Sweet Pickles Galore

It didn't occur to me while I was bidding on boxes and boxes of cucumbers to turn into pickles for the year that I exist in a perpetual time crunch.

Tonight, however, with lots of help from the Minions, I got a box sliced and soaking in lime water.
This is the first time I tried pickles with the lime.

My goal for the second box tomorrow is sweet relish.

All Alone at the Amish Auction

Actually, I wasn't all alone, I had Katie with me, but I wanted more alliteration in my title.

Usually I let Dan do the bidding when we go to the produce auction, but since I wanted tomatoes and cucumbers right now, I had to take the plunge and bid on my own.

Here are enough pickles for my whole extended family. I hope to score some green beans and also some reasonable (cheap) tomatoes to put up. They were going high today so I skipped them.

At least flowers were cheap.

Fun Food Preservation

Big Dan has had some extra time off of work lately, so he and I have gotten into the habit of going to a local farm to visit with the farmers (and their myriad cats and kittens!) and buying produce to put up.
Last time it was 8 quarts of green beans. Today it was cucumbers, more beans, and corn to eat fresh.
Next week, the girls and I will get 100 ears of corn to blanch and freeze. I'll try canning some too.

Here's the fruit of tonight's labors: 14 quarts of pickles, some dill spears and some secret recipe sweet dill chips, a 2 pound queso fresco cheese, and a pound of freshly washed butter!

This kind of counter cornucopia makes farm chores rewarding.

All in a Day's Work

I think one of the nicest things about pretending to be self-sufficient is the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day.
Raising young ladies of virtue is certainly a noble calling, and each day is an important work. But it's hard to see what's been achieved until later. Sometimes years later.
Canning peaches, however, is a task that is instantly rewarding. (There were more jars, but I took some as gifts.)
I used Pomona's Pectin, a low sugar pectin that uses calcium to gel rather than sugar. I love the flavors of the fruit I'm canning this year because they're not overpowered by sweetness.
I think that my plum or peach preserves with just a touch of sweetness would go well in this recipe for an Italian Jam Tart:
http://http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5605/italian-jam-tart

Venison

Our Amish friends gave us some deer meat. Foolishly, I forgot I had the means to tenderize the meat via the pressure canner, so I told him to just give us a little. Next time I'll know better.

As you can see, we're up at the crack of noon, industrially cutting meat.

Here's Mr. canner, hungrily waiting for us to finish. Becky is way better at cutting up meat into 1 inch pieces than I am. Those white things are pieces of onion in the jars.

I wish my friend Karen had been a little more graphic about processing venison in her post: http://holesinmyjeans-kpannabecker.blogspot.com/2009/11/rainy-days-and-mondays.html

But the fact that she did it and posted about it was enough encouragement to get me started. Thanks Karen.

Update to follow. If I don't blow up the kitchen. Or house.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

This summer, Becky strung the ripe hot peppers and hung them in the attic. She learned this from reading Little House books.
Now that they're dry, she used the Vitamix to powder them.
The powder's really hot!