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Adventures In Canning
Canning and Preserving · Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Adventures In Canning

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Every time I have tried to can things recently, I have been thwarted by life! It’s been very frustrating. I’m hoping to get some more of the jams canned this Friday. We have a house work weekend planned, so then I won’t mind too much if the kitchen gets a little sticky. We can just clean it right up!

Some of the fruits I have waiting to be jam are strawberries, rhubarb, and apricots. I might pick up some more pomegranate juice too and try some jellies. I meant to make Jasmine Tea Jelly for my FIL for Father’s Day, but it never quite got made. Maybe I can get it done for Christmas.

I have made one jam so far and it was the Plum Cardamom jam that I fell in love with last year. This year I tripled the batch and didn’t bother straining it, just blended it with a stick blender. I think it worked just fine. The original recipe is from the Small Jars, Big Flavors book, but I only sort of followed it. I ended up using the old school method for one cup sugar to one cup fruit. It was still so good, that I was licking the ladle. 🙂 I ended up with 13 half pints of jam. I might not be as possessive this year. Last year I only had 8 jars and I had 4 of them myself. 🙂 Here is the jam, pictured with my next two canning experiments.

I ran out of cucumbers for my pickles, so may make some more. Some of them went bad before I could get to them. These are Hot Garlic Pickles from the Taste of Home Canning magazine. I made them last year and they were a hit. I want to make some plain garlic pickles too and some more squash pickles. (Don’t tell anyone, but my Dad ate zucchini voluntarily!! Oops…. 😉 ) I have to have enough pickles for future pickle trays, after all. I ended up with two jars of pickles.

The third other jar is pickled red onions! I love them on sandwiches, so thought I should have some. I haven’t tried them yet, but I think they look super pretty!

My friend K and I got together and made the Husbands play video games and snuggle the dog while we canned tomatoes over Labor Day. We ended up with probably 40 lbs of tomatoes? We made Zesty Salsa from the Ball Blue Book, and Roasted Garlic Pasta/Pizza sauce and Spicy Sicilian Pasta/Pizza sauce, I believe from the Better Homes canning magazine.

K took home half of them and some of the tomatoes. The salsa had some garden peppers and tomatoes. She brought a whole bag of mixed hot peppers, including habeneros and cherry bomb peppers, so it might be super spicy again. I’m excited to try it!

She canned the rest of her tomatoes, and I tried out our new dehydrator to make sundried tomatoes for the freezer. I cover them in olive oil and they keep for about 6 months in the freezer? To be honest, I have kept them for longer than that and they do fine. I didn’t quite get the consistency right, as I didn’t quite know how to make the temperature increase in the machine. Now I know and I want to try to dry some herbs next.

Don’t they look so pretty? I added some basil, oregano, and garlic too them before they were dried. The house smelled amazing!

My garden hasn’t been as successful as I wish it was. It looks pretty sad right now. I have to try digging the radishes and carrots. They were both small when I tried before. I was sad. Next year, we’ll have to try some different things.

My strawberries are still producing though and if the squirrels haven’t stolen my poblano peppers yet, I should have two out there. We also have some more purple peppers started. I think I might need to read some more garden planning books or something to figure out how to be more productive with it. Next year, I would also like to add the third bed, which might be partially herbs, and actually cage the tomatoes. They were unwieldy again this year and it was very annoying.

Back to canning talk… I have a new canning magazine (Better Homes and Gardens- Can It! Freeze It!) which has some very interesting looking recipes in it, such as Vanilla-Caramel Butter, Vanilla Citrus Plums, Brandied Strawberry jam, Roasted Tomatillo-Corn Salsa, and Sage Peach Jam.

I’m not sure exactly how many more things I will get done. I want to try some wine jelly and a whiskey ginger jelly too, but those I can really do any time.

I’m going to take Fancy’s example and go to bed to dream of new and interesting canning options though. I’ll leave you with a picture of my prized possession: a large jar of Penzey’s Sandwich Sprinkle! The Husband just shook his head, but I know he’s excited about it too. 😉

Canning Galore!
Canning and Preserving

Canning Galore!

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Hello! Besides canning this weekend, we also did some yard work. A lot of yard work. It was slightly unexpected yard work, but it made the yard look a lot better.

Notice anything missing? Here, I’ll show you another one…

We took the trellis down! Hooray!

We can see the garden from the house! We can watch the dog when she runs away at night and tries to find the skunk.

