What are you canning now?

[Happy Chooks]

No canning today, but I did make chevre cheese.

 

[Chicky Babe]

I've been dying to try home cheese making. Is it hard at all? Any advice?

 

[Carols Clucks]

tonight, blueberry jam....oh my yummy

 

[JNB]

Today I made Apricot-Pineapple Jam... Yummmm

Tomarrow Im making Raspberry Jam

 

[Dentaku]

This sounds really good. Do you just drink it straight or add carbonated water? How do you store it?

I just mix it with water, tonight we'll make a welcome drink with sparkling whine and rhubarb syrup - i imagine it will be great! The bottles are stored in a dark and cool place, i add sodium benzoate to prevent mold but that is optional.

Recipe

1 kg ripe rhubarbs cut in pieces(stalks that are to thick and stringy to work for other cooking are perfect for this)
4 dl water

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5-6 dl sugar/litre of juice
(1 ml sodium benzoate/litre of juice)

Bring water to boil in a large pot and add the rhubarbs. Boil until the rhubarbs are starting to fall apart. Pour everything into a thin cloth(i guess a cheesecloth or similar would be great) or a really fine mesh strainer fixed above a large bowl. Let the juice from the rhubarbs separate for aboute half an hour, with a cloth you can also squeeze gently to get as much juice from them as possible.

Measure the juice that you have and pour it in a clean pot, bring to a boil. Add sugar a little at a time and boil until it's completely dissolved. (If you want to use sodium benzoate, remove some of the syrup and stir down the sodium benzoate into that until it dissolves - pour this back into the rest of the batch when you're done cooking it to avoid a bitter flavour). Remove the pot from the stove and remove all the foam. Pour the lemonade syrup into hot, clean bottles, all the way to the brim and close them immediately.

 

[Happy Chooks]

I've been dying to try home cheese making. Is it hard at all? Any advice?

Chevre is easy.

Put 1 gallon goats milk in pot.
Heat to 86 degrees.
Add chevre culture and stir.
Cover and let sit 12 hours.
Strain through muslin to separate the curds from the whey.
Add herbs if desired.


You can use the whey, but I think it's nasty - so my chickens get it.

 

[vfem]

Patiently waiting for the tomato sauce to finish on the stove... its taken so much longer then I planned on tonight. 20 lbs worth of tomatoes SEEMS to make a lot of sauce, then as it simmers and goes down in the pot you aren't left with much!?

Anyways, I did spend the time weighing the tomatoes I was processing to save (I didn't do the one's I ate in salads and on sandwiches... or gave to the chickens) and I've gone over 100 lbs of tomatoes so far this year!!! That's $200 in tomatoes I've grown to save. I'm a very happy woman. I'm going to keep on weighing them as I'd like to know what I total for the summer this year.

And to think, I didn't weigh any other produce I've done.... I could only imagine what I've saved.

 

[bockbock2008]

Patiently waiting for the tomato sauce to finish on the stove... its taken so much longer then I planned on tonight. 20 lbs worth of tomatoes SEEMS to make a lot of sauce, then as it simmers and goes down in the pot you aren't left with much!?

Anyways, I did spend the time weighing the tomatoes I was processing to save (I didn't do the one's I ate in salads and on sandwiches... or gave to the chickens) and I've gone over 100 lbs of tomatoes so far this year!!! That's $200 in tomatoes I've grown to save. I'm a very happy woman. I'm going to keep on weighing them as I'd like to know what I total for the summer this year.

And to think, I didn't weigh any other produce I've done.... I could only imagine what I've saved.

You've got me beat. I had to turn my spaghetti sauce off and will have to finish cooking it down tomorrow. I've got to sleep! It's cooling now. I started with about 3 gallons and am down to a little over 2. I've been through around 50 pounds so far. Mine started turning about 3 weeks ago.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Darn gophers pulled down 2 of my fully grown tomato plants. Not a trace of stalk, leaf or tomato to be found.

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

I just canned 7 quarts of tomatoes (a 5-gal bucket worth) and have a batch cooking down in the crockpot. It's probably going to take a while, but I can't take all that extra heat in my kitchen today.

I tell you what... a Ninja food processor is the trick. We had a bunch of small tomatoes this year, so instead of peel them all, I just cut the tops off and put them in the food processor. Ta da! No peeling.