Under Pressure: Pressure Canning Without Fear

I have a new post up at Feminist Mormon Housewives on pressure canning tomatoes, though the tips are helpful for any food you want to pressure can (low acid foods like green beans, and meats, and things like soups should be pressure canned.

Product Preview: In search of the perfect lunch container

I've been searching for over a year now for the perfect container to send homemade yogurt to school with my kids for lunch.  I've looked at lots, and found a few that might work, but they just cost so much that I hadn't yet bit the bullet and bought them.

Enter Preserve.  The containers are made from recycled #5 plastics (things like yogurt cups).  Kind of fitting to use recycled yogurt cups to store my homemade yogurt.

At 3.99 for two or 9.99 for ten, they're inexpensive enough that I don't worry so much about sending them to the school lunch room.  Plus they're super cute.  I'll report back after I get them and we've tried them out a few times.

The website sells toothbrushes and razors (and the neat thing about these, is that you send them back when you're done and they recycle them to make more), kitchen items and tableware.  

Apples

Head over to feminist Mormon housewives to read my new post, and learn how to can applesauce and pie apples. 

(pay no attention to the jar of apricot puree)

Salsa Tutorial Plus lots more...

I posted over at Feminist Mormon Housewives this week, head on over and learn how to can your very own salsa, it's easy, and Oh So delicious!

While you're there you can check out my other "Inner Pioneer" posts:

 Pickles Tutorial

Pollination (bees baby!)

Foraging

Lessons from the green bean patch.

Backyard Chickens, they're easier than you might think.

Make your own yogurt: a tutorial.

Tips for simplifying gardening.

How to grow and care for your own berry patch.

Edible Perennials make for low-work gardens: Asparagus, Rhubarb, Garlic

So you grew garlic, here's what to do with it...

Jam Tutorial

Soil- keeping it healthy helps your garden grow!

TIps for growing healthy tomato plants.

Alice Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers

Every year, I plant one or two jalapeno pepper plants.  Inevitably, if I plant one, it dies, and if I plant two, they both flourish.  The same thing seems to happen with zucchini plants.  It just happened that while I was making salsa with my Mister, we took a break for lunch, and he pulled the store bought jar of pickled jalapeno peppers out of the fridge to put some on his sandwich.  It was an "aha" moment.  Something we've been buying that we don't need to be.  A few days later I went out and picked all the jalapeno peppers, did a little googling for a good, simple recipe and got busy.  My adjusted recipe worked perfectly for 2 half pints of chopped peppers.  

1 quarts jalapeno peppers
1 cups white wine vinegar
1 cups water
1/2 teaspoon pickling salt per half pint
1 small garlic clove peeled, whole per half pint

Wash the jalapeno peppers, then, wearing gloves, chop them all into quarter inch slices.  The gloves are important so that you don't burn your skin.

Fill your jars, leaving an inch or so headspace (these were packed down a bit before we added the brine).

Add garlic clove and salt.

In a pan, combine vinegar and water and bring to a boil.  Pour boiling liquid into jars, wipe rims, and top with 2 piece caps.  Process in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes (adjusted for altitude in my area it was actually 20 minutes).  

This is my first year getting into pickling, and it's so easy, I can't believe I haven't done it before.  Remove the jars from the BWB canner, and place on a towel on the counter until cool.  Check for seal by pushing in on the lid.  If it didn't seal, put it in the fridge and eat it first.  Jars that sealed can be wiped down and put in the pantry.  Delicious, easy pickled jalapeno peppers ready for use all year!

Garlic Scapes and Garden Update- June

Last week I finally got around to cutting the garlic scapes.  Garlic scapes are the stem that the flowering head grows on.  They should be cut off to allow more growth to go to the bulb.  

You cut them at the point they meet the leaves.  I think I had close to 25 scapes.  Cut just below the flower bulb and discard the upper part (I fed them to my chickens).

Coat scapes with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt.

Put on a hot grill (this was a bedtime snack...)

It's just like cooking asparagus.  They were tasty, but the two of us could only eat so many.  The rest I pureed with olive oil, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts- garlic scape pesto.  We ate some on pasta for dinner the next night and the rest, I put it in little containers and froze for later.

This morning when My Mister got back from a scout campout, we headed over to my cousin's house.  She's out of town and said we could pick her raspberries.  We picked about a gallon of berries.  Two trays full went in the freezer, and we saved a bowl for eating.  Some day I'm going to have a patch like that.  We'd have plenty to eat, make jam, and freeze enough to last the winter.  Also canning.  I canned a few jars last year as an experiment, and while we didn't like them for eating, My Mister loved them for putting in smoothies.  I'm all for smoothie fruits that don't take up freezer space!

After picking berries, we took naps (we all had late nights) then I planted this rocoto pepper plant that we started from seed.  It's in a self-watering container, which hopefully means I don't kill it off.

