Where Did the Time Go?

It's unclear what happened this year. I haven't canned anything since those blueberries and I even stopped baking bread for a while, breaking a 10-year streak of not buying sandwich bread. There is definitely a lack of motivation involved, for many reasons, but there is also less produce coming from my farm share since I changed shares, and I have not had "the right day" (the right combination of weather, time, and picking partners) to go foraging for blueberries or elderberries or picking strawberries. I have been out of town A LOT, which means I missed the aforementioned blueberries and elderberries when they were in season. Legion has suffered a bit from my travels as well, but I seem to keep being able to rescue it. Hopefully that trend continues.

My red currants were the only thing that did well in the garden this year and I never planted any other vegetables. I think I may have to give up on the low bush blueberry plants, each one produces about one blueberry despite being covered with flowers in the spring. 

In the freezer I had stored just under 1.2 kg of red currents from early summer. I already have jelly from last year, so I decided to make jam instead. It will be seedy. Hopefully that is ok. 

1.18 kg red currants

3 cups sugar

1/3 cup water

This was cooked to about 220˚F and then processed in boiling water for 10 minutes. Made 5 8-oz jars and 1 4-oz jar.

I hope the fall gives me more energy, and that I can climb out of this hole in which I have fallen.

Blueberry Days

Our friend brought his toddler blueberry picking and they picked way more than they could eat. He asked if I would make jam with them, so I agreed to give him half of the batch. He brought over a big bucket which worked out to 9 cups of crushed berries, the exact amount that the recipe in The Complete Book of Home Preserving calls for if you are making jam without added pectin. 

The only hitch seems to be that it took forever to get to 220˚F and then sailed right past it while I was measuring the temperature, so it's a little thick. Even with that, the recipe made eight cups instead of the expected six.

It's also not super sweet which is not a bad thing. 

While The Canner Was Out

Seriously huge kohlrabi

When I dig the pressure canner out from the basement, I usually try to make a few things with it before I put it away again. I made beans yesterday and today I made turkey stock. Six pints were processed in the canner successfully. A seventh pint didn't seal so I used it for dinner, which was:

Broccoli cheddar soup except it wasn't broccoli - it was kohlrabi. The farm share provided us with a kohlrabi that was as large as my head - no kidding! So I chopped up half of it and cooked it with some onion, turkey stock, milk, salt and pepper, and then puréed it with my immersion blender. After that, I melted two cups of cheddar cheese into the soup, and served it with the bread from the farm share - a small boule. One of us had the soup in the boule, the other had the soup with the bread that I pulled out from the boule. 

Now, what to do with the other half of a giant kohlrabi?

Navy Beans

The farm we use now doesn't just have summer farm shares. It has mushroom shares, dahlia shares, fruit shares, winter shares, and all sorts of other creative local produce collections. We are alternating weeks currently with the mushroom share and the winter pantry share. One of this week's items is a kohlrabi literally as large as my head. (Still thinking about what to do with it.) Another was about a pound of dried navy beans.

We've been using more white beans in our cooking, but not often enough to just cook these and keep them in the fridge. So I canned them! I soaked them overnight then boiled them for 30 minutes. Then I put them, with their cooking water and 1/2 tsp salt per jar, into four pint-sized jars and processed them in the pressure canner. 75 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure. 

Pizza Sauce

This year, between the farm share and my own garden, I saved up five gallon-bags of tomatoes in the freezer, waiting for the season to end so I could make some sort of tomato sauce. Over the past few years the most frequently used tomato sauce I've canned has been pizza sauce and so I put all 22 cups of purée into that endeavor. 

Twenty-two cups of purée cooked down to twelve cups of sauce which are now tucked away in eight 12-ounce jars. That should be enough for a year, maybe a little longer, depending on how often we make pizza. 

Recipe in Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving - tomatoes, oregano, salt, pepper, garlic powder and lemon juice.

The Generosity of Strangers

We spent a week recently on Lopez Island, part of the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest. We rented a cottage near the ferry terminal, brought a car and a lot of groceries, and had fun exploring the tide pools for nudibranchs and other sea life. With the exception of the ferry itself, it was a relaxing week. 

On one of our walks, we noticed a sign across the street from our cottage: "Yellow Plums. Pick 'em and Take 'em." We followed the signs and found a single tree laden with yellow plums. We waved to the owners, who stayed in their house, and picked a bunch. They were delicious. 

I took enough back to make a small crisp. I didn't have all the ingredients (like sugar or flour), but I had butter, and maple sugar oatmeal packets, so I mixed those up and sprinkled that over the top. For serving, we had some maple syrup to drizzle over the top. 

How nice of those people to share!

Changes at the Blueberry Patch

It seems the conditions this year were right for the wild blueberries, and it was a cooler day than usual so my husband and I went to pick some berries. What we found was that the area near the blueberry patches is under construction - a very large new school is being built nearby. Since the berries are under major power lines, I am not worried that they will go away, but the usual trail has been widened, smoothed and graveled. So, while the time we were there was not quiet or peaceful in any way, the sheer amount and size of the berries meant we filled our half-gallon container in about an hour and half, which is quite fast, especially for just the two of us. And we didn't have to leave the first patch we found. 

We now have 10 jars of wild blueberry jam, and more in the fridge for now. 

Making jam did require some teamwork as I broke my right elbow last week and am not allowed to lift anything heavy. The canning pot full of water definitely qualifies as heavy, so my husband helped get it on the stove and was nearby if I needed anything. Fortunately, the rest I could do with my left hand - stir, ladle, close the jars, etc. I am out of work due to this injury and hopefully it won't take longer than six weeks to heal.