What are you canning now?

[KDbeads]

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This sounds lovely! Do you think I could use white or yellow onions as instead?

Yep, that's what I'm planning on doing next time I get a good sale on yellow onions.

 

[vfem]

Just finished up 8 8oz jars of white grape jelly (we grow the wine grapes so much more flavorful then white table grapes). Also did 6 8oz jars of French Vanilla Peach Sauce. YUM! Love that stuff!

 

[annaraven]

Okay - I've got 20 pints in the pressure canner cooling down. The remainder of the tomato sauce in the stockpot is being turned into arrabbiata sauce (spicy tomato sauce) with the addition of some onion, celery, garlic, and hot peppers. I'll pressure can that later.

 

[BarefootMom]

You know canning defines your life when...

I have a speech due tomorrow and I have to bring in an object that defines you...


I am bringing in a quart jar of canned peaches. lol. It is the only thing I could think of!

(Classes just started last night and we already have a TON of homework!! ahh)

 

[KenK]

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Do you ever make wine? I would love to grow some grapes that would make a drinkable wine. I'm no wine snob AT ALL but I can't tolerate the overly sweet local muscadine wine.

 

[Happy Chooks]

How do you guys keep the birds out of your grapes? I've netted mine, and they still find a way in to steal the grapes.

I have too much going on right now to can much, but I'm sticking LOTS in the freezer. 4 gallons of blackberries, 1 gallon strawberries, 1/2 gallon so far of raspberries, picked a 5 lb bucket full of nectarines and about 15 peaches so far.

I do need to find time to do more dill pickles, so the pickling cucumbers don't get soft.

 

[kareninthesun]

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If I had a crawl space, I'd tell no one and convert it to a girl cave. Complete with sound, books, a fireplace, a quilt that no dog nor peanut buttered child had trod upon, no big screen tv, candles, a jaccuzzi, NO LAUNDRY ROOM or phone access. the toilet seat shows no signs of misses and never goes up. There's no furniture with crayoned artwork beneath them, no sticky fingerprints, no noseprints on glass, no artwork overdecorating the refrigerator door, no unidentifiable items in the fridge or parts of GI Joes/Barbies in the tub. I'd miss them only until I crawled out and into the real world.

 

[3goodeggs]

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Do you ever make wine? I would love to grow some grapes that would make a drinkable wine. I'm no wine snob AT ALL but I can't tolerate the overly sweet local muscadine wine.

Get Terry Garey's book: The Joy of Home Winemaking
It has recipes for every conceivable wine. (skip the banana It removes soap scum and that's about it's only redeemable virtue) I made Tamarind wine that was so fantastic. Blueberry is great as is blackberry, mulberry is so, so, so good it will make you go out and plant trees. really.
I have been squeezing wild fox grapes for days now. My hands feel like they have been tanned. ..and look it too.
Not all great wine has to come from grapes.
raisin wine is like sherry. peach was good, but I like them fresh better. Tangerine was great, Pear gets made yearly, lemon was good, and freezer berry has a good rating (I scribbled this in pencil in the back cover of my book) freezer berry is all the stuff you find when you clean out the freezer: cranberries, blackberries, grapes, strawberries... I guess it could have been named compost wine, but who'd drink it? well, me, but normal people might balk.
when you use the port or montrachet yeasts you can get a higher alcohol content and a dryer wine.
you can order catalogs from Northern brewer , Carlson, or E C Kraus
What I like about wine making is when you are buried in produce you can toss it into a fermenter and buy some time.

 

[KenK]

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My lovely wife, the librarian, has been asked to borrow it for me, should be arriving shortly.

I figure some of the muscadine/scuppernong wines might not be quite so sweet if the formula didn't call for 10-20 pounds of sugar.

 

[3goodeggs]

There is a trick to that. You have to find the specific gravity of the juice. If it is high enough then the fruit is sweet and will ferment out dryer. If the fruit is not sweet enough, as the yeast convert the fruit sugar to alcohol, you get something that will turn your eyeballs inside out with sour. That's why you add sugar. The yeast want more than the fruit has to offer. I have made muscadine blends that are nice. and some that are so sweet I use them to blend with a pear that might get too dry. I think she has a recipe called "Sahara pear" nope just looked it up, it is peach. My peach wine was always too sweet. That's why i'd rather eat a peach than ferment it.
You can slowly add sugar water syrup and ferment it out until it is where you like it. However, you need it to be at least 10-12% alcohol or it won't keep very long. If you used a hardy yeast that can tolerate higher alcohol levels, then you can just let it sit there until it becomes still. I have had some of the champagne yeasts keep going for well over a year. I do not like to add the sulfur, so I just let it all ferment out to 'deadly to the yeast' alcohol levels.