The best part of summer, for me is my garden. I loathe summer for any other reason. I hate the heat, I hate the humidity and heck, I can't even say I like the beach that much. I am much more an autumn/winter kind of girl, but summer does have one perk and that is the satisfaction of seeing hard work come to fruition through the garden. This time of year we have lovely offerings coming out of our garden in the form of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, peppers and berries. We have plums and lemons as well. While we can all year long, this time of year is really crunch time because you want to can at the peak of freshness. So while summer may seem endless and canning may never seem to end this time of year, the good folks at Ball have made it a fun celebration of an age old tradition!
National Can it Forward Day will be celebrated and observed on August 1st this year and is an homage to home canning. A way to bolster those of us who may have been canning for many years and a way to encourage those who have an interest but just don't know where to start! So I hope you will join me and others on Saturday to celebrate National Can it Forward Day! You can tune into the Ball website for a live demonstration and lots of great presentations all day long. You are going to love the learning opportunities that will be presented! Here is some information on what you will be able to see and learn on this fun day celebrating home preserving!
Join us on Saturday August 1st for International Can-It-Forward Day! Now in its 5th year, Can-It-Forward Day will broadcast live from the new state-of-the-art Jarden Home Brands headquarters in Fishers, Indiana, celebrating the joys of fresh preserving. To showcase the simplicity of home canning and spotlight “Made From Here” recipes, four blogger ambassadors from across the country will share their preserving expertise during the live webcast: Food in Jars’ Marisa McClellan of Philadelphia, PA, Hoosier Homemade’s Liz Latham of LaPorte, IN, Southern Plate’s Christy Jordan of Hunstville, AL and Yesterday on Tuesday’s Malia Martine Karlinsky of Seattle, WA. Viewers will also get a behind the scenes look at recipe testing and development and the science behind ensuring safety and the highest quality of all home canning recipes.
In addition to American favorites, the International event also features flavors from Australian Chef Rebecca Sullivan demonstrating recipes from down under. Participating via web internationally, canners in South Africa, Australia and the UK, will also join by making and sharing their own favorite canning recipes!
DETAILS:
Tune in to the live webcast of canning demonstrations from 11:00am – 4:00pm EST, featuring an integrated chat function to submit your home canning questions to be answered in real time. New this year, there will also be an exciting celebrity mason jar auction unveiled during the webcast!
Share what Made From Here means to you by hosting a home canning party on Saturday, August 1!
Share your home canning creations, tips and tricks via social media with the hashtag #canitforward.
First let’s get some business out of the way. I AM SORRY. Regretfully I hadn’t realized that the year had gone by so quickly and that I had not posted a blog entry here since January. I will do my best to not let this happen again. I will commit to at least once a month, but my preference is to post at least once a week, however, life likes to get in the way and let me know that I am not the one in control here. So, that being said, I have been very busy making videos, working on a website called Noreenskitchen and working in my garden and working on a cookbook, so perhaps you might be able to forgive me for my tardiness. I really appreciate all of you who come on over and join me here to see what is going on in my life, in my kitchen and so on and so forth. So let’s get on with it shall we?
Every year, I plant a garden. I love growing things, fruits, veggies, flowers, you name it. I love to see a plant develop and produce beauty. Whether it be a ripe and delicious tomato or an amazing fragile and fragrant bloom. I love nurturing a garden. I get great satisfaction from turning the soil and tending the seeds, feeding, watering and protecting what I have worked hard to raise. The garden is where I find solace. It is where I find joy and peace away from a wicked and hurried world. There is no wickedness nor hurrying in a garden. It all happens in it’s own time and not a moment sooner. The garden is where I find God.
The beauty of the garden is not the only thing to bring me satisfaction though. The inevitable harvest is the end result and the desired outcome for me as well as many other gardeners. We plant with the anticipation of harvesting baskets full of red tomatoes, zucchini, string beans, cucmbers, berries, herbs and a myriad of peppers. I cannot refuse a pepper. I currently have 4 raised beds dedicated to peppers alone, sweet lady bells, liberty bells, giant chili, cayenne, sweet cherry peppers, jalapenos, giant Marconi, sweet and hot Hungarian banana peppers and one dangerous Habenero. The latter I plant simply for the beauty. I love the way the peppers brighten to a beautiful orange and the fruit hangs off of the plant like little Chinese lanterns. I do pick them and dry them. I have never dared to eat one, for fear of frying my tongue out of my head. Perhaps someday I will be brave and add one to the chili pot. But I doubt that will be anytime soon.
