A Year's Supply of Peaches

We have been canning.

At the beginning of the week I took the kids outside, handed The Bairn a bucket, set Ellen up in the shade, and picked enough fruit off our tree for Steve to make a canner-load of spiced crab apples.  Steve claims he's going to make the best bbq sauce in the history of the world with the remaining canning syrup.

Wednesday we drove to the Annapolis Valley, my true Nova Scotian home, to buy 100 lbs of peaches.  Whenever we go to Wolfville, I have to spend a lot of time demanding that Steve explain why we don't live there.  They are my people.  For example, at the fruit market where we bought the fruit (and where they sell homemade taquitos and operate a petting zoo/park/playground), a woman asked Steve to come over and lend his strength to moving our peach boxes.  One of the young male employees protested, "Now, now, maybe his strength is poetry."  (It's not.)

Yesterday we spent seven hours processing 23 quarts of peaches and 5 quarts of peach pie filling.

To do this, you must first dress your baby as some kind of weird Hawaiian hobo.

Just because.

Then you must give her fun toys, like empty bowls and forks.

Because she is a gem, this will keep her happy all day.

Then you may proceed with filling three of these buckets with peaches before processing.

Afterward, do not even consider making dinner.  Eat outside at the market down the road.  Sit with old people who come out in droves to hear the live music on Thursday nights.  They will be nice to your baby, even if she's dressed like a freak show.

Adventures in Cheesemaking

Last month someone from Relief Society called to say that they'd like me to teach a class in August and I said, "Sure thing."  And then they started talking about cheesemaking and I said, "Sure thing, except, you know, I don't know how to make cheese."  And then everyone at church started telling me how excited they were for me to do the cheesemaking and someone I know from our little village who doesn't go to church with us but works with someone who does was emailing me to ask if she could come learn the cheesemaking too, and I was all like, "Sure thing, except, I don't know how to make cheese!")

Still, all the people are coming tonight.  And I do know how to make cottage cheese and yogurt.  And I read some books on making cheese.  And this morning I whipped up some paneer to give myself some more cheesemaking credentials.  So wish us luck, because I'm going to be instructing others on cheesemaking in four hours.

This is my paneer.  It cost more than buying a block at the store and probably part of The Bairn's brain, because I let him watch YouTube movies all morning so that he'd stop 'helping' me with it.

My Two Favorite Ways to Preserve Rhubarb

In the last week I've bottled two batches of rhubarb chutney and two batches of rhubarb marmalade.  These are my two favorite ways to preserve rhubarb.  They are both extremely delicious and quite easy.  Here's how you make the marmalade.

My orange chunks on this batch were a bit bigger than normal, because my food processor was having issues.

1. Don't be pregnant.  This was my mistake last year.  Everything is easier when not pregnant.  You can think briefly that you might be pregnant, enough to make your husband suggest you buy a pregnancy test, and your toddler can, weirdly, say to you, What's the matter of Mama?  Mama has a baby in her tummy.  But don't actually be pregnant.


2. Chop 6 cups of rhubarb and throw it in a pot.  If a toddler is helping you, chop the rhubarb and then let the toddler throw it in the pot.  Be careful that he doesn't get too attached to the rhubarb pieces or he will throw a fit when you suggest that they are intended for cooking and you'll have to make patient negotiations to trade the rhubarb for blocks.  If you were actually pregnant, this would send you over the edge, so don't be pregnant (see 1.).


3. Add 6 cups of sugar to the pot.


4. Set the toddler down in front of the iPad to watch Russian machine videos on YouTube so your head doesn't explode when he begins chanting about a 'little taste of sugar.'  Don't feel bad about it, you would also be doing this if you were pregnant just to get a little rest.  


5. Chop 2 whole oranges (rind and all) in a food processor and add to the pot.


6. Stir everything up and bring to a boil over mediumish heat.


7. Simmer uncovered for about an hour (probably a little less) until the mixture sheets off a spoon.


8. If you're ambitious, you can put your baby in a high chair and give her toys/food to play with so she's not always crawling over to the stove and standing up, possibly putting her in the path of boiling liquids, but this is not required.


9. Process in a water bath for 10 minutes.  Makes 7-8 half pints.

Original recipe here.  Notes about the original recipe: I don't find it necessary to put the mixture into hot jars, just clean ones (USDA now says you don't have to sterilize if you're processing for 10 minutes or more).  Also, my rhubarb creations never come out very red because our rhubarb variety is not very red.  

A Happy Accident

The milk for our yogurt boiled (which ruins it), so Steve made cottage cheese instead.  I love it.  Recipe here.

Canning Love

It may seem early in the season to be writing about canning projects, but we have been eating the fruits of Steve's labors this winter and they are so good.  Steve made and canned all kinds of products last summer that I would never have considered doing on my own.

