Purple Tomatillo

Pooka finally got her purple tomatillo. It was one of many we harvested over the weekend. 2 lbs of tomatillos that we in turned processed into salsa verde. In fact, we made 5 half pints got were processed so we can have a bit of summer all winter. Pooka was just so excited to see that it was purple, however the salsa still came out green instead of purple. Turns out these little guys only turn purple where the sun hits them.

Purple Tomatillo

In other news, I do have the first of the month pictures that I am hoping to get up this week. The back to school rush as well as the garden finally really producing has made things a bit busier then I expected. 

Garlic everywhere

Spring is finally starting to really show its face. The garlic has just started appearing everywhere in the last few days. We have had wonderful rains that watered our pea seeds and have given the garlic a boost to come out and find the sun. I can finally begin to feel the truth of spring in the air.

Garlic anyone?

Pooka is excited to see real garlic coming up as well. Every day you can see her stopping to admire her herb and garlic areas as she comes home from school. She loves walking it to see what has started to look like it may come back, and what has grown. Daddy is excited since he finally used the last of our homemade garlic powder yesterday and misses it already. He asked if we could please please make more. I told him of course once the garlic is ready but soon we will have other things to get to work preserving and harvesting.

Jam Anyone?

Over the spring/summer I bought fruit when it would go on sale. Blueberries and raspberries were one of many fruits where I did this, especially when they were 75% off or buy one get one free. We then froze them much like we freeze green peppers.  We told ourselves that when it wasn't as hot, when we had more time we would make jam.

One afternoon of work.

Well that day finally came and today we canned and canned and canned. Pooka was our little helper, never really leaving our side (except while her friend was here to play) in her little Mommy's helper apron and her chef's hat. She would hand us tools and ingredients. When we would start pouring things into the jars, Pooka would man the hot water bath in the sink, handing us warmed rings and jars for me to fill. She loves doing this and spending the time with Mommy and Daddy.  Pooka looked at me and said "I love doing this with you, and I hope I get to do it when I am older with my kids."

We made spiced blueberry jam from the book Food in Jars by Marisa McClellan. This has become one of my favorite go to books. This blueberry jam has a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg in it. We decided to try something new with this recipe.

Spiced Blueberry Jam

The other batch of blueberry jam we made previously that I know Brother will like. He loved having this in his lunches last year and is super excited that it will be in his lunches again.

Blueberry Jam

The third batch was another new recipe of Raspberry jam, also from the Food in Jars book. I tasted a small bit while it was till hot and while it was HOT. It tasted really good. Daddy tasted it and said he might need to start having toast in the mornings so he can eat good jam. That is high praise from him.

Raspberry Jam 

All in all, Daddy and I walk away knowing that A) Pooka is learning to do something for herself and B) both of them will have a healthy homemade part of the lunches at least until we can get the garden producing again.

Siracha-cha-cha

We made siracha from our 5 color Chinese peppers the other night. This was a trial batch to see if we even like it before we invest into making more of it. Before I tell you how we made it, I do want to admit that we no longer call siracha well, siracha. Pooka decided that every time someone says the word siracha, then she breaks out dancing while saying "siracha-cha-cha." It is a very elegant little dance, which does remind me of some of my professional dancer friends. To start we took about 4 oz of hot peppers, which made about a 1/4 batch from a recipe I found here.

5 color Chinese Peppers

These peppers were chopped and mostly seeded and placed in a pot with some vinegar, salt and garlic. I will say the smell was a bit strong. Not too bad, but it did remind us to be careful. Also, please remember when using hot peppers to wear gloves.  

Cooking it down

Once they had cooked a bit, we tried using our immersion blender. The liquid level was a bit low for this, so instead we put it in the blender/grinder attachment for the stick blender. This worked quite well, but make sure when your done blending, you give it a few minutes after blending to allow everything to settle again before removing it from the blender.

Peppers all blended up

Then it was pour into a jar. Daddy said it tasted like siracha-cha-cha if it is a bit orange. Had we waited till we had enough red peppers, it would be more of a red color. However, we decided to try it before all the peppers were red, so our siracha-cha-cha is more of an orange color. If Daddy likes this, we may be planting more 5 color chinese peppers next year to give Daddy a whole year worth of siracha-cha-cha.

