Over the last week I was busy with canning some pineapple and pears. I also made a batch of freezer pickles. I'll probably make some applesauce this year once apples are available to pick.
I haven't made canned pineapple before. I used four large pineapples from the grocery store at $2.49 each. I canned them in ultra light syrup using the recipe in the current edition of the Ball canning guide. My yield was eight and a half pints (could have probably squeezed them into 8 pints), putting them at about the same cost as canned pineapple from the grocery store. We'll see if the taste is good enough to recommend home canning over purchasing, because let's be honest: canning is a ton of work.
I bought eight and a half pounds of Bartlett pears from the grocery store at 99 cents/pound. I used the Honey Vanilla Pear recipe from Simply Canning. I made this same recipe a few years ago and these are the best pears. I could eat an entire jar by myself per day if I had them! Anyway, the first time I made these I used the sugar syrup recipe as directed in the recipe (not the honey version). This time I used the light syrup ratio in the Ball canning guide. My yield was eight pints. These are worth the time, effort, and cost for me. They are so delicious. That being said, I love grocery store canned pears too. I'm maybe a bit unusual in that I far prefer canned pears of any type over fresh.
As a side note, my Bartlett pear tree has a handful of tiny, walnut sized pears on it. I'm not sure they will be edible. This is the second year we've had the tree and the first year that it has born fruit.
I also made a batch of freezer pickles. Most of the cucumbers I used for this came from my in-laws. I think I added two whoppers from my garden to get up to 12 cups, or 3/4 of the recipe. My yield was five-8 ounce Ball freezer containers. They are best when eaten within a day of thawing.
We harvested the rest of our potato crop too. They didn't do very well this year. The red ones had scab and many were super tiny, as you can see in the photo.
I also tried a new recipe, pecan pie muffins. They are pretty good the first day. Second day, okay, third day, dry. They are easy to make, but very high in calories. Be careful not to over-bake them. The recipe said eight muffins; I got 12. I noticed the recipe I used referenced an original that used half the amount of pecans. I may try the original too as a comparison. Regardless, they are definitely a dessert due to the amount of sugar and calories.
I've basically finished up my guild swap projects. I'll share those next week after she's received her things.
We've also been moving forward on sewing room prep. We're going to have to level the floor before we can do anything else. That is not a fun process. We had to do that in the bathroom area that we just finished and the sewing room is much larger.
We're also finally getting to the point of refinishing/repainting the vanity table my daughter inherited from my grandmother 12 years ago. We've done many rounds of stripping on it and my husband has been sanding and gluing and patching. My daughter is super excited and has cleared out the alcove in her room where we had always intended to place the table. We work slowly.
Today is the first day of school for my kids, so I'm hoping to become a little more productive during the days again.
Do you can? What are your favorite canning recipes?
Showing posts with label pickles. Show all posts
It's the First Day of School and...
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
I ended up catching a milder version of my son's illness and spent several days in bed resting. I'm recovered now, but I'm still behind on life. I did get one of my quilt guild's Pulse quilts completely done and am hoping to finish the second one today so we can get those out in the mail. My guild meets Friday night and we are exchanging minis so I will share those next week.
I finished all of my The Aqua Umbrella QAL blocks and top. I'm trying to decide if I want to add more blocks to make it larger or just quilt it as it is. It's currently 58 x 60".
I am a week behind on the 365 blocks and I have yet to add all the 6" blocks to the top. I also need to do this month's Fig Tree blocks, make some shirts for my daughter and me, finish piecing a bunch of tops, quilt and bind a bunch of tops, make more doll clothes patterns (especially since the quilt shop I've been working in is closing and I'm out of work again), and make more Sew Powerful purses and maybe some charity quilts too. I have caught up on mending however!
I made 6 pints of freezer pickles and gave away the last few cucumbers from our plants, which have mercifully died back. We got another small harvest of green beans, enough for dinner tonight. The beans still look okay, but I am unsure as to whether they'll produce more or not.
This has been kinda an odd summer weather-wise. It seems like we go from pouring rain to hot, humid, and parched, although not as hot as some summers. The plants look really scraggly and weeds seem to be going mad. This morning I went to the bus stop with my younger child and there were mosquitos the size of sweat bees! Creepy for sure. We usually go out and walk at night and haven't had the mosquitos. We have had up to six tom turkeys wandering the neighborhood but I haven't seen any females or babies this year--also odd. The rabbits are thriving and doing some damage.
Here's hoping I get it all together and get super-productive!
I finished all of my The Aqua Umbrella QAL blocks and top. I'm trying to decide if I want to add more blocks to make it larger or just quilt it as it is. It's currently 58 x 60".
I am a week behind on the 365 blocks and I have yet to add all the 6" blocks to the top. I also need to do this month's Fig Tree blocks, make some shirts for my daughter and me, finish piecing a bunch of tops, quilt and bind a bunch of tops, make more doll clothes patterns (especially since the quilt shop I've been working in is closing and I'm out of work again), and make more Sew Powerful purses and maybe some charity quilts too. I have caught up on mending however!