Preserving all of the garden’s bounty can be quite the quandary for the gardener. Many people, including myself become generous givers, gifting baskets full of our home grown produce to the neighbors, and while that is a lovely thing to do, you can only do it so many times before they start to pretend they are not home when you come a-knockin’ for fear that you will give them even more vegetables to deal with. However there is a myriad of ways to preserve your harvest for later use. Some produce is more conducive to certain ways of preservation than others. For instance, you can’t freeze cucumbers. You can freeze zucchini, squash, tomatoes, beans, even peppers. You can dehydrate almost anything, I even know one lady who dehydrates lettuce! I love dehydrating and freezing but I most love canning! Pickling, preserving, water bath or pressure canning, I love it all.
Canning is something that used to be a matter of course. something that everyone did in the summer or whenever the harvest was done. Canning tomatoes, peppers, pickles, jams, jellies, etc. was simply a way of life. People have been canning for years. But with the need for mom’s to leave the home, go back to work and the advent of the microwave and the frozen dinner and a plethora of other convenience foods that are merely add water and stir, we have become a nation that thinks all of it’s food comes from the store, and not from the garden, field or orchard. But I digress down from my soap box. Canning is an important skill to possess. Canning can actually give you freedom from processed foods and big agricultural corporate farming as well as peace of mind knowing that you have your own supply in the event of a personal disaster, natural disaster or emergency.
On the surface, to the untrained eye, canning can look daunting, scary and just plain hard, but in reality canning is approachable, enjoyable and simple. As long as you take all the necessary steps and precautions to assure you get a good end product. I did not grow up in a home where canning was done. I never watched either one of my grandmothers do their canning. I only remember consuming the results of the work. My love affair with canning and preserving started when I was 23 years old living in the small mountain community of Williams, Arizona. I had recently moved there to be closer to my parents who had moved two years before. When you live in a small town, you get used to attending lots of gatherings, especially during holiday time. At one such gathering for my mother’s philanthropic sorority, which I later became a member of, I was enamored with a jar of pickles the likes of which I had never tasted before in my life. They were bread and butter pickles. Sweet and tangy, the cucumbers had been pickled along with, onions, carrots and the most delightful addition of cauliflower. I believe, had I not been in the presence of other ladies, many years my senior, I would have dove right in and eaten that whole jar, and perhaps even drank the juice like a sweet cocktail. Really, they were that good!
So, me being my sassy, 23 year old self, asks the lady who made the pickles, one Jeanne Weise, owner of the local “Country Grocery” if she would be willing to share the recipe. Now for anyone of you who has never had the privilege of living in a small town, asking for a recipe can be a frightening proposition. Either you will be embraced for asking or you will be shot down on the spot and humiliated in a very certain way that will cause you to reel with emotion at what may have just happened to you. There is another way though, the way when they will actually be very happy to share the recipe and leave out an important ingredient so that when you make the recipe it won’t be quite right. However, none of the above happened when I asked for the recipe. Mrs. Weise asked me If I had ever canned anything before, I had to reply no, but figured how hard could it be? Right? I was young and stupid. I didn’t even have a pot big enough to cook the pickles in! So Mrs. Weise told me that she would like me to come to her house on a Friday afternoon and she would have all the supplies necessary and she would teach me how to make the pickles. I felt honored. Once I spent the afternoon with her, making the pickles and learning all about what to do from the salting, to the brining, to the sterilizing to the water bathing. I was hooked. It was the beginning of a life long love affair with putting up my own home canned goodness.
At the time I first was introduced to the ways of making bread and butter pickles, I was unstoppable. On my own, I acquired the necessary equipment, albeit second hand, and went to town, in my tiny one bedroom apartment, making strawberry jam, orange marmalade, apple butter and yes, even more pickles. I made peach conserve and apricot syrup because it didn’t jell right. I learned many lessons along the way through my own mistakes. Canning is a constant lesson on how not to do something, but when it comes out right it is simply divine! Today I can everything that comes out of my garden as well as things that are locally grown that I do not grow either at all or enough of to produce the quantity I need to make canning worthwhile. In the last month I have canned 50lbs of peaches, strawberry rhubarb jam, plum jam, dill pickle spears, chicken breast, ground beef, spaghetti sauce and what I am about to share with you, bread and butter pickles.