Finished Siracha-cha-cha

A day alone

With Pooka now in big girl school with brother, I occasionally find myself home alone with just the animals. I will not say it is comfortable yet, but it does me good to keep busy when they are gone. This particular day, I wasn't as good at keeping busy, but I did decide to get to work on preserving some of the herbs. I went outside to the front bed and brought in all of this. Over an ounce of hot peppers to make siracha-cha-cha (Pooka has a little dance she does whenever someone says siracha), herbs to dry and 15+ ounces of basil. I did save some purple basil as well to make Purple Pesto for Pooka (those leaves are in the measuring cup).

A short days work. 

I ended up making 2 bags of nut-less pesto since we do have a nut allergy in the family. I am hoping this will become a go to meal for when we forget to thaw dinner. It sadly tends to happen in spurts.

More herbs dry. Not necesarily these, 

I did get over an ounce of herbs dried. It wasn't these per say, but when you have seen one pile of herbs, they all look the same.

2 bags of pesto.

Out of the 15 ounces of herbs, we got a half quart of purple pesto and a quart of pesto. The purple pesto had already been in the freezer, and while I tried to lay it flat, I think it shifted on something. Now to cut back the basil outside before it frosts and make more. Sadly the siracha-cha-cha will have to wait till another day.

Garlic powder

With the abundance of garlic we had this year, Daddy and I decided to try and use the single clove heads of garlic to make our own garlic powder. It is a fairly simple process, but it does take some time and some effort on our part.

Garlic that has cured for awhile

This is one bulb from the smaller garlic plants. They are 1 clove of garlic in the bulb, and perfect for this since they are pain to use for cooking (too much peeling to do multiples of). However, the first step, like anything with garlic is to remove the peel and cut off the root end of the garlic.  

That is 1 clove of garlic

Yes, this is the size of one clove. I was trying to use my thumb for scale. As you can see they garlic is good sized for one clove, but fairly small if that is suppose to be a whole bulb. Next you slice the garlic into thin slices.

Drying Garlic

Once sliced into thin slices, you lay the garlic out on the dehydrator rack. We tried to keep all the slices the same thickness, but due to what we were slicing, we did have some variation. The thinner your slices, the shorter the drying time. I think we let ours run most of a day or so until they were fairly brittle.

Garlic powder made the old fashioned way

Then comes the turning it to powder part. I would love to say I used the mortar and pestle for ALL of our garlic powder, but I would be lying. We tried the mortar and pestle and it worked quite well, but took forever, and since this was something where I really really didn't have all day to spend grinding, we decided to use our emersion blender's chopper bowl attachment. That worked quiet well but make sure when you are done, you leave it closed and off for a long time before opening to allow all the dust to settle. 

Homemade Garlic powder

We poured it into a empty glass spice bottle and threw a label on it. Daddy has decided this tastes light years better then the commercial stuff. 

Rainbow Salsa

Recently we had to clean out the fridge. The garden had produced some much that we really needed to do something. We had tomatoes, but we had so many peppers and onions we decided to make salsa. But none of the recipes we found really encompassed everything we had, so we decided to make Pooka's Rainbow Salsa. It got its name from the rainbow of colors that went into it and Pooka loves making things colorful.

Tomatoes, onion, purple, sweet and Jalapenos all in the pot.

Into it went:
19 cups of tomatoes (including Roma, Beefsteak, Betterboy, Fireball and colored Cherry tomatoes)
6 cups onion (red and white)
9 1/2 Jalapenos
3 cups Bell peppers (Red peppers, Sweet peppers and cubanelles)
3 purple 5 color peppers
1 bulb of garlic
3 cups of Cilantro

Rainbow salsa all ready to go

We ended up making 11 pints of Rainbow Salsa. They look so good, we are only hoping it is not too hot with all the purple peppers in it. We will see, but it definitely looks pretty good. It looks a bit less colorful in the jars, but it should taste good.

Close up of the salsa

"What did you do this weekend?"

