Preserving Your Harvest

[Isadora]

I'm trying my hand at making peach jam today.

 

[21hens-incharge]

When my peaches ripen I am going to make some peach butter.
It's wonderful in winter to have that bright sunshine color and taste of summer!

 

[WthrLady]

THATS what I did with my Mrs Wages, added more mustard seed and fresh DIll! Thanks for jiggling my memory.

 

[WthrLady]

50 pounds of puree and tomato sauces/pizza sauce simmering on the stove at the moment. Pressure canner is warming up.

 

[Birdsonghill]

Thanks for this thread BReeder! I love to see young people getting interested in traditional growing, harvesting, storing and preparing of foods! This thread encourages that and is great REading ! I started canning, smoking, drying and cooking with my Mom, in the 1950's and 60's and still do it in my home today. She had four boys and taught all of us about cooking, cleaning, working ,loving and mostly respect and appreciation for life and the simple pleasure of having good food! We all, Father's , Mother's, or just friends of younger people, need to pass that simple pleasure on, that is founded in that appreciation of having good food, that you produced from your own efforts! I recommend to the new homesteader or beginning food storage enthusiast or cooking /eating fan, to get themselves a library going, of a few good classic recipes books, at the least! I have a collection of thousands of recipes, many dating from the 1920's to the 1970's from my mother. But , there is no teacher like experience! Even failures, usually, make us better cooks or homesteaders! I do not have the energy to can as much as I did a few years ago, however, I still can some pickles, sauces, relishes, preserves and misc. every year to date! This week I made my annual batch of watermelon rind pickles and green tomato/pepper/onion relish. Start a tradition in your family or keep one alive! Grow open pollinated, heirloom varieties, use sustainable methods, avoid chemicals, preserve and teach skills and enjoying good healthy home grown food is a proven winning life style! If you want that good old fashion quality and flavor, you have to grow the old varieties and prepare them yourself! I get inspiration to continue my efforts, reading about others work, and new recipes and old alike! I experiment to this day and occasionally make mistakes to this day! Save the skills and the classic recipes and always be open to the new! Don't do like me and not write down new recipes! You can lose masterpieces that way.

 

[BReeder!]

Thanks for this thread BReeder! I love to see young people getting interested in traditional growing, harvesting, storing and preparing of foods! This thread encourages that and is great REading ! I started canning, smoking, drying and cooking with my Mom, in the 1950's and 60's and still do it in my home today. She had four boys and taught all of us about cooking, cleaning, working ,loving and mostly respect and appreciation for life and the simple pleasure of having good food! We all, Father's , Mother's, or just friends of younger people, need to pass that simple pleasure on, that is founded in that appreciation of having good food, that you produced from your own efforts! I recommend to the new homesteader or beginning food storage enthusiast or cooking /eating fan, to get themselves a library going, of a few good classic recipes books, at the least! I have a collection of thousands of recipes, many dating from the 1920's to the 1970's from my mother. But , there is no teacher like experience! Even failures, usually, make us better cooks or homesteaders! I do not have the energy to can as much as I did a few years ago, however, I still can some pickles, sauces, relishes, preserves and misc. every year to date! This week I made my annual batch of watermelon rind pickles and green tomato/pepper/onion relish. Start a tradition in your family or keep one alive! Grow open pollinated, heirloom varieties, use sustainable methods, avoid chemicals, preserve and teach skills and enjoying good healthy home grown food is a proven winning life style! If you want that good old fashion quality and flavor, you have to grow the old varieties and prepare them yourself! I get inspiration to continue my efforts, reading about others work, and new recipes and old alike! I experiment to this day and occasionally make mistakes to this day! Save the skills and the classic recipes and always be open to the new! Don't do like me and not write down new recipes! You can lose masterpieces that way.

Thank you. Stick around and keep learning new things. This thread has been great for me too.

 

[BReeder!]

Alright, new question here...

How the heck can I can pickled banana peppers without them getting soft? I have been having mixed results. Pickling them isn't a problem and I certainly could make a refrigerator pickle batch, but I want to store them long into the Winter and Spring and I am running into limited fridge space, so I would prefer to keep jars on the shelves in the pantry over the fridge.

 

[WthrLady]

Just washed the pizza sauce jars from yesterday. Like the salsa, I am not happy with what I'm seeing inside. It's watery, very watery, and it wasn't that way when I put it in. It was the correct consistency for pizza sauce when it went in. Grrrrr.
Maybe later I'll open them up and simmer them down some more. MrsWages btw. Not sure I care for the flavor either. It's VERY sweet.

@BReeder! not sure about that. Maybe some pickle crisp in the brine?

 

[WthrLady]

Pizza sauce update: (Cross post)

I simmered it all day again and took -12 pounds of tomatoes originally (MEAT tomatoes) and simmered them according to the directions and it was still too thing for canning yesterday, so I simmered them to what looked like pizza sauce and canned them. It was too water then. So today I simmered more and took those 7 pints and took them down to 7 HALF pints. Mrs. Wages is too sweet a pizza sauce, but it has to have high sugar content to bring up the acid as it is a BWB preservation (I'm pressure canning though). But I just wanted to try it. I won't waste my tomatoes again on it.

 

[21hens-incharge]

Pizza sauce update: (Cross post)

I simmered it all day again and took -12 pounds of tomatoes originally (MEAT tomatoes) and simmered them according to the directions and it was still too thing for canning yesterday, so I simmered them to what looked like pizza sauce and canned them. It was too water then. So today I simmered more and took those 7 pints and took them down to 7 HALF pints. Mrs. Wages is too sweet a pizza sauce, but it has to have high sugar content to bring up the acid as it is a BWB preservation (I'm pressure canning though). But I just wanted to try it. I won't waste my tomatoes again on it.

I feel your pain. I had similar struggles with plum jam today.

It's a Ball recipe I followed. No matter how long I boiled it would not reach the temp stated in the book. In the end it started to set IN THE POT! It was supposed to yield 6 half pint jars. I got 3.
Round 2 was similar but I went ahead and water bath canned it earlier. Yup it did not set properly.

I will call it plum syrup and leave it as is.

Tomorrow I will attempt with strawberries. That recipe calls for pectin.