What are you canning now?

I also have a Presto, it will hold 18 regular mouth pints or seven quarts for pressure canning and can be used for water bath. Water bath with seven quarts, like maybe pickles, that thing is heavy.
 
I just bought 3 huge pumpkins from WM. They have started to clearance them a week before Halloween, so they will be gone in a day or two for <$4.00 each. I have about one month of storage on my porch, but DH wants to open up my pressure canner and canning pumpkin would be perfect.
A friend called last week to remind me to come out and pick pears. She must have had several hundred of them. My other friend and I filled 9 painter's buckets full. They are still hard and I am keeping them in the garage. Later this week it's time to make spiced pears!
 
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Dehydrated pears are dessert in themselves.

I can imagine that drying pumpkins would enhance their flavor. Really, there should be something - some technic to do that.

My pumpkins are all gone, except for the two that I have carved, in my slapdash manner, and are still out on the front porch ... Making me think of finishing up composting for 2018.

Burning candles in them for 4 hours doesn't encourage me to experiment with pumpkins again this fall. One that I was left with was immature and wouldn't have kept well on a basement shelf. When I did that before with a mature pumpkin, I was surprised to see how well it kept, for several months!

Really, they do that for me in the garden - once I found an early-maturing variety. There are pumpkins turning orange in August, every year. Not much is going on with those, by late September. Vigorous early summer growth. Flowers and tendrils are edible, too.

Dehydration for puree, huh?

Steve
 
Been canning up chicken stock today and also the last batch of fire jam....I think it's the best batch I've ever made. The flavor is out of this world, the heat is perfect and the balance of sweet and sour are perfect. Instead of using the brown sugar I used honey and only used a pound of it, though the recipe calls for 3 lbs of brown sugar.

Turned out GREAT!

So 14 more qt. of stock on the shelf and 11 pts of fire jam, the last of the peppers have been used.

Still have to butcher a few more chickens that need to grow up a little more and that will bring the flock to winter numbers...that will come later. Probably the next thing to can will either be deer meat and/or soups.

My canned goods shelves are full to overflowing, so not sure where I'll put the deer meat, but the soups will take the place of the space the stock is using, as I'll be using some of the stock for soup bases.
 
digitS' said:
Dehydrated pears are dessert in themselves.

I can imagine that drying pumpkins would enhance their flavor. Really, there should be something - some technic to do that.

My pumpkins are all gone, except for the two that I have carved, in my slapdash manner, and are still out on the front porch ... Making me think of finishing up composting for 2018.

Burning candles in them for 4 hours doesn't encourage me to experiment with pumpkins again this fall. One that I was left with was immature and wouldn't have kept well on a basement shelf. When I did that before with a mature pumpkin, I was surprised to see how well it kept, for several months!

Really, they do that for me in the garden - once I found an early-maturing variety. There are pumpkins turning orange in August, every year. Not much is going on with those, by late September. Vigorous early summer growth. Flowers and tendrils are edible, too.

Dehydration for puree, huh?

Steve
Click to expand...

Yes. I roast them in the oven first, then blend up the pulp and put in my dehydrator. Takes a bit of time, but saves on space on the shelf & freezer.


ducks4you said:
Gosh, never thought to dehydrate them!! Good idea! :hugs
Click to expand...

I just put another round of pumpkin on a few minutes ago. I roasted 12 of my pumpkins this morning. I've got another 5 left to do.

I've got 36 qts of sweet potatoes put up. I've got 40 lbs more to do. I bought some russets the other day on sale at what I thought was a good price, $3.00 for 10 lbs. I bought 50 lbs and put up about 20 lbs so far. Then today, I went and bought some more russets for an even better price, $ .99 for 10 lbs. I bought 100 lbs to put up.

Going to try and put some up this week between cooking for Thanksgiving.
 
Food preservation varies by climate ...

The northern Europeans historically made so much use of cabbage and sauerkraut. Maybe I should even say "prehistorically." Don't know. You can't protect your cabbage patch from pests if you are off several months each year with your cattle on distant pastures.

And, kim chi ..! With the root vegetables and hot pepper! I guess I'm envious of those that can enjoy lots of those sorts of things at this time of year. Second time I have mentioned sauerkraut, this morning.

DW is likely to want a number of pumpkin pies for the freezer. I'm disappointed how the crust holds up frozen. Not even sure why DW cares about these pies. I bet I eat 5 slices to her 1 here in our traditional baking seasons.

I'm lucky in my location between two major potato growing regions, I suppose. Potatoes are so inexpensive that I didn't grow them for decades. Then, I realized that we were really missing out on the unique varieties.

Really, really, really - I should have some of the late-maturing fingerlings in my garden. It is counter intuitive that those little spuds can grow a couple of months longer than something like a Yukon Gold but they do. Storage is likely to be much improved in my basement.

I snatched them out of the garden at the same time as the early varieties I grow, the few times that I have had fingerlings. Need to practice some planting segregation.

Steve
 
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