Personally, I love when people ask us "What did you do this weekend?" Some weekends I have nothing fun to say. Sometimes I can answer with this:

24 Half pints of peach jam

Well, we got peaches from the neighbor's tree for free and made 24 half pints of jam and 4 pints lazy peach preserves.  With the cucumbers from our garden we canned 5 pints of classic dill pickle spears and 1 pint of classic dill pickle chips. We also froze 7 3\8 oz of sweet peppers, dehydrated 1/8 oz dry parsley, 1/4 oz dry oregano, and 1/2 oz dry purple sage. We even went out of town for a birthday party for Pooka's cousin at a Zoo with all the aunts and uncles.

Pickles anyone? 

I wish I could say after all this my house is flawless. That there are no dishes or laundry out of place, or even that the lawn got mowed, but I wouldn't be honest. Not when a good chunk of the weekend is devoted to spending time as a family and being together. In fact, let us not discuss the state of a Pooka's room that I really should of made her clean before we went picking peaches at her friends house.

Newly dried herbs

A long holiday weekend comes in handy. Too bad we can't make every weekend 3 days long. But even on short weekends, it is about doing what you can and spending time together in whatever ways you can.

Frozen peppers.

Basil Jelly???

What do you do when you have basil going bonkers outside??

Old picture, but you can see the basil hiding everything else. 

Don't get me wrong, we love the fresh basil, and are drying basil to put away for the winter, but we still have plenty so we decided to try making Basil Jelly. No, this not just me going "Let's make Jam out of everything" and no this is not me trying to justify what we have, but me trying to find more ways to use the basil.

Basil anyone??

First we took a ton of basil, and washed it all very well. Then we followed the directions on Sweet Domesticity. They were very easy to follow and she tends to have great ideas. In the end, we got 5 half pints. Enough to decide if we like it, not enough we are stuck with it if we don't. Daddy came up with the idea to try and make canned pesto yesterday. Now to find a recipe. Good thing no one here is afraid of work.

5 half pints of jelly

Using Blue potatoes

Since the blue potato harvest was so small (and the potatoes were blue) I had people wonder what you do with blue potatoes. They also wondered if the potatoes were blue on the inside. Well this proves they were very colored indeed.

Cut potatoes

 We just sliced and diced the potatoes till they were all about the same size then baked them in the oven with some garlic and some butter. Nice garlic potatoes for dinner one night. They tasted wonderful, so we will try them again next year and see if we can get any bigger ones. 

Potatoes anyone?

Purple Peppers

The purple peppers are very pretty looking, and are fairly small, so they look innocent. They are not. In fact, we tried these recently and Pooka is not allowed to try them. I swear I think my tongue started bleeding. Daddy on the other hand loves hot peppers, and he admitted they are a bit hot to eat by themselves. We have been subjecting them to people we know who keep saying they love spicy things. At least it is a good laugh.

 

I will admit we picked them when the peppers are purple. They eventually turn red, so we are waiting to see if they get hotter or milder when they mature, so we are waiting for one to turn red and Daddy will try it again then. Until then, the Purple, to cream, to yellow, to orange to red makes a great coloring in the front yard, if you could see them around the basil plants.

 

We have found that Daddy likes them put in a refrigerator Garlic Dill pickle we make. He said they gave them a bit of a tang, but could actually use a 3rd one into a 1/2 pint jar. That jar barely lasted an hour before Daddy and Uncle M had eaten them all. We also just put them in some salsa, so hopefully they are good like that. We may even try making our own hot pepper flakes with the dehydrator. Nothing will go to waste if I can help it.

 

 

Tomato, tomato, Apple Pie?

As you can guess, I have a few posts backed up. Alright, more then a few posts. I promise to get better about trying to get posts out, now that the immediate threat of a holiday is past.

Remember the great green tomato harvest. Well, it took a few weeks but the last of the tomatoes ripened. Daddy and I got to work canning all the tomatoes you can see here into crushed tomatoes. Pooka loves being in charge of handing us warm jars and lids out of the sink. Crushed tomatoes is a very heavily used item around here. We make our own spaghetti sauce, as well as using it in chili, soup, texas hash, all sorts of things.

Tomatoes everywhere

We ended up making 5 quarts and 1 pint of crushed tomatoes. I always forget how much tomatoes cook down.