Canning is a part of our heritage as Americans. Ever since John Mason designed the Mason jar and we were able to put up our own foods for later use, Americans have been putting everything in a can or jar. Preserving this Art and skill is as important to me as preserving our way of life. We must never forget where we came from. Making sure that we can do things for ourselves is something that we must all do. We have to be able to attain the skills necessary should we really need to use them. The best way of doing this is making those skills a basic part of our every day life.
The seasons will come and go and with them the bounty that each one brings, but when you can open up a jar of strawberry jam in the dead of winter you will understand what canning does. It affords you the opportunity to have something that grows in April in December. Yes, yes, I know, you can buy frozen fruits and you can most likely buy fresh berries in the dead of winter at your local mega mart, but do you know how far they traveled to be there? Where they came from? The answer is no. When you can, you know where the foods are from, when they were ripe and exactly what you put into the jar. Fresh, ripe fruit, wholesome goodness and love are ingredients that cannot be beat. There is not a simple quick substitute for that. There is no substitute for preserving our heritage. The American heritage and way of life that we sometimes forget about is something that must be passed on and preserved for future generations.
So, with all of that in mind, I will now share with you how to make bread and butter pickles, just the way I learned. Once you watch, you can go out and get the ingredients and make some for yourself. Once you try canning, I promise, you will love it. Yes, it is hard work, yes it is hot work and yes it is a lengthy process, but it is all worth it in the end, when you can reach in your pantry with pride and retrieve a jar of something you put up yourself and serve it to your family any time of year. Keep the tradition alive, learn to can and in turn preserve our heritage.
BREAD & BUTTER PICKLES
What you will need:
20 cups of sliced cucumbers either pickling or slicing
6 large sweet onions sliced
1 pound baby carrots
2 bags frozen cauliflower or 2 large heads of fresh, cut in florets
1 cup of pickling salt (not table salt, sea salt or kosher salt)
Place the above in a large steel or glass container and toss evenly with the salt and allow them to sit covered, in a cool spot for at least 2 hours.
If using frozen cauliflower, do not add in until later. If using fresh cauliflower, please add the cut cauliflower to the vegetables for the salting process.
After 2 hours, place vegetables in a colander in the sink and rinse well to remove a good portion of the salt. The vegetables should be slumped and no longer crispy.
Brine:
6 cups vinegar
4 cups granulated sugar
¼ cup Pickling spice
2 Tablespoons Whole mustard seed
2 Tablespoons Celery Seed
2 Tablespoons Turmeric
6 Dried Bay Leaves
6 Cayenne peppers, to add to each jar, if desired (I added 1 to each of 6 jars it really makes them spicy)
Add all ingredients to large stock pot and bring to a simmer. Add in veggies and if you are using frozen cauliflower, add at this time as well. Stir well to mix and bring back to a simmer and simmer for 5 minutes.
Ladle pickles into sterilized jars (I use pints) leaving ½ inch of head space, and making sure that all the vegetables are covered with brine.
Wipe the rims of each jar with a damp paper towel to assure that it is free from any dirt or pickle matter that would make your seal fail.
Place a hot lid on each jar and tighten down with a ring. Place in a water bath canner for 10 minutes after the water reaches a boil is when to start the timer.
Process jars for 10 minutes per batch. Remove from canner and set in a non drafty area on a bath towel and leave untouched for 12 hours. You should be able to hear each jar ping as it pulls a vacuum and seals.
Once the jars are cooled you can remove the rings, wash the jars, check for a good seal, label with the month and year they were canned as well as a description of what is in the jar and place in a dark cool place.
While the pickles are delicious right away, they get better with age. For optimum flavor, allow to sit on the shelf for at least 3 weeks prior to opening.
Your pickles should remain good for at least 2 years. I have never had them last that long, because we eat them so quickly. As long as your jar is well sealed, you should not worry. If your jar is bowed at the top, leaking or has an unpleasant or “off” odor, you should discard its contents and wash out the jar for later use.
