Preserving The Fruits Of Our Labor

I love pickling all sorts of things.

For the remainder of my produce, I dry it. Drying is the most energy efficient way of preserving food. And its great for backpacking or just keeping aro und the house. (I make all of my backpacking food from scratch.)
(Look up box fan food dehydrator.)

Fruits are amazing dehydrated. Especially melons. Sun dried tomatoes are amazinf for everything. And if you have a lot of them, they are great for making sauces and soups late on.

I even dry my lettuces and salad greens

For me when I buy herbs I buy in bulb. Take the steams off after I clean them then I put them 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon into each cell then I put abit of water into each then freeze so that the herbs is held at the bottom. Then take it out and fill it so that its a little over the tops of the herbs and freeze. This works awsome when I make my mint teas because I have a espresso machine that has a steamer so I just use the steamer to heat up the water and the steamer can get the water very hot so its fast to use it.

I'm SO HUNGRY now! Why do I look at these threads... the canned peaches and spiced blueberry relish sounds soooooooooooooooooooo bomb

am old school. i do mostly peppers, herbs (rose merry , sage, lavender,) and i just use the good old ZIPLOCK bag well there called something else here .. something Chinese , but keeps stuff good for long,

mellokitty said:

it's hard to find someone with whom you can both WORK AROUND EACH OTHER in a home kitchen... especially with things like boiling sugars and hot jars flying around everywhere. my buddy and i were just patting each other on the back for that this weekend because whether it's a multi-turkey dinner for 5 families, OR a year's worth of jarring, we rarely get in each other's way.

for the record, i don't think i'd want to do canning with my man.... or if we do, he'll have to build me my dream kitchen first

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so whats the temps like in your state? i can hardly grow raspberry as it is along with strawberry( 70s is best temp) we had so much heat here it was so terrible.

silasraven said:

so whats the temps like in your state? i can hardly grow raspberry as it is along with strawberry( 70s is best temp) we had so much heat here it was so terrible.

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i'm in canada actually.
and, while you guys south of the 49 were having the killer heatwave, we were having an unseasonably cold and rainy summer. temps hardly made it out of the 80's this year.
so our growing season was crap too. the local strawberries were done before we knew it, and the raspberries cost, like, quadruple what everything else did, but we had to buy a flat anyway....

making apple and pear butters today.....

damn, the only thing produced for me this year was cotton. never tryed those butters. i bought grapes to make straight juice for now no color wanting to try wine just dont have the skills yet.

you could make grape jelly? (i've made wine before but it was at the u-brew so i didn't really have to think about it too much )
concords are out now and i'm thinking of doing some jelly.... (want to try making wine jelly too... lots of great local wineries)

i want to try growing cotton, but i've heard it doesn't do that great up here.....

very nice gotta bring in the peaches and apples

mellokitty said:

you could make grape jelly? (i've made wine before but it was at the u-brew so i didn't really have to think about it too much )
concords are out now and i'm thinking of doing some jelly.... (want to try making wine jelly too... lots of great local wineries)

i want to try growing cotton, but i've heard it doesn't do that great up here.....

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stuffs still in the fridge do i just blend it or what?

hang on, i know i have a recipe somewhere.......

http://pickyourown.org/grapejelly.htm

this goes over all the steps/equipment you might need... if you don't want to do the whole sealing thing and are probably going to end up using your jelly in the next month or 2, you can just put it in a clean (preferably sterilised) jar and it should keep fine in the fridge for as long as you'd expect an open jar of jam to last.

sweet thanks

i was going to do a tutorial on apple/pear butters, but realised it's ridiculously easy:

-you don't have to add sugar if you start with ripe fruits.
-you can use just apples, or just pears, or a combination of both (i've done all 3 so far and they are all fantastic in their own way)
-peel, core, and chop the fruit (or, after you've peeled and cored them, you can blender/food process them)
-put in a slow-cooker or on the stove on low heat, add 1 cup of liquid (juice or water) for every 6 cups of fruit, simmer uncovered, on low for around 8hrs, add a bit more liquid if it starts to "scorch".
-when it reduces to the consistency you like, jar and seal it to your preference.

optional: you can make up a "spice packet" out of cheesecloth (whole spices -- some things i use are: fresh ginger, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, star anise, and cloves), toss it in with the fruit about halfway through cooking, and *presto* you have "spiced apple/pear butter".

xmas is going to be a BREEZE this year.....

next up -- Pie-in-a-Jar!

damn sounds great.