YUMMY!!

Holy heck. Just proof that some things I make are incredible. At work yesterday - ready for snack time - pulled out some goat cheese with green tomato chutney and had it with wheat thins - sweet potato crackers

Bloody amazing.

Yum!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! and.....Pumpkin overload

Hubby had to work today so we are had Thanksgiving Dinner with family yesterday.  My brother and sister-in-law flew in from out west a few days ago to see family and we had a wonderful thanksgiving feast.  Of course, 3 special people were not able to join us - My sister in law spend dinner with her family and My step father and my brother-in-law are currently out of the country for work.  

Darren and Kev went to help out a friend close up his parent's cottage and do some work around the property that needed to be done.  This friend lost his baby girl a few weeks ago so Darren and a bunch of work buddies are heading up to get everything done for them.  I wanted to go but given I'm still forbidden to do manual labour of any sort because of my back injury, I stayed home with Miss Em. 

After  a restless night, Em was up bright and early at 6:30am despite trying to get her to nap for just a little bit longer -- it wasn't going to happen.

By 7:30 we were starting the prep for making pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving Dinner.  

We made the crust from scratch, put it in the fridge to cool and set a bit and we started on the pumpkin pie filling.  Since I didn't have any left over from last year in the freezer (we lost everything in our freezer in July when we went away and the freezer door was left open 1/2 an inch.  Yep - quite the mess). I had to use <gasp> canned.

Just kidding - in all fairness, canned pure pumpkin is just fine.  However - since I'm trying to watch what my family eats and am attempting to feed them more locally grown, fresh, organic food and produce, I question what nutrition is lost in the commercial canning process.  I already know the taste isn't as good as fresh but since canning pumpkin puree at home is not safe, sometimes canned is the only option.

Yes.  You did read that correctly.  Home canning, using any method (boiling water or pressure canner) of pumpkin puree is not safe.  I have done a lot of research on this topic and other than canning pumpkin cubes (which still can be questionable) it cannot safely be done....so I won't do it.

Freezing pumpkin puree is perfectly fine.  So I do that.  

After we got the pumpkin pies made (Em 'decorated' the crust edges - she's awesome!) and into the oven, I cut the 6 pie pumpkins I picked up saturday in half and scooped out the seeds.  

Pumpkins ready to go into the oven.

Pumpkin pies out of the oven and starting to cool - she did a great job on the crusts eh??

Back to the pie pumpkins....

I baked them at 350 for 1 hour and took them out to cool for about another hour (just until they were cool enough to handle).  

When they were cool, I scooped out the meat and put it in the food processor.  Once pureed, I took the pumpkin out and put it in a food strainer to strain out the water.

Once that was done, I filled ziploc bags (already labeled with name/date/amount).  Then into the freezer they went.

Next time I want to make pumpkin anything...pancakes, bread, pie, cookies, cheesecake, scones, cake...I just need to take out a bag and let it thaw in the fridge.

Pumpkin Puree

Ingredients

·      6 pie pumpkins, halved with the seeds removed

Directions

1.     Bake halved pumpkins in a 350 degree oven for 1 hour.
      Remove pumpkins and let cool
      Scoop out pumpkin meat and blend in food processor
      Drain water out of puree
      Place in ziplock bags, labeled with amount and date.
      Freeze.

Yield

·     12 cups

Cost

·      Pie Pumpkins - 6 for $10

·      Total - $0.83 per 250ml.

It's only FALL!!!

We got hit with an unexpected frost the other night.  It was supposed to go down to around 5 degrees but for some reason or another, Mother Nature decided that was too warm.

At 6:45 I got in the car to head to work. My lovely husband had left my window open a crack so the outside and inside of my car windows were covered in a thin layer of ice.  The not-going-away-with-the-defroster ice. I had the pleasure of having to scrape (YES SCRAPE!!) off ice in SEPTEMBER!  Seriously?  What.  The.....oh nevermind.

Needless to say, my tomatoes were done with the idea of growing and after the frost, they looked pretty sad.  When I got home from work I massacared picked the remaining green tomatoes off the plants and thought to myself what on earth am I going to do with these?

Low and behold I did a quick search and found what seemed to be a good recipe for green tomato chutney.  As per "me" I decided to try it but wanted to tweak it a little bit.  Boy am I glad I did!.  This recipe turned out really well and it is a bit weet, but tangy with a bit of spice as well.  Tastes like Christmas!

Green Tomato Chutney

makes 7 cups

12 cups chopped green tomatoes

2 1/2 cups chopped onion

2 cups white vinegar

3 cups brown sugar

4 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon cloves (use a teaball or spice bag to keep them from overpowering your chutney)

4 cinnamon sticks

6 star anise pieces

1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes (use more for a spicier chutney)

1 cup dried cranberries (or raisins if you don’t like cranberries)

2 teaspoon sea salt (if using regular table salt, use 1 teaspoon)

Combine tomatoes, onion, vinegar and sugar in a large non-reactive pot over medium heat. 

