, or not, it’s entirely up to your tastes. Experiment with different batches to see what you like best. Add your spices and herbs now too.

Step Four

You want to make sure the salt water mixture you pour over the veggies covers them completely. The point is to not allow any air to reach your veggies during the fermentation process.

Step Five

Next your going to add a lid to keep critters out, BUT you need to allow the resulting gases to escape. If you’re highly diligent you can just put a lid and ring on the jar very loosely and remember to just kind of lift it once a day to let those gases out.

Fermenting Kit. — There are several brands.

I know myself better than that, I’m not that diligent and would never remember to do that. So, I bought a kit. It comes with what’s called pucks and breathable lids. These kits aren’t real expensive and it makes the process so much easier.

They run as low as $20 and you can probably spend as much as you want. There are several kinds, so you can decide what works best for your.

When I first started making sauerkraut I didn’t have the kit. I found a method that used sandwich baggies covering the veggies and then filled with water. I got to say it really was pretty inventive. You can see this method here.

Once you have prepared your veggies and got them in your jars, filled it with your salt water and situated a lid, now you wait.

Make sure you set it on a plate of some type because most of the time it will bubble over and will make a mess. Ask me how I know this 😉

How long do you wait?

As a rule you let your ferment sit from a few days to 6 weeks. The warmer it is the faster your food will ferment, but ultimately the amount of time is entirely up to you.

Sauerkraut. — Sauerkraut ready to ferment.

The taste will continue to evolve the longer it sits. Different foods have a different suggested minimum amount of time to ferment. Each recipe will give you timelines to follow. The trick to getting the taste you like is to test it periodically once you get to that minimum amount of time.

Once it gets to the flavor you like, put it in the fridge. The cold will slow the fermentation process to almost a stop and it will stay pretty much like it is. I’ve never had a ferment go bad in the fridge. So far, I’ve had sauerkraut sit in there for several months and catsup longer than that..

The fermenting process adds a tang to your food. But recently, someone told me they had tasted sauerkraut that had sit for 6 months and it was the best and mildest they’d ever tasted.

Now I can’t attest to that yet, but you can bet I’m going to try it.

Share what you know.

Leave a comment below to let us know what food you’ve fermented and how you did it. I would appreciate any inspiration you can leave.

If you haven’t yet, but you plan to try, let us know what you come up with. I can’t wait to hear!!

Until later-

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

September 4, 2019January 24, 2020

I Lost Track of Time.

I have to say, having a full time job can really get in the way of harvesting and preserving my veggies.

Monday's harvest. — Monday’s harvest (with a side of homemade chocolate chip cookies).

We had a holiday this week and it threw my whole weekend off.

I also got to play with my grand kids over the weekend, so I was a little distracted. I was so busy with them and with harvesting and preserving and picking berries, I completely lost track of my days.

I didn’t even realize Tuesday was Tuesday until about 10 pm Monday night. Oops.

I’ve been canning.

Jar of canned tomatoes. — Quart of canned tomatoes

We’ve been harvesting and preserving our garden goodies.

We don’t have a ton of different veggies, but we have enough of the few we grew. I’ve given some to family and now I’m preserving for later.

Of course, we’ve been eating them too….daily.

This weekend, I canned 10 quarts of tomatoes and 3 quarts of chicken broth.

I’ve been saving up tomatoes through the week and froze them. Then I thawed them this weekend. The skins come right off when you thaw them. That was something new I tried and it worked great.

We bought a few chickens from a farm down the road a few weeks ago. I cooked them and used the meat last week.

Then I cooked what all was left from the chicken along with some veggies and some rabbit parts I had saved in the freezer. You can read how how I make broth here.

We’ve found that the rabbit makes the broth a bit darker than usual. I’m guessing that will make it more flavorful too.

I’m dehydrating too.

Dehydrated veggies in the dehydrator. — Dehydrator and dehydrated veggies.

