End of the Season Sauce

     The piles of produce grew as we continued to rip out our autumn garden with the frost laying in the dips along the garden's edges.  Like every year, we had to now find a way to use up, or put up, all of the produce in a semi-timely manner.  There were greenhouse tomatoes resting on our counter.  Another bucket of semi-green tomatoes on the kitchen floor, and yet another container full in the fridge because, let's face it, I ran out of counter and floor space.  A plethora of peppers coated a blanket on the floor of our spare bedroom as they change from green to their rainbow of goodness.  Another bucket full is jammed into the corners of the fridge.  

     Then there were everything that was trying desperately to find it's place to dry from the containers and baskets of herbs and beans to the basil that has overtaken the living room.  There was still more of all of those to come, as well as even more produce, that withstood the light frosts in the garden, and happily warm and cozy in the greenhouse.  It made for a lot of produce to use up, or put up, and I've managed to find just the recipe for a herb laden tomato sauce that made for wonderful mountain pies over the campfire, a zingy marinara for bread sticks, and tastes delightful on noodles.  

END OF THE SEASON SAUCE

Yields: 2 cups.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp Olive Oil (I used Extra Virgin as that's what was on hand)

2 medium cloves Garlic

1/8 cup chopped Onion

3/4 cup loosely packed fresh Basil (I used a mix of Purple Basil and Blue African Basil)

1/2 tbsp fresh Oregano

1/2 tbsp fresh Thyme

1/8 tsp fresh cracked Black Pepper

1 lb Paste Tomatoes, cored

1 tsp Sugar 

Directions:

Saute garlic and onions in olive oil until golden in a saucepan or edged skillet.  In the meantime, blend the remaining ingredients together in a blender.  Add them to the pan, and cook over medium heat until it reaches desired thickness.  (Note: Our paste tomatoes were fresh and not overly juicy or ripe so the thickness was reached in about 20 minutes.)  

Leftovers can be refrigerated for up to one week, or frozen for longer.   This sauce cannot be canned.

Gad-Cukes!

"Examine preserves [in storage], to see that they are not contracting mould; and your pickles, to see that they are not growing soft and tasteless."

– Lydia M. Child, The American Frugal Housewife (1832)

      Anyone else feeling a little tired lately?  It must be harvesting season, or canning season, or freezing season, or dehydrating season… hmm… maybe this is why I’m feeling a little tired.  Last week, I had the fortunate of walking out to our cucumber plants for the first time in my life, and harvesting cucumbers to process!  Then I had a few days where those cucumbers sat in a basket in my fridge and telling me to “process us quickly, before something else comes up!”  Looks like I better listen to those talking cucumbers because that sweet corn sure is coming in fast now! 

      Our first cucumber crop is looking to me like a batch of sweet pickle relish (and some bread and butter pickles)!  It’s not that we don’t like pickles (only I do actually, the husband can’t stand them), but some of our family members love the relish that we give as Christmas gifts with other goodies each year.  So before the day heated up, I headed out into the kitchen for some canning!  If you’d like to follow along and can some of your own sweet pickle relish, I’ve added the directions below. 

Ingredients:

• 6 cups seeded and finely chopped pickling cucumbers (We have “pickle barrel” cucumbers in the garden, so I ended up using five big ones and getting about 6 cups worth)
• 3 cups finely chopped onion (In my case that meant one big candy onion we had downstairs)
• 3 cups of seeded and finely chopped green and red sweet peppers (I used some from the freezer, and mixed together whatever I could find of the two since our pepper plants aren’t at the harvesting stage yet.  I usually try to go heavy on the red pepper for pretty, but couldn’t find enough of it to do so this year.  If you didn't notice, we're canning with what's on hand right now.)
• ¼ cup of pickling salt
• Cold water
• 3 cups granulated cane sugar (We prefer to use granulated sugar made with sugar cane instead of sugar beets, which are more likely to be GMOs.  You can find out on your bag whether you have sugar cane sugar or sugar beet sugar)
• 2 cups cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 2 teaspoons celery seeds
• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric

Directions:

Step 1: Scrub clean the cucumbers with a vegetable brush.  We actually have a carrot brush, which works wonderfully, thanks to one of the volunteers who gave out very meaningful Christmas gifts to all the staff members at a former job.  (She pegged what we’d like!  Our gift was all fun cooking stuff!).

