Porkchops and Applesauce... minus the Porkchops

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” - George Bernard Shaw

Last week we received a plastic shopping bag full of apples and knew that no matter how much our son loves apples and we might enjoy them occasionally, we were not going to eat them all before they spoiled. It became the perfect opportunity for further adventures in canning! We decided we would make juice from the apples for our son and also preserve the byproduct - unsweetened applesauce. We also had some mangoes and peaches we had to use up before they went off, so we made mango peach jam.

The mango peach jam was improvised based on instructions with the box of pectin for each. Essentially we had enough of each to mix a half batch worth of ingredients for the mango jam with a half batch of the ingredients for the peach jam and voila! The mixture foamed and boiled up after adding the sugar, so we should get a good set from this batch.

The finished mango peach jam sitting out to cool after a boil bath, as well as a pint of apple juice. We're just going to put the pint in the fridge for our son, so no need to boil and seal, just cool.

We moved on to the apple juice using these instructions for making homemade apple juice. We had to improvise a little because we don't (yet) have a sieve, but we did have a colander and cheesecloth. After cleaning, cutting, and cooking down the apples as per the instructions, we deviated slightly to put the mash in the cheesecloth, move it around with a spoon to free up the juice, and then wring and squeeze the mash to get even more juice out of it.

Wringing and squeezing the mash in the cheesecloth.

The cheesecloth allowed us to really press the applesauce and get more juice from it.

You can see some juice trickling out of the applesauce here.

What we ended up with was one quart and one pint of rather tasty unsweetened, unfiltered apple juice...

We decided not to filter it and instead left it pulpy.

... and two quarts of equally tasty unsweetened applesauce. Yummy!

We decided to leave the peels in for extra fiber and texture. Mmmm.

The juice instructions mentioned that the applesauce could be preserved but didn't provide processing instructions. We used this homemade applesauce recipe for its processing instructions. We placed the jars in the boil bath and processed the applesauce for 20 minutes and the juice for 30 minutes.

We ended up cleaning and reusing the 12-quart stock pot we used to cook down the apples for the boil bath because the pressure cooker pot we use normally for canning wasn;t tall enough to boil quart jars.

After processing we set the jars out to cool. We are very much looking forward to having some of our homemade juice and applesauce when we feel like having some. And we only lost one apple that was too far gone to use.

Putting Veggies On Stack

“Permaculture is that art of the possible.” - Graham Bell

Stacking functions is a permaculture concept that means to seek many yields from a single element of a system. It's something I try to do whenever I can and remember to think to do so (obviously trying to increase that frequency!). So when I was planning dinner tonight I decided I would get inventive to stack functions while cooking the veggies.

The Challenge:

• Roast the meat.
• Boil the potatoes.
• Steam the cauliflower and asparagus.
• Cook the onions and mushrooms.
• Stack functions to get all of this done with as little energy and as few pans as possible.

How I Succeeded:

Roasting the meat and cooking the mushrooms and onions was pretty much a no-brainer. They all went in the same pan and went in the oven together. Pretty much status quo, and it makes the mushrooms and onions and meat tastier.

Cooking the rest of the veggies? Let's get creative!

1. Get a large (I used a 12-quart) stock pot and put the water and potatoes in it. Bring the potatoes to a boil.
2. Place a large steel colander in the pot to use as a deep steamer basket and load with cauliflower.
3. Place the steamer basket in the colander and load with asparagus.
4. Place the lid on top and cook until the veggies are ready to eat or prepare.

All three veggies were cooked in the same pan on one burner rather than three pans and lids and two steamer baskets on three burners. Added bonus for the colander pulling double duty as a steamer basket! I was able to reuse the colander to drain the potatoes. I should have prepared the mashed potatoes and cauliflower in the pot I used to cook them, but I admit I used a separate steel mixing bowl.

Kick Out The Jams

"The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today.” - Lewis Carroll

Something we've wanted to do for some time is start preserving food in a way that wouldn't require refrigeration or freezing. Hopefully someday when we have a little more control of our housing (i.e. not renting or renting from a landlord that will allow us to downsize appliances), we'd like to significantly downsize our refrigeration since it is such an energy drain.

Over a period of time we slowly worked on building up a supply for canning as we could afford to do so. We bought a canning kit with the pressure cooker and all of the tools needed for safe canning, then we bought a couple of cases of pint jars. We also were gifted a case of quart jars from a friend who moved out of the area which helped tremendously.

I had no prior experience with canning. It was always something that fascinated me (you mean people save food in glass jars for later? that's possible?) but also was a bit scary because it was different. And seemingly very time consuming. My partner had canned jams and jellies many years ago, so thankfully she was more comfortable and was able to help me step through my first experience. The result?

Our first round of blueberry jam! Both our preserved food and my confidence levels increased.

We received a bounty of 12 pints of fresh organic blueberries from our local food pantry with our weekly pick-up. It was almost as if some sort of cosmic providence was prompting us, serendipitously saying, "You've been preparing for this, now it's time to do it." And so we did. Our son devours blueberries, so we only chose to preserve four pints. While there certainly was some effort involved, I was pleasantly surprised by how little time it actually took. We read through the recipe a couple of times in advance and followed it to the letter. We ended up with the four perfectly sealed and set jars you see in the photo above. Success! I immediately felt empowered and confident that I could can our own food to save for later and spread out our food to be more resilient. And I don't mind saying that we made some very tasty jam. The first jar we opened was proof that making it ourselves was most assuredly worth the effort and far superior to store-bought jams and jellies.

We wanted to make mango jam from a bounty of mangoes we received from the food pantry, but we ended up not having enough to do so. Here's where the boosted confidence came in handy. I had read through the recipes for jellies and preserves some, and did plenty of online research on the "theory" behind canning and making canning recipes. Really fascinating stuff! Even with what we had remaining for blueberries after our son and our previous canning, we didn't have enough to even do blueberry mango jam. So we improvised. We ended up portioning out what we hoped was enough mango, blueberries, and apple juice (store bought unfortunately) to make enough of a fruit base for the box of pectin. The results?

Our second round of jam! Feeling totally empowered now.

It worked! We had a proper seal on all four jars and the jam set nicely. We still haven't tasted it yet to know whether it's a good flavor combination, but the process worked. If it tastes good, we promise to share the recipe.

We have visions of moving on to canning carrots (we always seem to have an overabudance of carrots, but thankfully they naturally keep long anyhow) and making pickles (our son loves pickles, too). So far everything we've done has been processed in a boil bath, which is a lot easier and less scary. I'm thinking pickles would be a nice progression for confidence building, but carrots may be the next push from necessity. Have I mentioned we get a lot of carrots? The scary part for me is that we'll have to process the carrots in the pressure cooker, and using a pressure cooker is very foreign to me and rather intimidating. But after some great success with making jams, I'm feeling a little less afraid of venturing into unknown canning territory.