I dehydrated some of the banana peppers and okra. I’ll be able to add the peppers to meatloaf and maybe some meatball and the okra to soups and gumbos during winter.

I also dehydrated the last of the radishes we had. They were so good roasted, I thought dehydrated, they would be really good in soups and stews. We’ll see how that goes.

Since they lose their bite when they’re roasted, I’m counting on the flavor without the bit in a soup or stew too.

We went berry hunting.

We also went berry hunting Monday morning. I’ll be coming up with some elderberry syrup soon. Stay tuned for that one.

With cold and flu season just a few weeks away, you’ll want to make some of your own elderberry syrup.

I have a few cool things in the works. You’ll see those soon.

I’ll catch you next week with something new.

Until then –

Health, Wealth & Blessing ~ Tracey

July 16, 2019July 29, 2019

Berry Jam

I love berry jam. Don’t you? It goes good on everything, in my humble opinion.

This is where I found my berries.

Early this year I bought a few blueberry bushes because I eat a ton of blueberries. They’re my favorite.

My blueberry bush with berries. — One of my 3 blueberry bushes.

I’d always heard or read, can’t remember which for sure, that, like strawberries, it would take a year or so to start getting any berries.

Apparently, that’s not true. I was happy to see that these bushes were going to produce lots of berries. They didn’t produce a lot at one time, but as they matured, I harvested them and put them in the freezer.

Then one day I was out walking around the yard and found a mulberry tree. My husband had been hacking at it with a machete for quite a few years trying to kill it. Of course, we all know you can’t kill a mulberry tree, at least where I live. They grow like weeds.

Ripe mulberries in a bowl. — Mmmmmm mulberries.

There’s been a large mulberry tree on the property for years and I never got a berry from it. The birds ate them all before I could get to them. There’s always been purple bird poop on everything, every year.

But, this year, this tree, which is now a bush, continued to survive. And not only did it survive, it was covered in mulberries. Beautiful, ripe, purple berries, that tasted awesome. I couldn’t believe the birds hadn’t noticed this bush!!

So I started picking berries daily. I only got about 1/2 cup of a mix of the two at a time. I collected them, washed them and let them set out to dry overnight and then put them in jars in the freezer the next morning.

Me and My granddaughter discovered frozen berries make a great summer snack. Note to self for next year.

I decided when I got to 5-6 cups of berries I’d make some berry jam. It did’t take too long to collect about 5 cups. That seemed to be the magic number, because at about 5 cups both bushes finished their production.

I’m not complaining, I’m totally happy with what I got from them. Beside the 5 cups worth, I also got to eat some too.

Now it’s time to make some berry jam.

I found a non-pectin berry jam recipe on the Farmer’s Almanac web site. This is what I loosely followed. I’ve looked but I can’t seem to find the same recipe again to post a link.

I say loosely because that recipe used a different kind of berry and didn’t add lemon juice. I wasn’t sure about the acidity level of berries, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

Better Homes and Gardens Canning Book. — The canning book I used as a reference for this recipe.

This is one of the books I use for my canning.

I have several, but this happened to be the one I used.

It has a chart that lists the acidity levels for several different types of foods.

If the acidity level is high you can water bath can your jam for preservation instead of pressure canning.

But if the acidity levels are lower you need to use a pressure canner to be sure you kill any kind of nasty bug that may make you sick.

Acidity levels for different types of food. — Acidity levels from the book.

As you can see, lemons and limes are at the low end of the pH levels which you would expect, and the berries are kind of in the middle.

There probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but since I had lemon juice, I decided I’d go ahead and use it.

Since I had the time I still decided to not use the pectin.

All I had to do was cook it a little longer. Actually, I probably cooked it a bit too long, cause it’s really, REALLY thick. But I’m okay with that.

It’s the first time I’ve made jam without the pectin. I wanted to make sure it got thick enough. I’ll call it an experiment instead of a mistake.

