Monday, August 16, 2010

What Have You Been Up To?

Okay, so I've been tired lately, but probably for good cause. Here are a few pictures of what I've been up to. (Notice the finished paper in the background?)



Picking vegetables from the garden.


Making tomato sauce (and freezing it since I found out mushrooms cause botulism if not pressure canned :( Mushrooms and wine were my only non-garden ingredients.


Plus

Plus

Plus


Equals:



Then I had to deal with the cucumbers! Just in case you can't tell, I have a HUGE bag of cucumbers.

And after a few hours

I actually made more jars of pickles than shown, but I gave three jars away and one didn't seal properly so it's in the refrigerator (and I am NOT going to show a picture of the inside of my refrigerator anytime soon). I still have a huge bag of cucumbers. More pickles to follow.

I also managed to sing in a choir concert this weekend, sort through 6 months of mail (don't ask, I don't open mail) and read three books in the past week.


Recipes:

Tomato Sauce:
25 tomatoes of various sizes
Handful of fresh picked basil
About 10 cloves of mini-garlic
Equivalent of about a half normal sized onion
salt, pepper, oregano to taste (I didn't grow oregano this year)
Mushrooms
Red Wine

Cut vines out of tomatoes and immerse in boiling water until skins pull free. *INCREDIBLY HANDY HINT* I just learned that you can freeze tomatoes as they get ripe until you get enough tomatoes. Don't bother blanching and peeling, when you pull them out of the freezer, run warm water over them and they will peal without this whole process. You won't be able to squeeze the seeds out though, so it could take longer. Maybe you could let the tomatoes defrost naturally after pealing them. I digress...

Put tomatoes in an ice water bath (or sort of cold in my case) until you can handle them and take off the skins. Smush out the juice (and set aside if you want to make tomato juice) and put tomatoes in a sauce pan along with all the other ingredients (add whatever you want, I've seen carrots and bell peppers added in many recipes). Simmer your sauce until it smells and tastes just the way you want it. You don't have to, but at this point if you want "normal" looking sauce, put it in the blender or food processor.

Scoop out serving sizes into freezer bags, label bags and stick them in the freezer. Don't bother with a pressure canner unless you don't have the freezer space, tomato stuff freezes great.

For the juice. Put the squished stuff through a food mill in the smallest strainer size. Heat until boiling, allow it to reduce by half. At this point you can either strain it again or leave it as is. Can if you want, but only if you put a tablespoon of lemon juice in each pint. This can be done in a water bath, but it's just as easy to freeze.

Pickles:
East German Recipe

This recipe is supposed to make "6 jars" but jar size differed. My mom came over to help so she determined how much we would actually use. I think we halfed this.

A bunch of cucumbers
2 1/2 liters water (10.56 cups)
1/2 liter 5% vinegar (2.11 cups) West Germany uses 10% acidity but it can't be found in the US anyway.
225 grams sugar (1/2 pound, or 1 cup)
2 hands salt (about 1 1/2 TBSP)
10 tsp mustard seeds
5 onions
5 tsp whole black pepper
Dill (we put in about 1 TBSP for each quart)

Prepare your jars by sanitizing them and keeping them warm.

Fill jars with 1 tsp mustard, 1/2 onion, 1 tsp black pepper, 1 TBSP Dill (or a sprig of fresh dill that we couldn't find nearby). Fill jar with cucumbers (ideally just the right size cucumbers, but otherwise chop them up into the right sized pieces).

Make a brine with water, vinegar, sugar and salt. Heat to boiling, then cover cucumbers with a brine sauce.

Let sit for 48 hours. You can either leave these in the refrigerator for 2 weeks or process them in a water bath for storage. We processed. Even if you process you should wait 2 weeks to eat them, so I have no idea how they taste. This recipe calls for far less vinegar than most American counterparts, so they won't be as sour as most U.S. pickles (which makes sense since my East German is always complaining about our pickles being too sour).

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