For example

clam juice - Last week Steve made fish chowder and used a bottle of homemade clam juice in place of the water the recipe calls for (we could also have switched out the haddock for the clams he preserved).

hot Italian peppers - These mostly go on pizza with the marinated mushrooms which I also love on sandwiches.

honey mustard - Have not worked out the economics of this yet, but the end result is very yummy.

dried beans - except, of course, they're not dried anymore because Steve canned them

Italian sausage soup - We took this recipe and canned it, minus the spinach, which we add the day we eat it.  We also canned my sister's very delicious tomato soup but it got a little bit ruined.

Seed catalogs have come in and I'm very excited by the prospect of actually being able to help in the garden this year (we'll see how that works out).  In addition to last year's crops, we're planning to add the following-

asparagus
asparagus peas
edamame
cucumbers
lettuces
spinach
strawberries
sweet potatoes

I'm also hoping for an herb garden and for Steve to build a cold frame so we can try to do some winter gardening.

Yay spring!

Canning Season

Steve, as usual, has canned his face off this summer and it's not even the high season for canning yet. Saturday was the busiest day so far. He put up green beans, mustard beans, dill beans, and three bean salad. It probably wouldn't have been possible if he'd been doing it on his own, but the missionaries were over for a meeting in the afternoon and they stuck around for four hours afterwards picking and snapping beans. Ever since, The Bairn has requested that I tell him the story of the "michigans" and the beans several times a day.

Dill Beans and Three Bean Salad

MORE impressive, though, is that today I canned zucchini pineapple.  People, I can't get anything done in the day.  I feel really good about the fact that I keep myself and a toddler alive all day, keep the whole family fed and clothed in (mostly) clean attire, and gestate a baby on a daily basis.  My house is not clean.  My blog is not consistent.  My hair is not combed.

Steve is really busy right now, though.  He's working in Halifax this month, so he leaves before The Bairn and I get out of bed in the morning and comes home late (currently 9:04 pm and still no Steve).  Our house, our garden, our lawn all need his attention, so I decided I would tackle this one small project for him today.  I picked the zucchini, I peeled the zucchini, I chopped the zucchini, I cooked the zucchini in its magic turning-to-pineapple potion, I bottled the zucchini, I processed the zucchini.  I ignored the fact that The Bairn was giving himself a colored pencil mustache and eating crayons.  He politely refrained from standing up in his high chair and demanding hugs (as is his way).

I did not, however, take a picture of my impressive (and beautiful) feat.  There's only so much a girl can do in the day.

Really, I feel like someone should throw me a parade.

Let's Vote

Since it's election day in my country, but also since I got my Canadian permanent residency card yesterday, let's take a poll on an important Canadian cultural institution.

Mincement: yea or nay?

Last night Steve brought home huge grocery bags of dried fruit, 10 pounds of apples, a bottle of rum, and part of a deer that his friend gave him.  He pulled out his grandmother's mincemeat recipe, tied on his apron (courtesy of Moo), and got to work.  As he ground the meat and fruit, he opined about future days when The Bairn would participate in this beautiful family tradition and beg to crank the handle on the meat grinder.

After two hours of helping, I excused myself and went to bed while Steve carried on with the preparations for several more hours.  In the morning, the mincemeat was still not finished.  This afternoon as I type, the mincemeat is still not finished.  It's a lot of work to make and bottle mincemeat.  Steve tells me that it will all be worth it on Christmas Day, when we pull a delicious mincemeat pie out of the oven at my parents' house and share it with family.  Except, we don't eat mincemeat in my family. 

Steve and I made a vegetarian mincemeat pie several years ago that I liked fine, and I was hoping to enjoy this batch of mincemeat too, especially since Steve worked so hard on it, but when I tasted it, I thought, "Who put a deer in this pie filling?"  I don't think I like venison well enough.  It's confusing to me to have a sweet pie with game in it.

Little mince pies are very popular in Scotland during the Christmas holidays.

And Steve loves mincemeat.

But (1) I'm not loving the taste  (2) It's so time intensive to make  (3) That heavy jam pot we were using fell on The Bairn's head (after it was empty and from the couch, so not far), and now I think of mincemeat as The Project That Concussed My Precious Baby.

But by all means, if you enjoy the mincemeat, let us know, so Steve can be validated and find pie-eating companions who will properly appreciate this holiday treat.

And if you we're hoping for some actual political election votery stuff (and you haven't already read it), you can read this post about Mormonism and political diversity from Miss Nemesis.

If You're Tired of Pumpkin

Pinterest tells me that everything I'm currently eating should include pumpkin.  At first I didn't argue.  I made my pumpkin breads and soups and curries, but Steve is not really a pumpkin-lover, so I stopped with the pumpkin and turned to another delicious fall food favorite--CRANBERRIES.

Steve bought a giant bag of local cranberries with which we made the following:

• cranberry sauce (canned by Steve)
• cranberry bread (made by my parents while babysitting my screaming boy child)
• cranberry and apple crisp (inspired by a crisp Steve made in Scotland; it uses honey and lime zest and it's so delicious that as soon as our friends with the beehives give us our honey supply for the year, we're making another couple of batches)
• Nantucket cranberry pie (recipe from the Pioneer Woman as adapted from Laurie Colwin, author of my favorite food memoirs)

The cranberry pie was a huge hit.  I think it will be my new Thanksgiving pie.  

