Monthly Archives: August 2008

The last five jars!  (Cubed big tomatoes with onions, garlic, basil and parsley.  Notice how the fruit rises above the fluid in the right one.  This is okay; I will simply make sure to eat this one before the others.  This happens sometimes when things are canned in their own juices with no added liquid:  the pressure canner cooks them and the fruit shrinks.)

You know, I am a planner, and I tend to have about eight irons going in the fire at a time (doing so keeps my little hamster wheel brain churning) but I banged up against something yesterday that made me stop in my tracks. Full stop.

I am out of canning jars.

How can this be? I thought I had a lot of jars.  Upon moving here, I had my city girl stash of, I don’t know, 5 dozen jars or so. This is an old farmhouse, and it came complete with an old farmhouse collection of canning jars…many of them filled with stuff from the 1980s, frankly. About the same time we moved here, my mom moved into a house that also had boxes of (thankfully empty) jars in her basement. And, as you might know, if someone finds out you’re a canning person, you become the recipient of the contents of their basements too, so…how is it I could run OUT?

But I did.

Maybe this is a sign that I have canned enough stuff for the year. But, but…I haven’t even touched the apples yet, or the meat birds, or, well, dang, I have another month’s worth of tomatoes outside…and ohmigosh the GRAPES…

Many things in farm life come with orange warning labels, frankly

One thing about canning? You find out what you will eat, usually about a year after you put it away.

It’s crazy canning* season here, and I have been a good girl and have actually cleaned out shelves before I have added more things to them. (Really, I kid myself that I am an organized individual, someone who thrives on order and tidiness. What is closer to the truth is I am an organized individual if I allow myself the time to be one.) So. One look at the shelves says this about our consumption: 1. I put away way too many jars of vegetable stock and 2. nobody including myself really wants to eat canned beet greens and 3. how in the world did I ever think we could eat all that jam?

I will say it’s wonderful walking downstairs to the basement and seeing those sagging shelves. It is so very gratifying. The feeling of panic that I have when I enter the garden (panic that says “you better preserve this, now”) is eased when I see the rows of canned goods: I am getting there, I think.

There are a couple of things I did not can enough of. There is no way one can ever put up enough applesauce. Do you know how versatile that stuff is? My latest use-it-up recipe is applesauce cake, with blueberries. I also did not can enough meat soups, but then again, I was a vegetarian when it was high canning season last year, and this is the first year of The Meat Bird on the farm (and 15 meat chickens are running around outside now) so there’s still time. I never can put away enough dried beans. Another very versatile thing, beans. And I have discovered the truism of one’s bank statement has a canning parallel in jars of tomato sauce: you will spend, or eat, all that you have if you don’t watch it.

There are dangerous things that I can: canned peaches, for example. These are no good at all. I will eat a whole jar myself, whether it’s a half pint, pint or quart.

And there’s another thing I have discovered, now that we’re entering season #4 of farm food preservation. It’s great to do basic stuff; in fact, it’s imperative to have simple cans of tomato sauce and juice, simple pickles and fruit down there. But it’s even better to do special stuff, really out-of-the-ordinary stuff, like peach chutney or corn/black bean salsa, ratatouille or pickled red onions. Oh and roasted garlic jelly, or pear mincemeat.

Anyway, if you are considering canning, start slowly. By season #4 your little hobby might become an obsession, and you will see gleaming mason jars in your dreams.

*I mostly mean pressure canning. I don’t really bother with the boiling-water bath canner much, except when I am making massive amounts of jam.

Revenge can taste good

This farm life is one of seasonal eating. Our bread is seasonal too.

My take: Anything that we have plenty of is (more or less) fair game as far as all cooking goes, including bread-baking. So, those baseball bat-sized zucchini? I peeled (too thick skins) and cored (too fat seeds, for which the chickens were grateful) and shredded them and did what I do with most summer squash: blanch and freeze them for winter eating. I reserved about 3 1/2 cups to add to some bread, though.

I start this first recipe at 3 and we eat it at 6, mainly because I put a lot of yeast in it. With all the mix-ins I add, I find a short rising period is better as anything longer could lead to microbial mischief with the mix-ins. Trust me on this: this is not a No-Knead long-rise bread.

El’s Summer Harvest Bread (yield: two small-ish loaves)

• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 4-6 cups unbleached flour
• 1 T yeast, or 1 packet and a longer rising time
• 1 t salt
• 2 t sweetener (I use honey)
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• about 1 3/4 cups lukewarm water
• Mix-ins: Get creative here.
• 1 cup non-quick oats
• 3/4 cup ground flax seed
• 1 cup raw sunflower seeds
• 1 1/2 cups shredded summer squash

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add wet ingredients and turn out onto floured counter, kneading and adding flour as you go: this will be a fairly wet dough. Add enough flour so it is easy to knead yet not so wet as to stick to the counter or to you, but not so much flour that it’s impossible to work. (Invert a bowl over the top of it and let it rest 5 minutes or so if you think you’ve added too much flour: this gives the gluten a chance to relax.) Continue to knead about 5 minutes. Place back in bowl and spray top of dough with water; place towel over bowl and let rise about an hour. Remove (scrape) out of bowl back onto refloured counter and divide into two. Form loaves and place into greased loaf pans. Spray tops of loaves with water again and let rise until about 1/2″ above top of the pans. Fire up oven and bake at 400* for 15 minutes, then lower temperature to 350* and continue to cook for another 25-45 minutes: it really depends on your oven. The loaves are finished when they are a nice medium-dark brown and can be easily removed from the pan. Remove from pans and cool on racks; we of course let them cool only 15 minutes or so before tearing into them for dinner.

This is great with summer minestrone. It makes a great morning toast with eggs, too.

Not El’s Zucchini Bread (yield: two small loaves)

• 2 cups unbleached flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 t salt
• 1 t baking soda
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 1-2 t ground cinnamon
• 1/4 t each ground nutmeg and allspice
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 cup salad oil
• 3 eggs (4 if large)
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 2 cups shredded summer squash

Mix dry ingredients, then, in separate bowl, beat eggs with other wet ingredients and squash. Fold together with dry and mix until just moistened. Divide batter into two greased, floured loaf pans. Bake in 350* oven until done (about 50 minutes to an hour; use a toothpick to find out). Let cool in pans 10 minutes and then cool on wire racks.

It is my experience this zucchini bread disappears quickly. A good thing, because I found another large squash today: a crookneck squash that was beautiful but, well, huge. And yes, scary. How does this happen?