So I started with the 5 cups of berries I had been picking and freezing over the past month or so. It was a mix of mulberries and blueberries.

Frozen berries beginning to cook down. — Cooking down my berries.

I poured them into a stock pot and heated them on low until the blueberries began to break and the mulberries got mushy.

Then I added the 3-3/4 cups of sugar. The recipe I found said 3/4 cup of sugar for every cup of berries. That seemed easy enough to remember and it’s less sugar than some of the recipes I’ve got for jam. I cooked this slow and stirred a lot so the sugar didn’t burn at the bottom. It won’t take long to melt.

Mashing cooked berries. — Mashing the berries as they cooked.

Cooking berry jam. — Cooking the berries.

Then I mashed them with a potato masher. You can mash these down as much as you want. I like the larger chunks so I didn’t worry too much about it. I knew the blueberries would cook down to pretty much juice, but the mulberries, which are sweeter, didn’t break down so much.

The recipe I read said without using the pectin you needed to cook it about 1/2 hour to 45 mins. I decided to go about mid way and cook them about 40 min on low. Next time I’ll probably just cook them about 25 min, maybe 30.

Make sure you stir a lot. I couldn’t get my burner down low enough, in my opinion, so stirred it almost constantly.

Now it’s time to can the berry jam.

Sterilizing canning jars. — this is an easy way to sterilize your jars. Put them over the water in your canner while you wait for it to come to a boil. I just put the lid on it and let it go.

I began by boiling water in the water bath canner. Then I put the jars in the canner while the water boiled to sterilize them.

Once the water boiled and the jars were sterilized, I filled each one.

Filling jars with berry jam. — Filling the canning jars.

While I fillied the jars, I boiled the canning lids. I’ve heard recently that that is a step that you don’t have to do anymore.

I’m not sure if there are new lids that don’t require boiling or if Ball just changed the rules. But since my lids are older, I’ll continue to boil them until it get new ones that read that it’s not necessary.

Cleaning the jar rim. — Make sure the rims of your jars are clean.

Once your finished filling the jars, you want to make sure the rims are clean. This will ensure there is nothing to obstruct the sealing process.

Then add the lids and rings. You don’t want to crank down the rings. Just finger tight. When you add them to the canner you want about an inch or 2 of water to cover your jars.

Jar of jam ready to be canned. — My canner has a rack in it. I set the jars on the rack and then I can just lower the rack into the boiling water.

I waited until the water was at a rolling boil, then I lowered the jars into the canner. You can add them sooner, but you don’t want to start your timer until your water is at a rolling boil.

Then I processed them in the boiling water for 15 min.

Now they’re done.

Now you can turn off the heat, and raise your rack.

The best part about this is hearing the lids seal. They’ll begin to ping one at a time. In my opinion, this is the best part. Makes me smile every time.

Now you just wait for them to cool and you have preserved berry jam.

I put one of them in the fridge without processing it, so I could have some berry jam to eat now. I wanted to try it out. Then I labeled the rest and put them in the pantry.

If you have the equipment canning your own jam is really easy. Do your research and be sure to follow the best safety rules when canning. They are listed in all the canning books. Don’t be afraid to it a try. It’s really not as scary as it sounds.

If you have canned your own jam, let me know what kind. I’d love to hear what you’ve been preserving. Add your pictures to the comments.

Be sure to subscribe and comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

April 23, 2019April 5, 2021

Making Dandelion Jelly

I love making dandelion jelly. Besides the fact that it tastes great, people just look at you funny when you tell them you got some dandelion jelly made this weekend.

It makes a bright yellow jelly that’s almost as bright and yellow as the actual flower and has a slight honey taste.

It’s really good and really easy to make. Here’s how.

Ingredients

About 3 cups of dandelion flowers
6 Tablespoons of pectin
6 Cups of sugar
3 Tablespoons of lemon juice

Instructions

You’ll want to pick flowers that are fully open, at least I did. I picked about 3 cups or so.