Homemade crushed tomatoes

And remember all the apples we used to help ripen the tomatoes. Well nothing around here goes to waste, and since we aren't very big apple eaters, Pooka, Daddy and I decided to turn it into Apple Pie Jam. I found the recipe over at Hickery Holler Farm's blog. I will always give credit when I find a neat recipe or idea.

Apples did their job ripening tomatoes

The directions are there, but in the end, we had apple pie in a jar. The 2nd batch (which was a double batch) came out a bit more syrupy. I am pretty sure its because the apples were overflowing their pot a bit and I turned off the heat a bit sooner then I needed to so the pectin may not of set as well. Either way, it still tastes so wonderful on ice cream, cheesecake or in oatmeal. Pooka just loves it on toast or biscuits for breakfast.

Pictures of batch 1 - 6 1/2 pints

The apples we had ended up making 21 1/2 pints of processed jam and 1 pint of unprocessed (I didn't have a time for pints). I think we will be finding all sorts of neat ways to use this. I also know a couple of pie lovers that I wish I could share it with (but I don't want to send it through the mail).

That Sunday was a very busy day. We did a ton of canning in one day (while watching a football game). However, I did forget to get a picture of all the jars we had made that day. Mostly because we were anxious to get it put away so we could have counter space. The next day I thought of it, but didn't want to go pull them all out again. Another day I will have to sit down and type up the canning inventory I made the other day. It amazes us how much Pooka loves this, and how good we feel knowing what we are feeding Pooka and her brother. One other huge thing that surprises us, the very large amount of food out of a garden we didn't expect to do much and how little went to waste.

Freezing Peppers

Peppers are still coming

In an early post, I mentioned we were freezing all the sweet peppers and the poblanos. Well fortunately  our pepper plants are still producing. Pooka asked if we could show you how we are freezing the peppers.

Late harvest

Once we harvested the peppers, I washed them and then left them in the colander or on a plate  for about an hour or so to make sure they dry completely. You don not want to add extra water to the peppers.

Cored and seeded

After the peppers are dry, you core and seed them. Since these were poblanos, I wanted to get most of the seeds out to lesson the heat. WORD OF WARNING: Don't be silly like me and forget to wash your hands before touching your eyes, nose or mouth. You will regret it. I did. My eye was mad for a couple of hours.

Dicing

 In this case we happened to have my Mom's handy dandy onion dicer in the house. This is a great way to make sure you are getting a uniform cut size (FYI to anyone out there: Christmas idea for Mommy). It is even better since it allows a Pooka to do the cutting. Place the pepper on skin side up. This allows it to get a better cut. If you do skin side down, it tends to have a harder time getting started.

Pooka's picture Diced Peppers 

 Once they are cut, they fall into the nice little catch area. I cut all ours at once before emptying out the basin. This way when I had more peppers in the house, I was able to keep track and I only cut them as I was ready to freeze them.

Ready for the big freeze

 Pooka then helped me spread them out on a silicone pie pan. We found this worked out better then a metal pan because A) the silicone we could bend to fit in the freezer easier and B) the frozen peppers could be popped off since we could again wiggle and flex the pan

Frozen peppers ready for use when you are

Put the pan in your freezer for a couple of hours. Once they are good and frozen, pull out the pan and "pop" them off. We just used our hands, and we never needed to dirty a utensil.  The frozen peppers were put in a ziplock bag that was labeled  dated and thrown right back into the freezer.



However, PLEASE remember if working with hot peppers to wash your hands (I didn't think again and checked Pooka for a tooth coming in. Yeah.. That didn't go well.) Please learn from my mistakes.

The frozen peppers have been used in meals already. They work great in anything that is cooking them. I haven't tried thawing and using them raw. I don't know if this would work well since when the water froze into crystals of ice, it may of damaged the cell walls of the pepper (thus possibly leaving them kinda mushy). However, for cooking with and adding to many a meal, its a quick and easy way to add peppers. Plus hopefully come middle of winter, we can still be eating from Pooka's garden.

Drying herbs part 2

So I know this post comes a tad later then I would like (Thank our previous internet provider for that, as well as school starting). If you remember, Pooka, Daddy and I followed the great teachings of Alton Brown on "How to dry your herbs at home."