Step 2: Start to multi-task, as I fill a water bath canner in the sink and start to get it up to temp on the stove by heating it on a lower setting as it will take a little while before I actually need it, I also start to finely dice and deseed the cucumbers.  Sure, you could use a chopper or food processor, but as some relatives and friends probably think by now, I must be a glutton for punishment as I hand chop them all.  For some reason, my mother taught me that chopping vegetables could be a joy – a task that I liked to take over when making lentil soup as a child.  Thinking back, perhaps she had some ulterior motives for this… All the “scraps” that I can’t use are going to the chickens.  (P.S. – All this hand chopping could take a while so pull out the laptop and turn on a video and try to pass the time.  I just happened to enjoy a very interesting BBC series on Edwardian farming on YouTube.)

Step 3: Finely chop onions.  (We discard our “scraps” to the compost bin bucket for these.) 

Step 4:  Finely chop peppers. Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with these peppers, they just happen to have frost on them from the freezer.  Thawing them just a little, but not entirely, makes them easier to cut. (We discard our “scraps” to the compost bin bucket for these.) 

Step 5: Combine all the vegetables and pickling salt into a pot or bowl and cover with cold water.  Let sit at room temperature for 2 hours.  Take a break!  (Actually, in my case, I started slicing cucumbers and onions and chopping garlic for bread and butter pickles as they chill for 3 to 12 hours in the refrigerator, so I could can them while the canner was hot.)

Step 6: Drain and rinse the vegetables in a colander under cold water in the sink.  Then return to the pot on the stovetop and add your spices, sugar and vinegar.  Bring it to a boil and reduce heat, allowing it to simmer for about 20 minutes or until about half the liquid is boiled off.  Make sure to stir occasionally or it could stick to the bottom!

Step 7: Ladle quickly into prepared jars, leaving a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of headspace on each jar.  (For some reason, it seems I never have enough hands available to remember to take a photograph of this step.)  Wipe rims clean and place lids and bands on tightly.  Process jelly jars for 10 minutes in a water bath canner.  Remove from the canner.  Place jars, upright, on cookie racks or clean dish towels to cool for at least 24 hours.

Yields approximately 8 jelly jars (8oz.).

And last, but not least – label the jars and load up the pantry!  Where am I putting these?  Oh, wait… there’s an empty spot!  Just let me shift a few things around… there.  DONE!  (At this point is where you can imagine a cartoon version of me standing back proudly examining my handy work as the cucumbers grow with profusion on the vine outside the window, about to explode at any moment.  And yes, a few short days later, it looks like we’ll have to be canning again soon.) 

 What have you been canning lately? 

A Very Berry Spring

“Economical people will seldom use preserves, except for sickness. They are unhealthy, expensive, and useless to those who are well.”

– Lydia M. Child, The American Frugal Housewife (1832)

      Oh, Mrs. Child, why must you be so disapproving of my jellies, jams and preserves?  Sure, they were expensive in your day with the cost of sugar and all, but when I can make some jam for under a dollar a jar (and most of the time between $0.50 and $0.75), it’s a beautiful thing.  Yes, they may be unhealthy with all that sugar, but if I’m going to eat peanut butter and jelly either way, I might as well make my own! 

Jars of Strawberry Jam Cooling in the Living Room

       There was a surprise awaiting us in the grocery store this past week – strawberries!  Piles and piles and piles of strawberries, and since my husband was with me (and I made the mistake of saying these berries at $0.99/lb. were much cheaper than if I waited to pick our own during the local season for $3.00/lb. jam), we left the store with sixteen pounds of them. 

      Now, before I hear from someone about how these strawberries are not organic, nor local, and we should be using both, I must confess, I sometimes go for things that are more cost effective rather than 100% healthy.  We presently can’t decide where to put or exactly how we’d like to grow don’t have strawberry plants.  With strawberry plants of our own we’d have the ability to make them as organic or inorganic as our hearts desired, but until then I’m washing the berries and hoping all the chemicals come off with the water. 

Strawberries Waiting on the Kitchen Table

Ingredients:

11 mounded cups of diced strawberries

13 cups of granulated sugar

½ cup lemon juice

2 packages of powdered fruit pectin (or a mounded 2/3 cup of dutch gel)

Directions:

Step 1: Wash the berries thoroughly and remove tops and any bruised/bad spots.

Step 2: Dice the strawberries to allow for a smoother chunky jam. 

Step 3: Mash the strawberries with a potato masher in a stockpot.  The chunkier you’d like your jam, the less you should mash your berries.  Heat the mashed berries on the stove over medium heat with pectin/dutch gel and lemon juice.  Bring to a full rolling boil.