I didn’t really measure, I just filled the bowl I had.

I’ve seen recipes that say you need to pull the petals out of the green bottoms and only use the petals because the green parts can taste bitter.

I’ve never separated the flowers when I made it and I’ve never had an issue with bitter. But to each his own, I suppose. So you can do try which ever way you want. I would guess you would need more flowers if you’re going to pull the petals.

Side note: Did you know each “petal” is actually it’s own flower? Cool hu?

Once you’ve picked the flowers, you’ll want to wash them well, of course. Tiny little bugs get down into those petals and sometimes, they don’t come out easily. I use the sprayer on my faucet and it usually works pretty well.

After thoroughly washing your flowers, put them in a sauce pan and cover with about 3-4 cups of water. Bring your water to a rolling boil and let it boil well for about 10-15 min.

Straining dandelion flowers — Straining your flowers. I’ve used a strainer and a coffee filter to ensure no floaties.

Then strain your flowers from the water. Make sure to squish all that liquid out of the flowers. Then you can compost the flowers. You’ll notice the water that’s left isn’t that pretty yellow color. That worried me the first time I made this recipe. Don’t worry, it’ll look better later.

Let the water cool back to room temperature. I’m not real sure why this is, but I’ve seen it in more than one recipe and I just haven’t tried it another way yet. It’s always been convenient to let it sit while I got something else done so it’s not been an issue.

Dandelion juice in a cooking pot. — 4 cups of dandelion juice.

In the end you’ll want 4 cups of liquid. If you didn’t get 4 cups from the boil, you can add some kind of apple juice or just add more water to make 4 cups.

Add your liquid back into a sauce pan or a stock pot and add your sugar, pectin and lemon juice.

Dandelion juice, sugar and pectin in the cooking pot. — Melting the sugar and coming to a boil.

Heat this up slowly to melt the sugar and once you get to a boil, boil for 2 minutes while stirring constantly so it doesn’t scorch or burn.

Foam from the cooked jelly. — This is the foam I removed from the top of my jelly before I put it in jars.

After this boil, there may be some foam that forms on the jelly. If so, just spoon it off into a bowl. You don’t want that in your jelly jars.

Filling jelly jars with dandelion jelly. — Filling my jars and getting ready to can them.

Now it’s done. Pour it into your jelly jars.

And now you’ll notice the pretty yellow color. I told you it would look pretty later.

Jarred jelly ready to be canned. — I canned 3 pints and put the rest in the fridge.

At this point you can add it to the fridge, give it away or can it. If you don’t can it, you’ll want to refrigerate it and share with others, cause this recipe makes about 4 pints. That’s a pretty big batch of jelly for me anyway. I’m the only one in the house that eats jelly.

The pretty color of dandelion jelly. — Look at the beautiful color.

I water bath canned most of this jelly, and put the rest in the fridge to use. I’ll give some away and have some sweet golden goodness for later too.

For canning I water bathed them for 15 minutes.

I’ve talked before about how great dandelions are here. I hope you’ll learn to love them as much as I do.

Let me know if you’ve ever made dandelion jelly, and if so, how it turned out. Did you like it? Did you separate the petals or did you just use the whole flower? I’d love to hear.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

April 2, 2019March 31, 2019

Beyond Homemade Lasagna

Homemade lasagna is always good, just like every other homemade goodness. This lasagna is “Beyond” because not only is the lasagna homemade so are most of the ingredients.

This won’t be a recipe in the conventional sense. In my usual fashion, there really isn’t precise measurements for the ingredients. It’s really all about what you like which determines how much of each you add

Lasagna is generally a layered pan of meat with sauce, cheese and noodles. The order and amounts are entirely up to you.

I follow that rule with most recipes, hence, I’m terrible with precise measurements.