I made 6 pints of freezer pickles and gave away the last few cucumbers from our plants, which have mercifully died back. We got another small harvest of green beans, enough for dinner tonight. The beans still look okay, but I am unsure as to whether they'll produce more or not.
This has been kinda an odd summer weather-wise. It seems like we go from pouring rain to hot, humid, and parched, although not as hot as some summers. The plants look really scraggly and weeds seem to be going mad. This morning I went to the bus stop with my younger child and there were mosquitos the size of sweat bees! Creepy for sure. We usually go out and walk at night and haven't had the mosquitos. We have had up to six tom turkeys wandering the neighborhood but I haven't seen any females or babies this year--also odd. The rabbits are thriving and doing some damage.
Here's hoping I get it all together and get super-productive!
Labels:
#quiltsforpulse,
#theaquaumbrellaqal,
Canning,
cucumbers,
pickles,
quilt
Apples and Cucumbers and Pickles, OH MY!
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Being a Michigan native, I'm accustomed to having lots of u-pick orchards offering many different fruits and berries. I no longer live in Michigan, and it's much harder to find places in my current location. Two falls ago we did find a u-pick apple orchard about an hour from us (thanks to a Girl Scouts program). We picked lots of apples and ate them.
Last fall I got it into my head that I wanted to pick a bunch of apples and try my hand at canning applesauce. I thought maybe my picky eater son would eat it. His only fruits are cinnamon (never plain) applesauce and bananas. (NOPE! Thought wrong.) I've made applesauce plenty of times, but never to can. I have frozen it, but I really don't care for the texture once it's thawed out. So, anyway, I gathered some canning supplies (including a pot that would work on my induction cooktop) and we went off to the orchard to pick apples.
It was only-mid September, but that was apparently late in the orchard's season last year. There wasn't much left to choose from, but we did get about a half-bushel. I quickly found that that is A LOT of apples!! I tried not peeling the apples and then running the cooked apples through a food mill. I tried peeling the apples. Either way, it is a ton of work and not cheap. After a week or two, I ended up with 12 quarts of applesauce. Nothing added but a little cinnamon (no sugar). Some of the batches ended up really yummy and others were just okay. I guess we did better mixing the varieties in some batches versus others. If I recall correctly, we only had two or three types of apples. Like I said, slim pickings. I was unsure if I did the canning correctly, but they seem to have turned out and I was pretty proud of myself! I'm seriously considering making more this year. One tip: Use an immersion blender to quickly knock down any extra lumps in your applesauce. Works great! I just saw an apple peeling attachment for the KitchenAid mixer that I'm very interested in. Too bad it's pretty pricy. Maybe next year.
This year we decided to plant a garden. We made a special one using an animal watering tank with drain tile in the bottom. It is supposed to be self-watering. We planted carrots, four broccoli plants, green beans, lettuce, one tomato, and a bunch of climbing pickling cucumbers. The broccoli never produced anything edible and worms had pretty much eaten all the leaves, so we pulled that out this week. The deer got the bean plants, the lettuce--thankfully we'd already been harvesting it for a month at that point, and part of the carrots. We do have a ton of cucumbers though! Oh, and I picked ONE green bean this week! Ha!
I brought my first harvest of about 10 cucumbers to my parents in Michigan at the beginning of July. I made some refrigerator pickles with my next harvest. They were okay, but I'd use a different recipe next time--too vinegary and not enough dill for our taste--have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE dill? Next I tried making sweet pickles. I made four pints plus a bit left over for the fridge. Those came out really well, but I'm thinking I was probably not supposed to put all the seasonings in the jar. Maybe those should have been filtered out?? It's kinda gross to bite into a hard chunk of clove attached to the pickle. The other thing I would do differently is slice my cucumbers a little thicker.
My husband wanted me to make dill pickles next, so I made three pints of those with my next harvest. We haven't tried any of those yet, but I did read a tip that really was a game-changer. The recipe I used was from Simply Canning and the author suggests making the brine in a stainless tea kettle. Wow! That was such an amazing tip. You just pour the brine right in--no mess like when I did the sweet pickles!
{Update 9-2-15: we opened a jar of dill pickles this week and they were pretty awful! :( The predominant flavor was SALT! Like, so much salt you didn't even have to get the pickle to your mouth to taste the salt!!! Either the author of the recipe really likes uber-salty things or the recipe needs to be clarified. I suppose it's possible I did something wrong, but man, what a disappointment.}
We had a little rain last week and we had an explosion of cucumbers! We also found one we'd missed for several harvests. I called her Big Bertha. She was 1.5 pounds!! I decided to try sweet pickle relish next and I used Big Bertha (with the seeds removed, of course)! I'm a little confused by things I'm reading on the Internet as to whether or not recipes not in certain guides are safe to use. So even though I found a recipe that looked intriguing on a blog, I ended up using a recipe out of my Ball canning guide.