After you remove the herbs from your drying rig, you should take off the top filter and see nicely dried herbs.  In our case, the purple basil turned a dark purple again, since some of the leaves we had used turned green before drying. They do tend to stick to the top filter as well, so be ready for them to be on either side.




Next, we sorted them out and then took a blank piece of paper laid it on the table. We then took the herb between our hands and rub them back and forth. This breaks the herbs off the steam (to be discarded) and makes them fit quite well in other applications. This was Pooka's favorite part becuase the whole house again smelled like her herbs.



This is what we were left with once we finished the basil. Notice how it is in smaller pieces and should work quite well for cooking now.  They may need crunched up a bit before use.  Just don't try to rush it, since you may be picking small pieces of stem out then (especially thyme).

Here is what we ended up with. On our second batch, I was in a rush and poured thyme in with the oregano, thus we now have Italian Seasoning. We also used parsley the second time. We initially had everything in 1/2 pint jars (since they were laying around) but I was talking to Daddy and trying to find a better way, so we found these 2 jars which are $1 (black lid)-$2 (Silver lid) a piece. Yikes.... And we didn't want a set since most come prelabeled with things we may not use much.


 While we were cleaning out the spice cabinet, we condensed some herbs that were in other containers and ended up with 2 of these jars which look suspiciously like the ones we bought only they were free. I think we accidently threw away the shaker lid, but that's okay since I just wait for more to be scavenged.  Like the ones we bought, and with a quick use of my labeler, they will have nice labels like the ones you see above, at least until I decide to make something on the computer, but that may take a bit.

Sunflower seeds

I know today was suppose to be about how to finish drying your herbs. I finished them, I swear, I just well, haven't had time to write it up or make it look prettier since school started yesterday for Pooka, and today for Kiddo. Life kinda sorta gets in the way of blogging sometimes.

Instead, I thought you would like to see how we harvested some sunflower seeds from Pooka and Kiddo's sunflowers. We have been planting sunflowers on our south side in this tiny planting bed for a few years now. It is super narrow, and has alot of the stuff in it (see here the gas meter) so unless you have a reason, you don't go there often. In fact, we almost never use our side yards, and the first year we planted the sunflowers, we saw what a difference it made to the number of weeds in that bed (as opposed to putting NOTHING in it).

Mammoth on the Left, Multi head on the right

Now, we originally planted mammoth sunflowers, but for whatever reason, they didn't seem to grow real well. However, we had some volunteer sunflowers from last year which were smaller multi headed but they actually grew taller. They grew quite well. I went out Saturday night on the side of the house for well something (I couldn't tell you what at this point) and noticed the seeds were drying and ready to come loose. I figured with as many goldfinches that are coming around anymore, we better get some now. A quick google search told me what I think I needed to know. 

Now first you will want to check that your seeds have little black lines on them. That plus the drying of the head you see here means your sunflower seeds are ready to harvest.  Make sure the petals have all fallen off and the seeds are fairly large and plump. From what I read, that means they will be better seeds overall. 

To do this, you have to take a paper bag and hold it over the flower head. Then you cut the head off with up to about a foot of stem attached. In our case, this wasn't always possible since some of the multi heads were attached 6 inches apart. Once the flower is free, we left it in the paper bag till we were ready for the next part.

 Next comes the destruction, I mean seed removal. I won't lie, this part is a bit gross. Bugs and things will fall out of the flower. It is nature and it happens. That being said you are suppose to rub the sunflower to have the seeds "pop" out. Well our seeds didn't want to pop. Instead they wanted to be forcibly removed. We did end up breaking some of the heads, but in the end, I dont think it mattered much. It just meant there was a bit more clean up to do.

 Here our the seeds when we were done. We washed them off in just regular water to separate out some of the gunk and the seeds. Now if anyone has a better way then picking through each one, please let me know.

Being that this our first time harvesting seeds, I am curious what kind of response we will get. We saved about a fifth to replant next year (and Pooka is talking about putting some in her goodie bags for her next birthday party), and the rest we roasted. But that is another post. We are contemplating planting one to see if they will even plant. I just haven't had the time to set that up. Maybe this weekend.