I planted three small cherry tomato plants in a larger self-watering container.

I mowed the patio-yard with the reel mower.  Plus My Mister moved the dog kennel since the backyard is now fenced in.  The property value just took a jump up.

My Mister moved things around and weed whacked around the chicken coop.  The chickens get the dog kennel and now have a much bigger yard to roam in.

I watered the garden, and My Mister put the last of the grass clipping pile and spread it out on the pathways.  The garden is looking great, although the sprinkler system is not working.  The control box malfunctioned.  It's getting replaced tonight- I'm tired of hand watering.

My Mister mowed the field.

I buried the potato plants again.  I'm mildly concerned about the potato box.  Apparently late season potatoes work better, and I think the variety I have here is a mid-season.  Hopefully I'm not disappointed this fall to take the thing apart and have only a hand full of potatoes.  The plants have grown really well, so whatever happens, I'll do it again next year, but I'll be more careful about selecting a good variety.

Early Morning Watering and Garden Puttering

This isn't garden or puttering, but you can never have too many cute baby pictures... Baby E playing on his "computer".  We train them young around here.

I *think* this is a cucumber.  There are so many weeds that look similar that it's hard to know for sure- so I'm not pulling anything until they get a little bigger and I can better distinguish weed from plant.

The transplanted raspberries seem to be doing pretty well- we only lost a couple.

Beans are up, and I'm happy to report that the saved seeds appear to be coming up at the same rate as the purchased seed.

Finally, potatoes!  There are only three plants up, so hopefully the others pop up soon, so I can bury them all again...

Some of these are weeds, but most of them are sunflowers.  It's going to be fun to have the long row of them edging the garden.

Blackcaps.  Even without the bees, they seem to be thriving and there are lots of buds where fruit will form.

****

I didn't take a picture, but the tomatoes and peppers are being hardened off, so we'll get them planted on saturday.  Also, there are three cracked eggs on the garage floor that I've been putting off cleaning up... I put them in the pocket of the stroller canopy to bring to the house, and when we got to the garage, baby E pulled the canopy down, dumping the eggs.  I about cried because we have two or three broody hens and eggs aren't as abundant as they have been.

Garden Progress and a DIY Wasp Trap

My Mister and CP worked on digging a trench to run the sprinkler line to our new smaller "big" garden.  Since the house is going to be under construction this year, we'll have trucks driving over our regular garden spot.  My Mister plowed up an area further south, leaving room for trucks to get through where they'll need to.  It makes the big garden smaller than we'd like it, but we'll survive.  Originally he was going to run a line all the way up the side of the garden, but the side by the sheds is so rocky that we decided to run the line just next to the sheds, and from there, just do some sort of above-ground line.  We don't know if we'll need to use this garden again next year or can move back to our regular location which will soon be my back yard.  (Imagine- gardening in my own garden in my own back yard....sigh...)

12 rows of green beans.

3 rows of potatoes.

One peach tree.  This replaced the peach tree we planted with my dad two years ago that died over the winter.  It's a little taller than I like for a new fruit tree, but it had the best shape of all the trees at the nursery.  I can't remember the name, but it's a mid to late producer (which means it's safer from frosts), freestone, and very sweet. 

One Bartlett Pear.

This is my potato tower.  I plated 12 or so seed potatoes in the bottom.  Once they sprout, we'll screw the first round of slats around the bottom of the tower and fill it in with soil or something... It will end up being a lot of soil, so I'm not totally sure about what I'm going to use.  I have a big bag of peat moss, so I may use that.  I also have a lot of old potting soil, which I may use.  The idea is that as the plants grow, you build up the sides of the tower.  I'll be able to harvest early potatoes by unscrewing the bottom slat and pulling the little potatoes out- all without disturbing the rest of the tower.  I've posted the link before, but I got the idea from pinterest, and this website.

The strings are to deter Inti dog from romping through my newly planted garden.  This is the bean side.

The potato side (well there are more beans over there too..).  My Mister says I need to work on my straight rows.  Whoops.

These are the raspberries we got from my cousin.  We were going to plant them somewhere else, but it was filled with weeds, and we didn't have time to get it ready, since the raspberries were a last minute trade for some of our tomato plants.  This will be a fine place for raspberries.  I'm just happy to have a year head start from when I thought I'd be planting raspberries in my yard.

The far end that isn't planted yet will hold squash and as many tomato plants as we can fit in.  Along the right side of the picture I planted a row of giant sunflowers.  

Gratuitous chicken pic.  I have two broody hens, and they weren't tempted out by the greens I tossed in.

I saw a tutorial on pinterest for a homemade wasp trap.  We had several crawling around in the chicken coop, so I cut the top off of a 2-liter bottle, inverted the top inside the bottle, and filled the bottom with vinegar and sugar.  I caught three wasps and several flies the first couple of days, but haven't caught anything since.  I think it needs to be refreshed regularly.  