Add the ginger, cloves, cinnamon sticks, star anise and red chili flakes. (I put the cloves and star anise in a tea ball so I didn't have to pick them out individually at the end)

Cook over low heat for approx 1.5 to 2 hours, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

About half way through cooking, add cranberries.  

Add salt at the very end of cooking (to taste).

When it has reduced by more than half, and become deep golden brownish in colour, turn off heat.

Remove cinnamon sticks and star anise/cloves tea ball. Fill jars, wipe rims, apply lids and screw on rings.

Process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

Eat on turkey sandwiches, or with a bit of goat cheese.  YUMMY!

It's not all about the cleaning

It's also about the food.

Jam, Jelly, Pickles, Peppers, Tomatoes.....

I'm a bit of a f-r-e-a-k.

Canning is an art....and given I can't draw stick people, it's an art form that surprisingly suits 'me'.  Unfortunately, other than the token strawberry jam, it seems many people don't really can their food like the old days.  Canning and preserving food is a ritual and is so serene to me.  Spending hours in front of a hot stove on a hot summer day gives me an inner peace that nothing else can (pardon the pun).

I didn't always 'can' food but I've been cooking and baking as long as I can remember.  My grandmother and I would spend hours in her tiny kitchen making jam, spagetti sauce, baking christmas cookies, rolling rum balls and perfecting her cheesecake.  The jam ended up in jars in the freezer (yeah, my grandfather pulled out a jar of jam from 1993 the other day.  He says it was perfect.  There is no way I would even try it.)  It's hard to explain my grandfather when it comes to food - pretty much he will eat anything....no matter how old, how freezer burnt or how unidentifiable it may be.  I love him more than anything....... but that's just weird.  His rules??? Don't ask him to eat peanut butter on anything other than toast.  Bananas will only be bought at $0.29/lb even if he has to drive across the city to get them.  Habitant Pea Soup is fantastic and Kraft dinner will never go bad.  I love that man.

This year I had BIG plans.  My new home has a huge yard and given we live a town over from the closest grocery store I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to beg convince my husband to build me the vegetable garden beds I always wanted.  I wanted 4, he wanted 1, we settled in 3....with the proviso that there was room for a 4th if we need it.

The 4th will be made this fall.

The garden beds were made last fall and filled with compost/earth and they sat until spring.  I spent a fair amount of time during the winter looking up varieties of seeds and deciding what I would put where in each garden.  In february I ordered the seeds and in March they were started indoors.  Rows upon rows of little seedings began to pop up.  It was beautiful.

Then the seedlings died.

Not so beautiful.

Seriously??  Where did I go wrong??

I have no idea - so when the earth was warm enough to work and the danger of frost had passed I made a trip to the local nursery (local meaning 35 minutes away) and picked up some tomatoes, peppers and whatever other starter veggie plants I could find.  After carefully plotting and planting my veggies, I planted the remaining seeds from the packages in rows, marked everything and waited.

My garden turned out beautifully.  The tomatoes were 6 bloody feet tall and although the strawberries didn't produce more than 5 berries all year long, they took over the entire garden.  The onions were sweet, the cucumbers and zucchinis were bountiful.  The ground cherries are amazing and the beets were an epic failure because they were overtaken by the ground cherries.  The carrots were ok but too close together to grow much, the leeks never showed up, the potatoes are not ready yet and the herbs were friggin amazing!!!! I learned many lessons over the course of the first season of these gardens and I know what I will and will not plant next year.  The 4th bed will be built later this month and next year I will have more space and will re-arrange things to maximize efficiency and solve some issues.  I'm already starting to put the gardens to bed for the year and have begun the pick out the new varieties of seeds for next year....I'm looking for more heirloom and organic items for next year as I'm confident now as to what works best in our garden.

Back to canning.

June is the first real opportunity to get down and dirty into canning.  STRAWBERRIES!!!!  Around here, mid-June to mid-July is strawberry season.  The first day the fields were open, we took the kids out and picked 2 4litre baskets of berries.  I wanted more, the kids were tired, the kids won, we left.

I have tried freezer jam, cooked jam with sugar, cooked jam without sugar, cooked jam with no pectin and this is what works best for me.

I usually do one batch of "no pectin" Strawberry jam - it really is amazing....but the kids love the thicker one I make which has the pectin in it.

One note here.....sometimes the fruit in the jam floats.  It's not a big deal.  It doesn't change the taste of it, it just may not look as pretty.  I. Don't. Care. anymore.

Strawberry Jam

Ingredients

·      6 cups strawberries (hulled, washed and crushed)

·      4.5 cups of sugar

    1 package fruit pectin

Directions

1.     Pour strawberries into a large dutch oven.

2.     Bring to a boil.

3.     Add the pectin and bring back to a boil.  Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

4.     Remove from heat.  Stir for 5 minutes to prevent fruit from floating and skim off foam as needed.

5.     Pour into pre-sterilized jars.

6.     Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. 
      Remove from water, let sit undisturbed for 24 hours. 

Yield

·      6 cups