Last Canning Session

I finally managed to find some time for the last canning session(s) of the year. My friend Janice had purchased some mountain apples for me, and I turned them into applesauce and apple/rosemary jelly.

For the applesauce, I used a saucer attachment to my mom's old Electrolux mixer. That mixer is probably close to 38 years old and it still works great. I mix most of my bread in that mixer. I made one classic applesauce mix with apples and sugar, and one with cinnamon and only using honey as a sweetener. I'm trying to not eat "as much" sugar as I used to, and we will see how this works. I found the recipe for apple/rosemary jelly on Pioneer Woman's recipe site, called Tasty Kitchen. My kitchen smelled great with the apple rosemary mixture cooking on the stove. I let the jelly liquid drain for about 20 hours using cheesecloth as a strainer. It took me a few more days to find time to cook it so I had it in the fridge for a few days. Once it was time to can the jelly (and turn the juice concentrate into jelly) I did a major mistake.
I started overachieving.
You know, thinking I can "just" vacuum for a few minutes while the pot of jelly starts boiling on the stove. Ha!

After I cleaned up the boiled over jelly that went all over the stove, down the stove cabinet, INTO the stove cabinet, and finally all over the floor.....and trying to keep Kane from the hot liquid and keep myself from sticking to the floor.....after that I still came out with 9 half-pints of jelly. But just imagine how much I COULD HAVE HAD. sigh.

The floor is still sticky. I have washed it. Twice.

Here's to the women who can really multitask and who do not get caught up in vaccuming. Have a wonderful rest of the week!

Newlyweds and Peppers Galore

Greetings from the newlyweds! :-) Yes, it's great although it really doesn't feel like much has changed. lol. Instead of the "When are you getting married?" questions, we now get the "When are you getting pregnant?" questions. lol. Oh and the "Mrs. Baaaaaaarley" wherever I go. Yep. You know who you are. I'm hereby letting you know that you're weird. And you should stop now.

Our honeymoon weekend at the Biltmore Estate in the NC mountains was awesome. We had a great time, eating good food, enjoying adventures that friends had so graciously given us as wedding gifts. Here we are enjoying the Segway tour. Off-road Segways are so much fun!

Back home I ventured out in the garden to find that the bok choi and chard I had planted the weekend before the wedding had survived, the cabbage and broccoli that still needs to be planted has survived the neglect, the raspberry bushes and persimmon tree that friends gave us for the wedding are waiting for their "place" and I had a huge bounty of peppers! I think I'm going to make some pepper jelly this weekend and can it as holiday gifts. We have a mixture of Carolina Bell peppers, Banana peppers and some Wenk's Yellow Hot. I also have some cutie Lemon Drop hot peppers that aren't in the picture.

I also have to take care of these that my friend Janice got for me during their trip to a mountain orchard. Apple sauce here we come.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Our wedding day!

Here are a few initial photos. It was a gorgeous day - a few raindrops in the morning, warm and sunny (and humid!) but a perfect day nonetheless. All the hard work we did up until one hour before paid off. The food was delicious, the place was gorgeous, our friends and family were there and I married the most wonderful man in the world. :-) Life is good indeed.

Jamfest 2009

My awesome friend Janice graciously volunteered to help me with cooking and canning the strawberry jam that we're going to use for favors at the wedding. Thus Jamfest '09 was born.

The 'jammin begins....

We had two batches going at any time, and once we had done two batches we got down to it; Janice decided on an improvised assembly line and off we went and canned 84 6oz jars of strawberry jam.
Yes, you read that right. 84 jars. My kitchen was COOKING during jamfest. I cannot wait for that electric bill....

"The Jammers"

(I was making my mom a salad for lunch. She was doing hard time with Sean on the walkway outside, and so the very least I could do was to make her lunch. So no, we did not add avocado and mushrooms to the jam....)

The final product turned out good. A few of the jars did not seal all the way, not even after a second hot water bath. Next time, I will do more research to find smooth side canning jars with double lids so that I won't have to worry. On the flipside, all the jars that didn't seal are in my fridge now, begging to be eaten.
Final pictures will be posted once I have the fabulous labels (ordered via Ms Pickles Press on Etsy because Mrs. JP reminded me to not do everything myself!)

