From Freezer to Cupboard

Making stock involves taking meat or vegetable scraps out of the freezer and converting it to canned, shelf-stable stock. This is helpful for so many reasons, but one of the big ones is that freezer space is limited. Shelf space, not so much.

After making a big batch each of chicken and vegetable stock yesterday, today I could skim the fat off the chicken stock and can it. We did use a little last night to make soup, but I had just enough for 10 pints. Now the pantry is full and the freezer is...not empty, but a little roomier.

Happy Mother's Day!

Added Benefits

For the past few months we've been getting a mushroom share from our CSA. Every other week we bring home about 2 pounds of oyster, lions' mane, and sometimes shiitake mushrooms, all grown locally. In addition to a lot of mushroom based meals*, I have been saving the trimmings with my other vegetable trimmings to make stock.

Today I made and canned nine pints of vegetable stock. We were running out, and the pantry needed replenishing. The addition of mushroom trimmings makes the stock darker, and it smells richer as well. I'm sure it will taste better, too. 

I also made a pot of chicken stock, since I had everything out. That's in the fridge, so I can skim off the fat. Tomorrow I'll can that, too. 

*In addition to the usual mushroom things (stroganoff, pasta, pizza), we have made mushroom steaks with the lions' manes, a mushroom scampi, and some glazed mushroom dishes. A lot of these recipes are coming from the NYT cooking app which is a tremendous resource of recipes. I'm not sure why I waited so long to subscribe. 

Back From the Dead

Legion was ailing.

The rise time was getting longer and longer, and Legion didn't smell right. At first, it was more sour, but then it started to smell...off. It still made bread, but not very good bread. I wasn't sure if I should give up and start over. I mean, Legion is 9 years old. Maybe it was time?

Recently I was lucky enough to be at an event catered by the culinary school, and got to see the Chef who had given me Legion and still had the original culture. We chatted and I learned some things. Things like - don't leave it in the fridge. Feed it more often. It needs to be stronger.

So I followed his advice and started dumping out starter, feeding it a smaller amount daily, and keeping it on the counter, with the lid slightly off to give it more oxygen. After a few weeks, it lost the funky smell. Finally I felt like it was ready for bread so over the past weekend, I made a batch. 

And it was as good as I remembered, with normal rising and proofing times. I think I have been successful in resurrecting Legion!

Fermentation Success

We've been getting a farm share all year from a different farm, and while there hasn't been the overabundance of produce as was the case with the previous farm, we do sometimes get a lot of things that we just can't eat in time. I had a bunch of napa cabbage and some watermelon radishes so I decided to try to make kimchi again. 

Previous attempts at kimchi were very watery. Somehow, this one wasn't. It was perfect, in fact. In 3 days after the fermentation started the taste was just right. I gave some to my friend, as I had about 3 quarts of it. Another quart went to this lovely dish:

Salmon with fried kimchi

This was from the New York Times Cooking app - Salmon cooked on a bed of fried kimchi.

Now, what to do with all the kale?

Single Servings

Last weekend, the stars aligned and we went apple picking. The youngerchild was home from college and the rest of us were free. It was also the last possible weekend we could go, as the season was ending. We picked a half-bushel of Macintoshes, Honeycrisps, Crimson Crisps, and a few Cortlands. 

I used the Cortlands to make a pie. We had a breakfast of baked apples, using some of the Macintoshes, and with the leftover filling I made an apple crisp with a few more Macintoshes. The Honeycrisps are for eating. That left the rest for applesauce. Which I finally made today.

The youngerchild likes applesauce as a snack and, for a while, we were buying cases of the single serving cups. But I can do that, too! I found all the 4-ounce jars I had, a total of eight, and filled those. The rest of the sauce went into eleven 8-ounce jars, for a grand total of fifteen cups of applesauce. 

Now I just have to work out how to get the applesauce to the youngerchild, as mailing a package with that much weight would be very expensive. I guess I'll bring it up next time I drive there. 

Replenished

It hasn't been a great year for canning, evidenced by my lack of blogging. I never entered anything in the fair this year because I didn't have anything to enter. I'm canning so infrequently I don't want to give any of my products away! The farm share, while adequate for our needs, doesn't give the opportunity to go pick unlimited tomatoes at the end of season or anything like that. And it's been ages since I foraged.

But while the produce hasn't been plentiful, at least not for me, I did have a freezer full of chicken and turkey bones from the last year. Last Friday I made a huge batch of stock - over two gallons. Some has been used already but the rest got canned into 17 pint jars today. We've been out of chicken stock for a while and it was time to replenish the pantry.

Congrats to my friend and fellow canner who DID enter things in the fair, and won Best in Show this year! It's quite the accomplishment and I am happy for her.

Mulberries, Fava Beans, Farm Shares and Crisps

We got a new farm share this year. Last year we didn't get a CSA because the farm we'd been at for over a decade suffered from drought and chose to not offer the CSA. I missed it. This year it became clear they weren't going to restart the CSA program, so I needed to find a new farm.

There are several farms that deliver shares to our area and I found one, Siena Farms, that delivers to the ice cream shop in the next town which we visit often. Conveniently, we can buy ice cream when we pick up the veggies! A small share weekly seems to be just enough for us. We started with some good salads and are moving toward sautéed and stir fried vegetables with various proteins. Tonight will be shabu-shabu, as I have carrots, napa cabbage, shitake mushrooms and garlic scapes from the farm. 

Today I'm blanching some fava beans although I have to decide what to do with them, maybe marinate?
But at least they'll be ready to eat. 

Also today, I made a batch of mulberry jelly. This wasn't the best mulberry year, because we had some rather windy storms come through so a lot of the berries got shaken off before I could get to them. Not to mention, I am always competing with the birds, squirrels and chipmunks for berries. I got just enough to make 9 cups of mulberry-lime jelly.

Last project of the day is a berry crisp - for the 4th the youngerchild made a chocolate cake that was decorated with whipped cream frosting and berries in an American flag motif. There are a lot of berries leftover, even with me making raspberry-blueberry muffins this morning and us all just eating a bunch. So I tossed the rest of them with cornstarch and sugar and made a crisp that I'll bake for dessert.