The Homemade Ingredients of the Homemade Lasagna

The Meat

Lasagna usually contains a meat of some kind, but not always. (We like veggie lasagna too.) The meats used can range from hamburger, sausage or as in this case venison. My husband hunts so we don’t buy hamburger, we use the ground venison from his deer.

I also can venison so when I don’t have time to cook, which generally means I don’t have time to thaw meats too, I can open a mason jar of already cooked meats and mix it however I need to.

I can meat in quart jars and that comes to about 2-1/2 to 3 cups of meat per jar. Again, not an exact measurement but close enough for government work (as my dad used to say).

The Cheese

If you’ll remember a few posts back I had a failure in my homemade mozzarella cheese making. You can see that failure here.

I told you then that the ricotta that came from that would be lasagna soon. And here you go.

I did figure out that I should have salted the ricotta cheese. I rarely salt things, but this is one of those “note to self” things for next time. That was something i didn’t add to the post either, but again, I should have.

The Sauce

The sauce is made from home canned tomatoes. Several years back we planted a lot of tomato plants and almost none of them grew, so we got nothing out of them.

Because of that we planted a LOT of tomatoes a year later and they all produced copious amounts of tomatoes. I can’t even tell you how many pints I canned that year. Thus, I’m just now using up the last of them.

All I did was drain the liquid from them, mash them up and add some salt, basil, rosemary and garlic. I had a partial jar of spaghetti sauce in the fridge that I added too, just to use it up.

The Noodles

I bought them. I haven’t had the pleasure of making that kind of pasta yet. I’ve made the noodles for chicken and noodles, but that’s a different recipe.

The Process

Mixing the Sauce and Meat

As I said before, I drained the liquid from the tomatoes, added salt, basil, rosemary, the other sauce from the fridge and a few teaspoons of garlic (sadly that was from a jar too).

The amounts of each of those are entirely up to your preferred taste, depending on how much you like each. I would generally start on the lower side, tasting every so often to make sure it suits you.

Then I added the meat, mixed it in completely and again allowed it to come to a simmer until all was thoroughly mixed and heated throughout.

The Noodles

As soon as I added the meat to the sauce, I started a large pot of water to boil. After the water came to a rolling boil, I added salt and then the lasagna noodles 3 or 4 at a time. In the end I used 12 noodles.

After they boiled about 8-10 min, I pulled them out and laid them out on wax paper.

Building the Lasagna

Lay 3 noodles in the bottom of a 9 X 12 pan, then layer on the meat and then the ricotta cheese. I also layered in mushrooms in ours, just cause I really like mushrooms. You could add onions, green peppers, carrots or even a spinach or kale if you wanted to. Use your imagination.

If I had it to do again, I would have made more meat sauce, just to make that layer a little thicker.

After the last layer of noodles, I added the remaining meat on top, then the last of the ricotta cheese, then sprinkled about 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese. Again this was a little bit that was left in a container in the cheese drawer, so I used it up.

The finished build with parmesan cheese sprinkled over the top

Cover with foil and bake in the oven at about 400 deg. for about 40-45 minutes. You’re not really cooking this, but you do want it to heat completely through enough to melt the cheese in the center.

The finished product. Sorry for the fuzzy picture.

After that, I pulled it out of the oven, removed the foil and added shredded mozzarella over the top and placed it back in the oven for about 10-15 min. Long enough to melt and brown the cheese.

We love broccoli. And yes, that is a paper plate. We love them.

Using up Leftovers

Throughout this recipe you’ll notice a theme. I’m a master at going through the fridge and using the last bits of things that seem to fit a recipe. I hate wasting food so when I can find a way to use it, I will. If it fits a recipe I’ll try and find a way to use it.

Although this really isn’t what you would consider a conventional recipe I hope you found some use in it. If nothing else, I hope it inspires you to look through your fridge and figure out how you can use all those little bits of ingredients in a homemade meal of your own.

Do you have a piece mill dish you make? Let me know how you use up the stuff in your fridge. I’d love to hear how you piece mill meals.

Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a post.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey