Getting Saucy!

I don't know if I'm in the minority here, but my contact with the cranberry has always been in the opening of a can. I'm a cranberry fan, but I was a little daunted by the real deal. Last fall I saw some nice red berries in a quart basket at Reading Terminal Market and thought, "Wow, pretty, but what would someone do with these?"

This fall, I was surprised by a windfall of cranberries. A good friend had bought two bags to make a bread and only needed half of one. She (erroneously) assumed I'd know what to do with them since she didn't.

Of course, I took the berries. I mean, I told her I didn't know anything about making cranberry sauce, but she was just happy to find someone who'd do something with them. And so I was introduced to the cranberry. I washed them, picked out what I assumed were bad berries (I figured if they were black inside and smelled really funky--or if they were super squishy--that it would be a safe bet to toss them), and then followed my friend, Rachel's, instructions explicitly. When I called her (frustrated by elaborate and rather icky sounding internet recipes) for advice, she read me the Ball Canning recipe and made me promise to use as much sugar as they called for (Who, me? skimp on sugar?) so we wouldn't end up with botulism.

The recipe was successful, I hit a farmer's market and bought the quantity pictured in my sink above, and made about a dozen jars of cranberry sauce. I don't know if this sounds exciting to anyone but me, but it tastes just like Ocean Spray! I love the cans, I was thrilled to replicate that taste.

I thought I'd post the recipe, and also encourage any other cranberry-phobes: You can do it! It's exactly like making any kind of jelly. (You can use a water bath canner if you're going to can it. If you weren't going to can it, you could skip all steps but boiling the ingredients below.)

Simple Cranberry Sauce Recipe:

Start your water bath and have sterilized jars ready.

Combine

4 c water,

4 c sugar, and

8 c cranberries

Put in a dutch oven and boil till they "pop." (You'll know, trust me.)

They need to hard boil for 10-15 min. You can add OJ or orange zest (I didn't), and if you're canning, leave 1/4" headspace at the top and waterbath can for 15 minutes (Ball's directions).

It was really empowering, let me tell you. If I can make cranberry sauce, what else can I do that I never realized was possible?! Who knows? Today the cranberry, tomorrow the world! . . . or, I don't know, maybe the kumquat, whatever that is.

Anyway, yum!

Seeing Red: a Canning Saga

So the main reason I haven't been blogging (or cleaning, or anything else deemed non-essential) is that I've been canning pretty much all the livelong day. It stated with tomatoes (diced and cooked) this year. Then I moved on to hot peppers, then peaches, then back to tomatoes (sauce), then applesauce, and then back to tomatoes again. I canned four bushels of tomatoes (which is about eight full computer boxes worth), which is about twice as much as last year and perhaps a little more than I can even use. That took a long time. There were four different days of heavy tomato preservation. At least for my last batch the tomatoes were tiny and my mom told me of a friend who blends her tomatoes whole and then cooks them and then cans them. A very speedy method. The only thing that took any time at all with that batch was cutting them in half and sniffing them (some looked fine but were rotten inside). I added lemon juice this year to my jars when I remembered (which was, sadly, only a little better than half the time). Lemon is supposed to ensure that the tomatoes are acidic enough to can since farmers have started to grow some lower acid tomatoes in recent decades (though, as my mom pointed out, she canned without it for her whole life).

Peaches became a bit of an obsession. I froze some, then set about to make jam. I gotta say, making jam is no joke. My first attempt based on an internet site was to slice the peaches and that batch resulted in a peach syrup with slices of peach floating in it. That we'll use as a yogurt topping. The next batch I cooked in the crock pot, and that batch turned dark brown: viola! Peach butter!

The next batch also turned too dark, so I made those into peach leather. I found a good recipe for that on A Sonoma Garden. That would have been awesome if I hadn't started talking and accidentally left the oven turned on (you're supposed to heat the oven and then turn it off right away) and burnt them a little. Eventually I managed two good batches of peach jam. Which translates to about 30 jars of jam. We should be pretty set in the peach jam department.

Next came applesauce. I made pretty much of that, too. Thankfully, my parents came one day last week and peeled like the wind (I'm a pretty inept peeler compared to my farmer's daughter mother), which is the only way I made it through my four boxes of apples.

Finally, I did a small batch of red raspberry jam.

And now I'm done until next week when the farmer gives me some pears. I'm out of jars, so that should slow me down a little. I'll need to get my red peppers and roast and freeze those. And I did get my zucchini grated and frozen (for baking). I'm feeling pretty good, and ready to rejoin the world. :)

It's Freezing!

The freezing of produce has rather taken over all of my free time these days (well, free time and time that should be spent sleeping or cleaning or something besides stirring, slicing, or squishing). Over the last week or so I've frozen:

• spaghetti sauce
• tomato sauce
• diced tomatoes
• sliced peaches
• grated zucchini
• free range chicken and broth

I've also harvested pears off of a neighbor's pear tree (she knew about it, it wasn't in the dark of night). They turned out to be very green and will mostly all have to be thrown away. I'm new to this foraging thing. (Let's not revisit the horse chestnut scenario from last year.)

There has absolutely got to be an easier, lazy version of tomato sauce (than boiling diced tomatoes and squishing them gradually through a collander with a rounded wooden squisher), though Owen pointed out that if I blend it it will no longer be sauce, since the seeds and skins will make it just blended tomatoes. Hmm, well, maybe I'll have to do it again next year, but OH BOY, what a lot of work. It felt very un-modern-American. Micah helped cut up rome tomatoes with a butter knife.

It felt like a bit of a ripoff to spend 5 hours on the spaghetti sauce and only have 10 gallon bags to show for it.

The easiest freezing item was the grated zucchini. Now I have to find some recipes that use grated zucchini.

My broccoli rabe is almost ready (the first of three mini beds to be planted). The rutabaga could be ready soon, who in the world knows. And I planted swiss chard, kale, sugar peas, spinach, brussel sprouts, carrots, red beets, tatsoi, and endive.

I found a possible source for apples (for applesauce) and potatoes and buttercup squash that haven't been sprayed much and possibly a quarter of a grass-fed cow . . . if the Amish woman from the produce stand does actually call me as she said she would. I'm also going to try to get some onions that are dried for longer term storage.

The local eating adventure continues.