I actually undercooked this pie.  I ate the piece on that plate and then threw it back in the oven to set it up better and get more of a crunch on the top.  Delicious both ways.  So delicious that we ate it all before I could get a picture of it fully cooked.

Nantucket Cranberry Pie
from Pioneer Woman

Ingredients

• 2 C cranberries, heaping
• 3/4 C pecans, chopped
• 2/3 C sugar
• 1 C flour
• 1 C sugar
• 1 stick (113 g) unsalted butter, melted
• 2 whole eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 t almond extract
• 1/4 t salt
• 1 T sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Generously grease a pie or cake plate.  

Place cranberries in plate, cover with chopped pecans, and pour 2/3 C sugar over cranberries and nuts. 

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, butter, eggs, almond extract, and salt.  Stir together gently.  Pour batter in ribbons over cranberry mixture. 

Bake 45-50 minutes.  Sprinkle 1 T sugar over the top 5 minutes before end of baking.

The Bread You Bake When Your Facing is Melting Off

Steve believes it is the End Times and that the heat he's experiencing is more than a mere mortal can endure.  I'll concede that when it becomes the summertime and the earth heats up to normal summer temperatures and you live in a third floor apartment without an air conditioner and you get a day or two of 99% humidity, it's quite hot inside and that you should eat pasta salads and leave the oven alone.  There's no reason to start in with any kind of crazy I-wish-it-were-winter talk, though.  I NEVER wish for winter. 

To keep our home at its lowest possible temperature while still eating food, I baked this bread in the slow cooker yesterday.  It's a revelation.

The instructions are from the creators of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (I assume you all already know about them, because I was buying the cookbooks at the library when their first book came out and I had to purchase approximately 52 billion copies of it and there were still never any available on the shelf).

Basically, though, you just take your bread dough and slap it in the slow cooker on a sheet of parchment paper for an hour or two (they recommend an hour, my slow cooker took almost two).

I used the artisan bread master recipe and it came out beautifully crusty on the bottom and soft on the top, although the top crust was very pale.

It did in fact take me all of five minutes of actual work to make and it kept the house nice and cool, which was nice, because it meant I didn't have to spend my evening holding The Bairn in front of the fan and telling Steve that he should just try the hot water bottle ice pillow, because it truly will deliver him from heat stroke.

There Must Always Be Summer Posts About Canning

Marmot Dad's nephew is currently traveling.  He was in Jordan and now he's in Thailand, and I see his updates and photos from his travels on Facebook every day.  About ten years ago, I would have been entirely covetous of his trip and would have longed to go myself, but now I just think, Good for you.  I've done quite enough traveling for a bit, and I'm perfectly happy to spend provincial holidays at home canning 50 lbs of beans and excitedly reading the USDA canning guide.  (Steve, Steve!  Let's make cantaloupe pickles!  (Because we're growing cantaloupes in the garden, don't you know.))

I love, love, love a pantry bursting with delicious home production projects.

Especially when I have such a great helper to assist.

Homemade Nutella Made at Our Home

Did you notice when homemade nutella made the rounds on Pinterest?  Steve did, so we made some.  Here's how the division of labo(u)r went down:

Steve: Purchase hazelnuts and chocolate chips at the bulk store.
MBC: Advise against buying quite so many hazelnuts.
Steve: Slave away at boring post-doc to pay for ingredients.
MBC: Munch on chocolate chips while Steve is at work (they are very good with a handful of almonds), causing Steve to panic that there will not be enough chocolate for nutella.  This is silly.  There's plenty of chocolate for nutella, just not quite enough hazelnuts.
Steve: Adjust recipe to account for hazelnut shortage.
MBC: Measure out chocolate chips.  When scale goes over weight, eat off excess.
Steve: Threaten to hide all future chocolate supplies.
MBC: Bathe baby (who gets no nutella, although he screamed and grabbed long enough the next day that I gave him some banana) and put to bed.
Steve: Roast hazelnuts.  Grind hazelnuts.
MBC: Melt chocolate.
Steve: Combine chocolate with condensed milk and then with hazelnut butter.
MBC: Unsuccessfully look for pint jar for storing end result.
Steve: Successfully locate pint jar in baby's room after stern warnings not to wake baby OR ELSE.

It's good.  It's not quite as smooth as Nutella from the store, but it's VERY tasty, especially now that it's sat overnight in the fridge.  I've been eating it with a spoon while Steve's at work, which is going to make Mr. I-Hoard-My-Halloween-Candy-Until-April sad that he married someone who eats her chocolate treats in the car before she even leaves the store parking lot.  We used this recipe and we'll probably make it again, unless I go find the receipts and discover that buying hazelnuts costs as much as buying several jars of Nutella from the store.