Less than 4 weeks left! :-)

223 pieces of bread

My dear friend came over a few weekends ago, and brought her KitchenAid mixer. It was time to bake bread for the wedding.
I had already decided on a simple recipe for good rolls, that wouldn't require a lot of hand-shaping or kneading for that matter. I made these rolls a few weekends before for my bridal shower and everyone loved them, so....I'm hoping everyone will love them for the wedding as well!!!
I froze some after the shower and they turned out fine, so hopefully being frozen for 6+ weeks won't hurt them.

Sean was busy outside with our neighbor's digger digging a trench for the flagstone walkway. It's going to look great. Gotta love a man that knows how to operate heavy machinery. :-)

With my Electrolux mixer (30+ years old, and still kicking!) and her KitchenAid, we made a dozen sets of dough. My mixer made 2 to hers making one, so we did pretty well.

The dough looked like little mushrooms rising under the towels.... This dough requires no kneading and after rising, all you do is tip it out onto a surface with some flour on it and cut each set into 12-14 pieces, irregular shape is fine.

We put parmesan cheese on some, some with sesame seeds, some with sea salt and some just plain. Then we baked them for 12 minutes or so, and voila - after at least 8 hours of baking (and cleaning) we had 223 rolls of bread.

Minus the three that I had right out of the oven.
Minus the three that Julie had right out of the oven.
Minus the four that Sean ate coming in from digging the walkway outside.
Minus the two that Kane stole off the dining room table when I wasn't looking. (with cheese of course.)
Minus the five that I let Julie take home with her.

Here's the recipe for wedding rolls:
3 3/4 tsp dry yeast (I use bread machine yeast, if you don't here's a conversion table)
500 ml or 2 cups + 3 tbsp water (body temperature)
100 ml or 1/2 cup of kefir, plain yougurt or milk
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
5 - 5.5 cups all-purpose flour

Mix all ingredients except the flour in a bowl.
Add half of the flour at first and mix until you have a nice shiny dough. Add the rest of the flour.
The dough will be a bit looser than what you may be used to.
Place a towel over the bowl and let it rise at room temperature for 1-2 hours.
Turn your oven on to 425 F.
Pour the dough out onto a surface well dusted with flour. Do Not Knead!!!
Use a sharp knife or dough scraper to cut into 12-15 pieces.
Add toppings if you wish. Toppings tend to stick better if you brush the rolls with a little water first.

Bake them for 14-16 minutes, preferrably with a bowl of water in your oven to get some steam.
Let cool on a wire-rack.
Eat promtply with butter. Yes, butter. The real stuff.

Once they have cooled, you can freeze them if you wish.
Find a friend to bake with. I highly recommend it.

Somewhat of a garden bounty

The happy harvesters.

The kids came over again (see Let's plant potatoes) came back to dig up their potatoes and were sorely disappointed....sadly enough, they only got a few potatoes from their two rows. Our potatoes just did not do well this year.

Luckily the rest of the garden is delivering, so they got to pick green peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, hot peppers and cucumbers. The day was saved! (plus - who doesn't like digging in the dirt? lol)

Hope you were able to share your garden(s) this year!

Canning Pictorial

The wedding invitations are sent out and I am rewarding myself by doing a short pictorial of the canning we have done this year. First up were the canned peaches, recipe and instructions courtesy of the informative and knowledgeable Mrs. Zen at TennZen.

We then graduated to peach jam, with real vanilla beans. Yumm.....

We canned two different kind of pickles. The one on the left is pickle chips with a "Rodale spice mix" which includes bay leaves, mustard seeds, ginger, coriander, allspice, peppercorns and dried chilis. The one on the right is dill pickle spears with dill, mustard seeds and garlic cloves.
The chips are responsible for banning me from using the (new) mandolin..... I am so smart stupid that I did not feel the need to use the holder that comes with it, and promptly sliced off a nice chunk on one finger. Nice work. Even better was when I, a mere 2 days later, did it again on the next two fingers on the same hand. Apparently I don't like to learn from my mistake, and again felt that I was so smart stupid that I didn't need the holder. Then Sean banned me from the mandolin. But I know where he hid it.

The gracious and wonderful Mrs. JP over at "The Little Dog Shelter in the Holler" shared her recipe for salsa, and Sean and I spent an entire evening making LOTS of salsa with my pinieapple tomatoes. Hence the orange color salsa. We made a medium spicy for me, and a spicy version for him.

Now I just have this to work on. 96 small jars that are waiting on strawberry jam, blueberry jam and maybe a tomato marmalade. These will be the favors for the wedding, and I've found the most adorable little labels to put on the outside.