canning

Labor-Day-Weekend in Review

/ Shane / Leave a comment

In order to ease our driving experience, we decided to leave on Friday night about bedtime, so the kids would sleep in the car. BIG MISTAKE! Neither one of them had much interest in sleeping, and they ended up staying up pretty much the entire way there. Oh well.

Saturday morning we picked apples at an orchard, for making into applesauce. This was something we did every year when I was little, so we thought it would be fun to continue the tradition with the kids (oh yeah, and stock up on delicious and healthy applesauce – high fructose corn syrup need not apply). It was really nice. We had perfect fall weather, sunny but a little cool. Now that I’m used to picking blueberries, raspberries, etc. apple picking goes pretty fast. Plus we picked some, but we bought probably more than half already picked.

When we were done with that, I went off and played some paintball for about 5 hours for a bachelor party. As always, paintball was a lot of fun. I got shot in the neck again, but it wasn’t as bad as last time. I took one in the pinky that hurt pretty bad too, but I didn’t really have too many welts or anything, compared to some of the guys. We played one game where the bachelor could only get out if he was shot on a little square on his chest. I think they counted 16 welts on his torso. Ouch! Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and a lot of fun to hang out with a bunch of old friends.

When I got home, we had to make applesauce late into the night. We made 35 quarts and 11 pints. Not all of it was just for us, but we took the lion’s share. I don’t know what our final count was, but it was substantial! We still haven’t found room for it in the pantry. It was quite the operation, with 5 people all working at the same time, including two canners going.

The next day we went do my dad’s house. The plan was to go swimming and close out the pool for the season, but it had been so cool that we figured it wouldn’t happen. However, the pool temperature was surprisingly pleasant. We also found some time top play Pretty Pretty Princess, and dad won both times…I guess he’s a natural Pretty Pretty Princess. We also came away with an alarming amount of produce, including 7 squash, 5 zucchini, and 2 pumpkins (although one of them is big enough to count for 2 or 3).

Since we were in the canning mood, we decided to come back for round 2: salsa. We had tomatoes from our garden, plus everybody decided to drop off more tomatoes; so many in fact, that we ended up not even using our tomatoes when we canned! But we made 9 1/2 pints of salsa, and again canned late into the night. We’re really putting our canning skills to the test this year!

Finally, Monday was Labor Day and we spent it the way Labor Day aught to be spent: grilling out. Some family friends came over and Evie entertained us with tunes while we ate (as usual). Unfortunately we had to eat and run, since we had the drive back, and driving with 2 small children takes a lot longer than it would otherwise. It was nice though, we were in no hurry, so we even stopped and did some shopping on the way home. Of course, once we got home we had about a zillion things to do, so I ended up exhausted (especially since I spent the previous two nights canning instead of sleeping).

So, in summary, dessert.

Yes, everywhere we went had desert. Not just store bought stuff, but homemade deliciousness. I probably gained 5 pounds over the weekend. But it sure was delicious! If you count all the canning, I’d definitely say this trip was all about food. What better reason to take a trip?

The Big Trip, Part III – The Rest of the Story

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Finally, vacation was at an end, and it was time to go home. It was going to be a pretty long trip, so we decided to stop and go to a u-pick fruit place and get some raspberries.

The whole thing was sort of a disaster, from start to finish. It was really, really hot and the kids were tired and in a bad mood. We were there later in the day and the raspberries were pretty picked over, so it was tough to get many berries. Eventually, Sara took Evie over to pick peaches and I just tried to amass as many raspberries as I possibly could in a short time. We ended up getting a decent amount of raspberries, some peaches, and a big bucket of cherries, pre-picked and pre-pitted.

Later that night, after we were home and the kids were in bed, Sara and I made a big batch of raspberry freezer jam. Our strawberry freezer jam was quite delicious, so we have high hopes for the raspberry variety. It was actually quite simple to do.

This was followed the next night by a big batch of (sort of) cherry pie filling, with the fresh cherries. Our previous canning experience had been very successful and had left us with a lot of confidence and a lot of canning supplies. This time was no different, everything went smashingly. So we’re looking forward to our next canning experience as well as the delicious cherry deserts in our future.

In terms of what I was up to while the family was gone, it wasn’t all fun and games. Usually when something like this happens, I get excited thinking about all the free time I’m going to have. By the time it gets here, I have a big list of things to do, and I end up being busier than I usually am. So I said to myself, “I’m going to get all of this stuff done early in the week, so I can relax at the end of the week. The problem was, Sara called and updated the list midweek!

Sara: “I thought of some other things you could add to the list!”
Me: “I wasn’t really looking for more things…”
Sara: “I know, but it’s just stuff that we never have time to do.”
Me: “You know what else I never have time to do? Relax!”

The exciting thing about not having Sara there is eating all the things I don’t normally get to eat. In this case, that meant venison burgers and ham and noodles. Ham and noodles is one of my all time favorite meals, and is simply fried ham with slightly crunchy fried noodles. It was so good, I ate it twice.

There were two stories that I didn’t manage to fit anywhere else in these blog posts, so I am including them here:

  1. After I dropped the family off in Michigan and was driving back to Chicago, I ran into one of the worst rain storms I’ve ever seen in my life. I couldn’t see anything except the tail lights in front of me. That was all fine and well until about 5 cars in front of me simultaneously pulled over to the side of the road. After that I couldn’t see anything at all, so I pulled over as well. It was raining so hard (just rain, no wind) that even parked I couldn’t see out of my windshield. After sitting for 20 minutes or so, I decided to keep going. Just to occupy myself, I started counting the number of cars pulled over on the side of the road, waiting it out. I passed 52 cars! I can only imagine how many were pulled over at the height of the storm. Basically, the entire highway was shut down.
  2. When I was loading the car, I put the suitcases in the trunk and then went back for another load, leaving the trunk open. When I came back, I discovered that a bird had pooped into the trunk and onto the suitcases. Thanks a lot, universe.

Pickles!

/ Shane / 9 Comments

My grandma makes homemade pickles and they are to die for. I’ve always wanted to try to make the pickles myself so that I could rely on my own supply, instead waiting until she could sneak me a jar or two. I’m not saying she did sneak me jars and I’m not saying she didn’t, but I am saying that if she did sneak me jars and word got out (like on the Internet, for example), then I’d probably be in big trouble with the rest of my family.

So I planted some cucumbers this year on the porch figuring I’d get enough for a jar or two and we could give it a trial run. However, we had an opportunity to raid my grandma’s garden for cucumbers when she was on vacation, and we netted quite a few (and some dill).

our contribution

We had never tried canning before, and we were a little nervous about it. We purchased a nice set in anticipation of doing some more canning this year, especially once the tomatoes start rolling in from the garden. Previously we had just frozen everything and that worked pretty well, but, with the uncertainty of the garden next year, we might need to lay more of a supply by this year.

in progress

So, we managed to can 7 quarts of pickles and even had some spare cukes left over. One of the jars didn’t seal the first time around, but we re-processed it and it sealed the second time. Now it is just a matter of waiting for 6 weeks until these beauts are ready to go!

finished product