Step 4: Add all the sugar at once and stir constantly, return to a full rolling boil.  (A full rolling boil is a boil that cannot be stirred down).  Boil for a complete minute and begin to fill jars.

Ladle quickly into prepared jars, leaving a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of headspace on each jar.  Wipe rims clean and place lids and bands on tightly.  Process jelly jars for 10 minutes in a water bath canner.  Remove from the canner.  Place jars, upright, on cookie racks or clean dish towels to cool for at least 24 hours. 

Yields approximately 19 jelly jars (8oz.).

And last, but not least – label the jars and load up the pantry!

Fastnacht Day!

      Perhaps you don’t live in our neck of the woods and have never heard of this very awesome holiday (boy are you missing out)!  For the rest of the country, you may know this simply as Donut Day, Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras.  They all come from the same idea of using up the fats in your kitchen before beginning the Lenten season.  Here in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, it’s known simply as Fastnacht Day.  

      Last year we had some spare time and went through the trouble of making our own fastnachts (and boy were they good).   Unfortunately this year, we didn’t have this time, but stood in a very long line to get “fastnachts,” or at least that’s what they were called.  Simply put, they were a glazed donut (which did taste good as well), and although labeled fastnachts, they were a donut that was missing that heavy potato goodness that a real fastnacht has.  

My husband rolling out the fastnacht dough. 

      Fastnacht, which translates to the “eve of fasting,” is a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch potato donut made on the eve of Lent to cleanse the house of all lard, fat, sugar and butter that were to be given up during the Lenten season.   The fastnachts were traditionally either cut into a doughnut shape or squares, and surprisingly had little sugar in them, but sprinkled with powdered sugar, honey, molasses or maple syrup, they certainly sweetened up.  

Cutting the fastnachts into donut shapes instead of their traditional squares.

      Few places in the local area still make real fastnachts, so we dug out our Mennonite cookbooks last year and spent the day kneading, rolling, cutting and frying three dozen fastnachts for us and some of my family members to try for the first time.    

Fastnachts rising on the counter before heading to the fry oil. 

      Of course we did "cheat" a few times, cutting them into donuts instead of squares, frying them in oil instead of more of the traditional lard (I didn't buy that much lard), and not frying them in cast iron over the open fire.  Oh well, it was pretty cold last year at this time as well, so I'm sure standing outside was out of the question then too.  

My husband flipping the fastnachts in the fry oil over the stove.  

     For those of you desiring to make your own fastnachts instead of eating donuts for breakfast, enjoy this recipe from the Landis Valley Farm Museum in The Landis Valley Cookbook: Pennsylvania German Foods & Traditions, which is similar to the recipe we used last year.  Enjoy!  

A Chilly Winter's Eve

“Water-gruel, with three or four onions simmered in it, prepared with a lump of butter, pepper, and salt, eaten just before one goes to bed, is said to be a cure for a hoarse cold. A syrup made of horseradish-root and sugar is excellent for a cold.”

– Lydia M. Child, The American Frugal Housewife (1832)

      I’ll take your word for it Mrs. Child.  No matter how much we like onions that concoction sounds divinely nasty!  In case you haven’t guessed, someone at our house has a cold, and there’s nothing to cure a cold like a good soup!  (Actually there are dozens of things that would work a lot better, but just roll with this, okay?)  So, today I’d love to make soup and bread for dinner to help “cure the common cold,” using two handy appliances in my kitchen, while I have a fun afternoon of board games with the extended family. 

      Can you even begin to imagine what Mrs. Child and our foremothers would have thought if they saw these things?  (Ignore the fact electricity wasn’t invented yet so those plugs would be pretty useless.)  Surely, keeping hot coals in the fireplace all night would seem pretty useless right around this time.  There’s no boiling water and back breaking labor as your soup simmers in a crock pot today!  No heading out to the bake oven in knee-high snow only to realize you once again burned your bread.  Nope, you now have the ability to bake bread even when you’re not home for three hours!  Isn’t the magic of modern technology sometimes amazing? 

      Now, I enjoy kneading my bread as much as the next person, but when you sometimes make 3+ loaves of bread a week, it can be a little much.  (The forty mini-loaves of bread in one day at Christmas, along with homemade fudge, was a “little much” for ten hours of work).  So today, dust off the bread maker, pull out the crock pot, and go on a journey with me, to the meal that wanting a rest will allow: Gone-All-Day Lentil Soup and Cheesy Herb Bread.

