Time to Fill the Jars!

It's so wonderful to have a circle of good people about; not only do I have a great family but my church family is something special too.  One of my church family arranged for me to trade a bunch of my seedlings I grew this spring for some farm fresh chickens.  I'm pretty sure I came out the winner on this one!  The chickens were raised without chemicals, drugs, or hormones, and their home was only a dozen miles from my homestead.  Eat local, right?

Well these chickens met their end a couple of weeks ago; by the time I got over after church to lend a hand the bloody bit was over, so I got to help a little with the bagging and weighing part.  There were chicken carcasses all over the kitchen, and a lot of gabbing and laughing as the work was done, sort of like an old-time work bee.

Ideally, I would have brought all twenty chickens home and stayed up all night stuffing them into jars and wrassling with the Creature to get them all processed.  However the combination of having to work, and the imminent visit of the small humans known as nephews had me frantically making room in the freezer.

So I pulled out several chickens this weekend, chopped them up, filled my jars, and processed them.  Eight pints done so far, and all sealed.  It seems the Creature and I have called a truce; pressure canning isn't nearly the frightening, nerve-wracking thing that it was.  I did learn a few lessons:  a sharp knife is essential (I'll have to learn to keep them sharp!), it is much easier to cut the raw meat when it is still partially frozen, and working with partially frozen meat can really freeze your hands!

The garden is very sad, mostly overcome by the relentless weeds.  I will have to purchase beans and corn from my Amish neighbors to have enough to can up this season, which troubles my frugal heart, as I should be able to get enough from my garden, rather than using money for vegetables, but you do what you have to do, right?  I do have a few spaghetti squash, peppers, and some tomatoes are finally turning red.  I like to do most of the tomato prep work outside, just because it makes such a big mess.  I do the work at my picnic table, and can simply hose everything down.

I start with the best tomatoes I can pick, and wash them before dropping them into boiling water, using the blancher.  My grill opens up enough to accommodate the blancher and does a good job of keepng the water boiling.  After the tomatoes have been in the boiling water for just a few minutes, I pull them out and plunge them into a bowl of cold water.  this makes the skins loosen, and cools them enough for handling.  I pull the skins off, and then put the tomatoes through my Victorio strainer.  This great little kitchen gadget will crush the tomatoes, pushing all the seeds and tough bits out the end, while allowing the puree to pour into a bowl.  This whole process makes a huge mess, especially when the plunger makes a tomato squirt all over - usually getting the walls, ceiling, and my face, while completely missing the newspapers put down to catch the drips.  The bowls of puree are dumped into my heavy duty stock pot, cooked down to the desired consistency, and then jarred and processed.  This method is great because the puree lends itself to so many recipes - everything from ketchup to soup to dried tomato leather.  Quarts are water-bathed for forty minutes, pints for thirty-five.  While I grow heirloom tomatoes that weren't bred for sweetness, there's no way to be sure how acid they are, so I add about a tablespoon of lemon juice to each jar, just to be sure.

The Outside Kitchen!

There's nothing so lovely as jar after jar of bright red tomato puree lined up on the counter!

Until next time, may God bless you and keep you.

Ten Pounds of Pressure

The food co-op had boneless chicken breasts on sale this week, so it was time to get out the Creature and have another go at pressure canning.  This time I did it a little differently and did not cook the chicken, but raw packed it instead.  It took longer than expected to get it cut up and in the jars; I'm convinced it's time to spend a bit of money on a decent cutting board.  This whole cutting stuff up on a paper plate thing is getting old fast.  I filled each jar with bite-sized chunks of raw chicken, leaving 1" of head space, and got them in the canner.  I always add a splash of vinegar to keep the minerals in my well from leaving a white film on my jars, so got that in with the required amount of water, and turned up the gas.  It's not quite so scary now when the Creature hisses and spits and whistles as it comes up to temperature, thought it's still enough to drive the dawg into hiding.  I was feeling pretty good as it merrily rattled along, thinking this isn't so hard, after all, and the seventy-five minutes went by fairly quickly as I did some chores around the house.  After the timer went off, I let the canner cool for about 30 minutes, then took the lid off and waited another five minutes before pulling the jars out.  It was a bit of a shock to pull up on one of the jars, only to have the bottom of the jar and all the chicken stay in the pot.  Uff da!  New discovery for today:  if I have a bit of an issue getting the empty jars off the high closet shelf, and one of them bounces off my head, hits the stool I'm standing on, and rolls down the hallway, don't use it for canning anymore!  (And no, I'm not entertaining any speculation as to which impact actually damaged the jar!)  The jar stayed in place while the canner was heating; the bottom of the jar simply separated from the rest in one piece when I tried to lift it out.  Thankfully there's no glass shards, the chicken was salvageable and is now in the fridge for lunch tomorrow.  Of course the bottle of lemon juice fell on my foot when I opened the fridge, and all this after a jar of jelly jumped off the pantry shelf and hit my ankle bone while I was trying to get the Creature down from it's nest.  Wasn't the full moon last night?

Call it bravery or foolishness, but despite all the mishaps I loaded the canner with the second batch of jars and put it on the stove again.  It's chortling away as I type; what the outcome will be this time I hardly care to guess, but I'm really hoping for an uneventful end to the evening and eleven pints of canned chicken ready for the pantry.

Until next time, may the Good Lord bless you and keep you.

Ooops.