I have to say, having a full time job can really get in the way of harvesting and preserving my veggies.
Monday’s harvest (with a side of homemade chocolate chip cookies).Tuesday’s harvest. isn’t that pretty?
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.
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.
Chicken/rabbit broth.
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.
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.
Elderberries
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 the berries as they cooked.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Preserved berry jam, ready for labeling and then the pantry.
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.
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Canned meat can make your life so much easier, especially in the winter.
I don’t know about you but I seem to be getting extremely lazy this last month of the year. Maybe it’s because it’s dark so much.
I’ve not been on the treadmill for a month now and don’t see it happening till next year. It’s so wrong for that kind of mindset, I know, but I do know I’ll get back on it, just not now.
Coming home from work in the dark makes me feel like I want to go straight to bed, so fixing supper is definitely not first on my mind. And I’m terrible at planning ahead enough to thaw meat the day before.
So I’m really grateful that I canned so much ground deer. Now I can grab a few quarts of that, some of my canned stewed tomatoes, and depending on the spices I want to use I can have supper in about an hour and there’s no thaw time.
Canned meat seemed pretty scary at first, but turned out to be no harder than anything else. You just leave it in the canner for 90 minutes.
I did cook mine a little first and then rinsed it to get as much fat out as possible. My husband used to have our deer processed at a commercial meat locker and had 10% tallow fat added. We don’t do that anymore, I don’t see the need.
Canned ground meat
Next time, I don’t think I’ll cook it, I’ll just crumble it. I’ve also cubed up the roast parts and cut the fat off the scrap pieces and canned those as small cubes. This give a little more flexibility in what you want to use them for.
I’ve also done this with chicken. It’s usually cooked first just because it’s much easier than trying to cut chunks of raw chicken. That makes for an easy chicken and noodle supper.
Other things you can try are ham and beans. Canning them makes them taste like it’s a day or two reheated. I don’t know about you, but I always think ham and beans are better the 2nd or 3rd day anyway.
You can always add spices to the meat. Preferably something that won’t be hurt by the heat, maybe some Worchestershire sauce or something of that nature. The canning process pulls the fibers of the meat apart to some degree. This allows any spices you may add to really get into the meat, so it taste spectacular when it’s time to eat it. Some meats don’t need anything and are awesome just the way they are.
This gives me a ton more freezer space and like I said, when it’s time for supper there’s no thaw time. YAY!
Next time you need to make room in the freezer and if you like to can, give it a try. Just make sure all your meat chunks are an inch or so in size or smaller. This allows enough heat to get through the meat to stop any bacteria from growing.
Leave it in the pressure cooker for 90 minutes at pressure. And there you have it, canned meat ready for those nights you don’t have time to thaw meat.
If you’d like me to do a DIY How-To on canned meat, please let me know in the comments below.
If you have any other ideas of canned supper or supper fixings, please share them. I’d love to hear from you.