I made eight half pints plus a little left over. I tried a bit of the leftover and it seemed really vinegary, not sweet at all. I'm the only one in the house who eats relish (and tomatoes and avocados), so I was really disappointed. My husband took the leftovers plus one of the canned jars to his work cookout today. He didn't try any, but he said everyone liked it and thought it tasted sweet. I'm going to let it sit for a few weeks and then try it again.
So, how do you know who to trust as to whether or not a canning recipe is safe and in the correct proportions to avoid food-borne illness? Do you have a favorite canning recipe? I'd love to hear from you.
Last fall I got it into my head that I wanted to pick a bunch of apples and try my hand at canning applesauce. I thought maybe my picky eater son would eat it. His only fruits are cinnamon (never plain) applesauce and bananas. (NOPE! Thought wrong.) I've made applesauce plenty of times, but never to can. I have frozen it, but I really don't care for the texture once it's thawed out. So, anyway, I gathered some canning supplies (including a pot that would work on my induction cooktop) and we went off to the orchard to pick apples.
![]() |
| Here's my nice pot from Meijer on my GE induction cooktop. |
It was only-mid September, but that was apparently late in the orchard's season last year. There wasn't much left to choose from, but we did get about a half-bushel. I quickly found that that is A LOT of apples!! I tried not peeling the apples and then running the cooked apples through a food mill. I tried peeling the apples. Either way, it is a ton of work and not cheap. After a week or two, I ended up with 12 quarts of applesauce. Nothing added but a little cinnamon (no sugar). Some of the batches ended up really yummy and others were just okay. I guess we did better mixing the varieties in some batches versus others. If I recall correctly, we only had two or three types of apples. Like I said, slim pickings. I was unsure if I did the canning correctly, but they seem to have turned out and I was pretty proud of myself! I'm seriously considering making more this year. One tip: Use an immersion blender to quickly knock down any extra lumps in your applesauce. Works great! I just saw an apple peeling attachment for the KitchenAid mixer that I'm very interested in. Too bad it's pretty pricy. Maybe next year.
| My first canning batch EVER! |
![]() |
| Second batch of applesauce, 9/2014 |
This year we decided to plant a garden. We made a special one using an animal watering tank with drain tile in the bottom. It is supposed to be self-watering. We planted carrots, four broccoli plants, green beans, lettuce, one tomato, and a bunch of climbing pickling cucumbers. The broccoli never produced anything edible and worms had pretty much eaten all the leaves, so we pulled that out this week. The deer got the bean plants, the lettuce--thankfully we'd already been harvesting it for a month at that point, and part of the carrots. We do have a ton of cucumbers though! Oh, and I picked ONE green bean this week! Ha!
I brought my first harvest of about 10 cucumbers to my parents in Michigan at the beginning of July. I made some refrigerator pickles with my next harvest. They were okay, but I'd use a different recipe next time--too vinegary and not enough dill for our taste--have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE dill? Next I tried making sweet pickles. I made four pints plus a bit left over for the fridge. Those came out really well, but I'm thinking I was probably not supposed to put all the seasonings in the jar. Maybe those should have been filtered out?? It's kinda gross to bite into a hard chunk of clove attached to the pickle. The other thing I would do differently is slice my cucumbers a little thicker.
![]() |
| Sweet pickles, 7/22/2015 |
My husband wanted me to make dill pickles next, so I made three pints of those with my next harvest. We haven't tried any of those yet, but I did read a tip that really was a game-changer. The recipe I used was from Simply Canning and the author suggests making the brine in a stainless tea kettle. Wow! That was such an amazing tip. You just pour the brine right in--no mess like when I did the sweet pickles!
{Update 9-2-15: we opened a jar of dill pickles this week and they were pretty awful! :( The predominant flavor was SALT! Like, so much salt you didn't even have to get the pickle to your mouth to taste the salt!!! Either the author of the recipe really likes uber-salty things or the recipe needs to be clarified. I suppose it's possible I did something wrong, but man, what a disappointment.}
![]() |
| Dill pickles, 8/6/15 |
We had a little rain last week and we had an explosion of cucumbers! We also found one we'd missed for several harvests. I called her Big Bertha. She was 1.5 pounds!! I decided to try sweet pickle relish next and I used Big Bertha (with the seeds removed, of course)! I'm a little confused by things I'm reading on the Internet as to whether or not recipes not in certain guides are safe to use. So even though I found a recipe that looked intriguing on a blog, I ended up using a recipe out of my Ball canning guide.
| Big Bertha, the 1.5 lb pickling cucumber! |
| Sweet pickle relish, 8/10/15 |
So, how do you know who to trust as to whether or not a canning recipe is safe and in the correct proportions to avoid food-borne illness? Do you have a favorite canning recipe? I'd love to hear from you.
Labels:
applesauce,
Ball jars,
Canning,
cucumbers,
garden,
GE induction cooktop,
pickles
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