Hello Egg.  No reason for this picture, other than to express my joy that it is spring, and the grass is green, and the eggs are aplenty.  

Spring Garden Update

The new bean seeds arrived.  I was hoping I'd have enough from what I saved last year, but I decided those needed supplementing.  The saved seeds are "Provider" while these new seeds are "Bountiful".  Maybe next year I can call the cross-pollinated seeds Bountiful Provider.  I like the sound of that, and unless Bountiful is not, the cross pollinated seed ought to live up to it's name. Especially considering we still have some 2010 jars of canned beans.  That was the year I was pregnant and wishing that picking beans would send me into labor.   Now I just have to scrape all the saved seeds out of the pods.  I was lazy last year and just stuck them all in a bucket in the garage.

The seed potatoes arrived a little while back, and I finally got around to slicing them up.  Potatoes are my experiment for this year.  I don't expect to get a years supply off of this crop, but we'll see how they do.  I'm trying Sangre and Desiree.  We're building something along these lines...  It's a potato tower, that will sit in our raised bed, so hopefully keeping them watered won't be a problem.  That was my issue several years ago when I tried growing potatoes in buckets.  My elaborate watering system (using a stick to divert water dripping from the faucet every time the soaker hoses watered the garden) stopped working while we were gone for the week, and my plants died.  Some plants will have to go in the big garden since the potato tower isn't going to hold more than 12-16 seeds.  

My experiment from last year is actually more of this years' experiment, the garlic (Music) looks great, and I'm hopeful that this will actually be enough to last a year and have some to plant in the fall.  My goal is to work up to a years supply plus seed.  We'll see.  

Peas.  One of these years I'm going to plant enough that I can freeze some.  This patch won't produce enough for any to even make it in the door.  The kids will eat them as fast as they are ready.  

Asparagus.  I planted the roots three years ago, so this is the first year I've been able to harvest anything.  We went on vacation for a weekend and came home to some majorly overgrown asparagus, so I picked everything that was tender enough to eat, and we had it for dinner, and everything else is waiting to be turned into soup.  Currently there are only two stalks coming up, so the next picking might be more of a snack than part of dinner...

HB363

House Bill 363 is a bill which would allow Utah Schools to drop sex education classes, and prohibit them from teaching about contraception if they choose to keep sex education classes at all.  Research shows this is not the direction we ought to be moving.

I understand the reasoning, that we don't want to give young people the impression that we approve of them becoming sexually active at young ages, or outside of marriages, but we have got to put the practicality and health and safety of our young people ahead of our ideology.  This bill is a message bill, and the message it sends is that our ideology matters more than our youth.

There are going to be young people who have sex before we'd like them to.  By not even talking about it, not only are we not preparing them to be responsible when they choose to have sex, but we're not even giving them tools to wait for sex either.

I'm deeply disappointed by the vote our state house has made today, and encourage everyone to contact their senators and ask them to vote no on this bill.  It's a mistake, and we owe our youth better.

Here's a great article on why Abstinence Plus education is the most effective.  Send the link to your senator, and let your House representative know that you're disappointed by his or her vote.

Occasionally I receive products from BzzAgent to try out and review.  The most recent was Comforts diapers, wipes, and sippy cups.  These are found at Kroger brand stores.  Here in Utah, that's Smiths and Smiths Marketplace. 

I'm not usually a huge fan of store brand diapers.  They're thinner, the gussets are often flimsy, the tabs are weak and there is usually a terrible fragrance added.  Comforts diapers were thinner, and the gussets were not as substantial as a higher quality brand name, but overall, I think they worked well.  They are not scented and didn't cause rash problems on baby E's backside.  We had one blow out with them, but an occasional blow out when he's wearing disposables is not unheard of.  The tabs are the velcro type tabs, and held really well, an I didn't have any tear off on me.  

Price wise, they're less than brand name diapers, even from costco.  If I combine coupons and sales, I can still get brand name diapers for less, but these would work well for the in-between coupons/sales periods.

I actually really liked the wipes.  They are not scented, and didn't cause rashes either.  They felt fairly thick, and I would buy them again.  

I initially loved the sippy cups.  My 18 month old liked them better than his other sippy cups, and drank more from them.  My only concern was how thin the plastic was, and sure enough, after a couple of times being thrown "overboard", the bottom of the cup split open.  If your baby doesn't throw his cups down, or you are more attentive than I am, these are great cups.  We'll continue to use our second cup while running errands, but not in the high chair anymore.  I especially like the built in cover for the mouth piece.  Baby E liked it as well.  I'm not sure I would buy the cups again because of the thin-ness, but if you're using them instead of the take and toss type cups, these are definitely a step up.  They don't leak, and the mouth piece has a cover, which is great for carrying drinks around in the diaper bag.  I've also seen a leash you can attach to sippy cups, which might prevent them from getting cracked when babies throw them.