House of Roses

Meat Haul for September

I had a day off, so I biked up to the farmers’s market to pick up our meat share for this month.

Beef:

• ~1 lb steak tips
• 0.8 lb ground beef
• 0.9 lb ground beef
• 1 lb  T-bone steak

Chicken:

• 3.5 lb chicken legs

Pork:

• 1 lb Italian sausage
• 1.25 lb pork steak
• 0.7 lb ground pork

I also picked up 3 pounds of Gingergold apples while I was at the market.

Gallivanting, Grub | Comment (0)

Canning Tomatoes

Amanda and I canned tomates this weekend.

A few lessons learned: heirlooms are more meat and less water, so they shrink less in the heat and pressure, and are preferable to put up. After some chatting with my folks—who were horrified to find the book told us to add acid (”they’re tomatoes!”)—I’m wondering if I could do 11 pounds for less than 25 minutes. My poor mother’s worried I’ll have to add sugar to eat them when I open them. I hope she’s wrong.

Amanda got mortgage lifter tomatoes and, boy, are those huge:

First up: wash the beasties:

Then, chop to fit into the (quart) jars:

Next, pack the jars, stuffing in the tomatoes, filling as much as possible (but leaving head space at the top of the jar!):

Then, put on the hot lids and rings, and put them in the canner with water, some vinegar:

After the rise to pressure, 25 minutes at 11 pounds (oy vey), and the time required to cool back down to 1 atmosphere:

Gallivanting, Grub, gabbing | Comment (0)

(Old) Garden Update

Here’s the state of the garden back at the end of August. (Today the garden is full of rain.)

Gardening | Comment (0)

Apple Pancakes

We discovered the hard way, after putting up pint jars of cooked apples, that we don’t eat them. I love apples stewed but in canning they lost even more of their strength and have turned too mushy for my tastes.

But we had 6 pints left and I didn’t want them to go to waste.

So I started experimenting. Online I saw a reference to “apple pancakes” and then an issue of Cooking Light had a recipe but it wasn’t until I found this recipe that I decided I would just use the canned ones in place of fresh and make a few modifications.

In the end, I had something with the texture of an apple bread pudding and it was awesome. I don’t bother to flip the pancake over, as that doesn’t work so well with the canned apples. The bread flour made a wonderful difference, makes it feel full without there being much to it: there’s very little in the batter (I leave out most of the sugar) and yet it’s so filling!

Our conclusion: we’re going to put up apples (in pints) again this year just to make into pancakes!

Grub | Comment (0)