Gone-All-Day Lentil Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 pint of diced tomatoes (mine are unsalted and canned in tomato juice so I won’t be draining them)
• 1 pint of unsalted vegetable stock (you can also use either chicken stock or beef stock in place of vegetable stock for a more meaty taste)
• 2 cups of water
• 1 cup of lentils, washed
• 2 medium potatoes, diced
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 1 cup of green pepper, diced
• 3 carrots, coined
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tsp. dried parsley
• ¼ tsp. black pepper
• ½ tsp. sage (if desired for more flavor)

Directions:

Combine all ingredients into a crock pot and cook on low for seven hours.  (You can also cook it on the stove over medium heat for about 1 hour.)  Once done, it can be placed on keep warm until needed.  The prepared soup also freezes well for future meals. 

Cheesy Herb Bread

Ingredients:

• 10 oz. of water
• ½ tsp. of salt
• 1 ½ tbsp. of vegetable oil
• 3 ½ cups of bread flour
• 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese (can use shredded for a stronger taste, or substitute out cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, or pepper jack cheese)
• 2 tsp. dried parsley
• 1 tsp. dried marjoram
• ½ tsp. dried thyme
• ½ tsp. onion powder
• ¼ tsp. garlic powder
• 2 tsp. sugar
• 2 ¼ tsp. of active dry yeast (one packet) 

Directions:

Add ingredients in the order listed to the pan of the bread maker.  Turn on the bread maker about five minutes before you plan to leave so you can watch the dough.  If the dough is too sticky add more flour, a tablespoon at a time.  If the dough is not forming a ball and is too dry, add more water, a tablespoon at a time.  Cook on the French bread setting.  (Or, knead on the dough setting and remove from bread maker and place in a greased loaf pan.  Bake at 325° for 25-30 minutes or until bread sounds hollow when knocked upon.)

      And most importantly, enjoy your home-cooked dinner (even when you didn’t have to be home all day)! 

Pinch Your Pennies

“Bones from which roasting pieces have been cut, may be bought in the market for ten or twelve cents, from which a very rich soup may be made, besides skimming off fat for shortening.”  

– Lydia M. Child, The American Frugal Housewife (1832)

      The produce has been in from the garden for some time now, and the winter winds are officially upon us, but last week seems to be canning season all over again.  For anyone who wants to stretch a dollar, you’ll know Thanksgiving is one of the cheapest times of the year for good turkeys, and this year I roasted 28 lbs of two plump birds for the holiday.  Then came the picking clean of the birds, and who knows how many Thanksgiving leftovers before I was more than tired of seeing and smelling turkey.  The bird carcasses, however appetizing that may sound, were tossed into the freezer in a bag until a cold winter’s day.

Turkey Stock Cooling in the Kitchen

      We got that cold winter’s day two Thursdays ago.  The winter winds whipping across the open fields and snow blowing here and there, and out came the turkey carcasses, and whatever scraps of the birds had been left from Thanksgiving.  Three stock pots and four pressure canner loads later, we have more than enough turkey stock for the winter months and into next Thanksgiving (where we’ll substitute it for store-bought broth in our stuffing and make it into gravy) out of what would usually have been thrown away. 

Ingredients:

• Enough turkey bones, fat, drippings and “scraps” of turkey to fill a stockpot 1/3 of the way
• 2 gallons of water (32 cups)
• 2 medium onions, quartered
• 3 stalks of celery cut into 1” pieces
• 10 whole bay leaves 
• 20 whole black peppercorns

Directions:

Fill each stock pot approximately a third of the way with the pieces of the turkey that were picked clean from the bird.  Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil and simmer for a few hours.  Stock should be a creamy color.  Double over a piece of cheese cloth in a colander, and strain out the stock from its ingredients into another pot or bowl. Strain fat from stock as it cools, and then reheat the strained stock.   

Prepare a weighted gauge pressure canner by utilizing its directions.  Ladle quickly into prepared jars, leaving a 1/2 inch of headspace on each jar.  Wipe rims clean and place lids and bands on tightly.  Process quart jars for 25 minutes or pint jars for 20 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure using pressure canner’s processing directions.  Place jars, upright, on cookie racks or clean dish towels to cool for at least 24 hours.  

Yields approximately 8 quart jars or 16 pint jars. 

And last, but not least – label the jars and load up the pantry!