We are going to have to rent some equipment to get the two bushes out and are repurposing the trellis by retraining roses to grow on it instead of through the fence.

It was killing the apple tree and whatever else it could reach and really didn’t fit what we wanted our backyard to be.

We can also see the compost, which I forgot to say we started. I think it’s going well. I certainly added a lot to it this weekend. My full-blown canning run took up pretty much two whole days. I had to restrain myself on Sunday from canning more. I still have a list going of other recipes, but not enough time to make them all!

The only one not pictured is the ginger dill pickles from Epicurious. https://www-epicurious-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ginger-dill-pickles-56389773/amp

I had one today and they need a little more time to cure, but will be good to serve for the summer party.

Here are the other pickles:

Hot Garlic Pickles and regular Garlic Pickles. They are from Better Homes and Gardens Canning from 2015.

I used the little tiny, but super hot peppers from the garden! They need to sit for a week, so I haven’t tried them yet. They should be both garlicky and spicy.

Squash Pickles! This is a recipe I’ve been wanting to try since last year, but I never had the ingredients at the same time. I halved the recipe. The Husband doesn’t eat pickles… I know, I don’t get it either…

These were made from the zucchini from the garden. The recipe came from Southern Living Little Jars, Big Flavors. 

These beans were not from the garden. 🙂 They are also from the same cookbook. I want to make almost everything in it.

This Spicy BBQ sauce was from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. I made this recipe before, but with less spicy peppers. This year’s peppers were super spicy. I made this two weeks ago, I think. I used tomatoes from the freezer.

Also from the Blue Book is this Spicy Tomato Salsa. We are officially calling this Firebreather Salsa. I used all garden Jale-fuego peppers and a couple of tomatoes.

We have peach salsa too. No garden items in this one, but it smelled good. I’m excited to try this.

The peaches were wonderful. I will have to go back and get some more. More recipes to come!

I will be joining this puppers shortly.

I have to keep my strength up for party prep and more canning! Have a great night.

Recipe Roundup
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

LSiehLeave a comment

The weather here cannot make up its mind about what to do. All our snow melted in a day after getting several inches and now it’s freezing again. We’re supposed to get 4-6 inches by tomorrow. Fancy has spent most of the last couple of days curled up on the bed, or by the heating vent. She’s currently keeping my feet warm with occasional breaks to bark at the neighbors.

We had a good amount of variety in our meals this week. For dinner tonight, it will be “clean out the fridge.” I think all we have left is the chicken divan though, so that will be easy to finish off.

We had a pre-seasoned boneless lamb leg on Sunday, with mashed potatoes and fancy carrots from a Food Network magazine.

I consulted a couple of different recipes for the lamb, mainly just for tempature. It turned out really good. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/herb-roasted-lamb-recipe-1943577.html?soc=itksocialsharedefault%7Cios%7Ct Herb-Roasted Lamb By Ina Garten

I think this is the one I finally settled on. The link is being weird and linking back to the app instead of the webpage, so if it gives you trouble, search the Food Network site.

The lamb was delicious! We will definitely be doing this again. The Husband was super happy with it. I liked it. It masked the lamb gameyness and had a bit of a kick to it.

The carrots were from Food Network April 2015, Herbed Green Beans and Carrots. I only used carrots and I used a cranberry-pear white balsamic vinegar. I did reduce the sugar a little in the recipe. I julienned the carrots, feeling very fancy while cutting them.

We also had chicken divan. I accidentally mixed the cheese in and forgot the bread crumbs, so it was a little bit different. I also didn’t measure and under seasoned it. It still tasted alright though.

I made another muffin recipe. Blood Orange Pomegranate Muffins from Food Network, Jan/Feb 2018. 

They browned up a bit more than I was expecting. They have two full sticks of butter in them… The pomegranate arils were supposed to go on top, but I accidentally mixed them in. I didn’t make the glaze. I typically don’t like it. These were good. Slightly over baked, I think. They also made a full 24, when the recipe only said it would make 18. I’m not sure what size muffins they thought I was making…

I had chocolate chip banana waffles for breakfast one night. It had been a rough day, so they were a nice treat. https://hilahcooking.com/chocolate-chip-waffles/

I had them with butter and lingonberry jam. Mmm… I would make these again. The Husband was out for the night, so I didn’t have to share. I would make these again. I reduced the sugar a little and would do so again. The chocolate chips and jam made these sweet enough.

Last night I used the lamb to make a lamb stew, loosely based off a recipe in A Taste of Lebanon by Mary Salloum.

It was spicy from the lamb seasoning and warming from the cinnamon. We had cheese biscuits with it. We ate most of it last night. I would make this again if we have leftover lamb.

In other news, I started an Instagram account for the blog, with the same name- Notso50shousewife. If you have an account, feel free to follow along.

Stay tuned on Monday for my monthly review! I’m starting pretty strong on sewing projects this year.

Recipe Roundup- Leftover Edition
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup- Leftover Edition

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This week was a week of one recipe and two leftover recipes. I had a few freezer dinners and chili at work. It was “Hell Week” for the Husband’s play and he was gone until late all week. Fancy and I missed him a lot! His group performed “The Laramie Project.” It was so powerful! I’m not sure if I’m ready to blog about it, because it brought a lot of stuff up. Maybe I’ll tackle it all in a future post.

Fancy did get a new toy over last weekend, from the Husband’s uncle to distract her from the Husband being gone for so long. Poor little pig didn’t even know what was coming for him…

She’ll get one of her treat bones today with some homemade treats in it. It’s raining and she won’t go out except to use the bathroom. She’s going stir crazy though, so if anyone has a need for slightly crazy puppy cuddles, let me know. 🙂

I just made a chocolate applesauce cake today, so I’ll start with that recipe and end with the leftover recipes.

1- Chocolate Applesauce Cake from Taste of Home. https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/chocolate-applesauce-cake

I was trying to recreate a chocolate applesauce cake my Mom makes, but this was not the right recipe. It’s delicious and moist, but not dark chocolaty enough. She said another name for it was “Chocolate Tea Bread” maybe, so I might look that up. I used my homemade applesauce for it. I wanted this cake since I made the applesauce, so I am happy with it. 🙂

2-Slow Cooker French Onion Chicken from Pillsbury. https://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/slow-cooker-french-onion-chicken/ec69f51d-b79d-4ac0-8619-693a35167a87

First off, I didn’t make this in the crock pot. I baked it at 350 for about 45 minutes, maybe? I also used boneless thighs and drumsticks instead of chicken breasts. I ran out of time for the crockpot.

It was good. I liked the garlic and always like caramelized onions. I had it with green beans and a homemade herbed french bread roll. I forgot to oil the mini cast iron, so the bottom of it got stuck. It still tasted delicious though.

So I made a lot more chicken than I needed by accident and had to come up with a few things to do with it. I have no pictures of these ideas, but can give you the measurements from what I remember.

3- Chicken Salad, recipe by me.

I chopped up a couple of pieces of the chicken, added a few tablespoons of chopped celery, and about a 1/8 cup mayo. Also, salt, pepper, and I accidentally dumped at least a tablespoon of dried tarragon in the container. It was delicious! I was going to eat it with crackers, but they had gone stale in my snack drawer at work. Apparently my face was absolutely hilarious because my client burst out laughing in the middle of her sentence. 🙂 I ate it by itself after that.

4- Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup, recipe by me.

I chopped up the rest of the chicken, a small onion, a garden jalapeño, and two cloves of garlic. I added them to a box of chicken broth, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of diced green chilis, and a can of tomato paste. Spices were cumin, garlic powder, a little turmeric, oregano, and salt and pepper. I let it cook overnight and promptly had it for breakfast on Friday. It’s delicious and spicy! It’s helping the Husband’s cold, we think.

I did learn that the massive jalapeños are probably massive in heat level, not necessarily size. I know this because I rubbed my eyes at 4:30 AM and cried for a very long time. I had cut one (only one!) up, washed my hands multiple times and went to bed. Apparently it was extremely potent. I think I might need gloves to make the salsa. Yikes! Not a good way to wake up for sure.

My work schedule is crazy as usual. I decided to move to one counseling center full-time, instead of part-time at two centers, so while this will eventually make it better, right now it’s not the easiest. I’m attempting to tell clients I’m leaving, but both last Friday and Monday, I had three no shows or cancellations each day. It makes it hard to move things along for sure. My plan is to be full-time at only one center by January. Hopefully I can have a couple of earlier nights  during the week to actually cook things again.

Speaking of cooking, I should go make dinner for me. I’m going to make a grilled cheese with the herb bread. I’ve used it before and it was delicious!

Have a great weekend! May it be filled with naps!