With regard to the lids, the rings can be used over and over again. If you see that some have rusted, put them to a different use or discard them. The lid portion is only good for one use. Once the product in the jar is consumed, do not re use the lid for canning. You can however used the lid should you wish to use it to store some dehydrated food in some jars that you can vacuum seal, but that is another story altogether.
I hope that you try this and I hope that after watching you are less intimidated to try canning. Pickles are a great way to start, as is jam or jelly. Give this a try and as always:
Summertime brings with it thoughts of beach visits, amusement parks, time off from school and warm nights. For some though, like myself, it brings with it a bounty of fresh picked fruits and vegetables. It also brings canning time! One of my favorite times of the year. Yes, canning is work, but it is satisfying and good work. It is work that you can look back on a year later when you crack open that jar of strawberry preserves and remember picking the berries with your children. Or when you look in the pantry and to your surprise you find one last jar of bread and butter pickles when you thought there were no more left. You sneak to the kitchen and open it up and you indulge in their sweet and sour goodness. Nothing like home preserved foods. Nothing like knowing exactly what is in that jar, good wholesome fruits or veggies and lots and lots of love.
We live in such a hurried society now, that few people actually take the time to "put up" their own pickles, jams, jellies etc. Yes, I know, it is easy to go to the store and purchase your favorite pickle. Very easy to twist open a jar of strawberry jam from the local super center. But how many of you have actually taken the time to look on the label and see what is going into your jar of "All Natural" preserves or "Extra Crisp" gerkins? I think if you looked, you would find that there are some ingredients that are less than desirable like high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, preservatives, etc. Not to mention that many of the fruits and vegetables grown for the mass market are genetically modified so they will grow without rotting, have a longer shelf life or ward off unwanted pests by actually having the pesticide placed in its DNA.
I can for many reasons, one is because I love it. Many years before I jumped on the healthy and safe food bandwagon, I canned because I love it. I did not watch my mother do it, I did not even watch my grandmothers do it. I was introduced to canning by a lovely woman named Jeannie Weise in Williams, Arizona. A long time ago my family lived in that area. Her family owned a local mom and pop grocery store. At a holiday gathering she had brought several jars of her bread and butter pickles and they were heavenly. I had never tasted anything like them, certainly nothing that could be purchased off the shelf. I asked her if she would mind writing down the recipe for me. A little conversation transpired and she realized I did not know anything about canning. She invited me to her home and taught me how to make her pickles. This was the beginning of my love affair with pickling and preserving.
This led to my desire to learn how to make, jams, jellies and eventually pressure canning to preserve my own soups and stews. It also led to my love of gardening and my intense passion for cooking. It all works together. Plant the seed that grows the cucumbers that you can turn into pickles, either sweet or tart, and the relish sweet and hot. The best part of canning and preserving? Sharing! You have never seen someones face light up as you do when you present them with homemade plum jam or tomato sauce or hot pepper relish. Today people are blown away that there is someone who still does such a thing!
I do find it a little sad though. Our grandparents lived through the depression and World War II. They preserved as a way of life. The post war era came along and the baby boomers helped to make life as we know it easier, allowed us to have more "free time". Allowed the housewife to take it easy by opening a package, box or jar and adding water and stirring to make a "Meal fit for king". Our lives are add water and stir, but that is for another blog!
Since I do work full time and have two kids, and still manage to maintain a huge garden that grows from April through November, my weekends are spent canning the bounty that I have proudly produced myself. I do not can my bounty exclusively though. I do not grow many fruits, save some various berries, but I am blessed to live in a bountiful area that hosts acres and acres of strawberry and blueberry fields as well as peach orchards and miles and miles of fresh corn.
With the current economic situation in our country, I find that people are taking the time to go back to some of the old ways. These pickles are as old as you can get. Fermentation was one of the original forms of food preservation. Employed by the ancient Egyptians, it has been refined throughout the ages and is what we know of best today as pickling. Yes you can pickle without fermenting, but if you want an authentic and true Kosher dill pickle, this is how you need to go about it.
Fermentation is a process in which good bacteria is introduced into an environment, to turn one thing into another. In this case I turned cucumbers into pickles. You can turn cabbage into sauerkraut or kim chee or any number of fruits or vegetables into their pickled counterparts. The process I used in this recipe is called lacto-fermentation. This is because the bacteria which we are inviting is called Lactobacillus. This looks like a long scary word, but in reality it is nothing more than the bacteria that turns milk into yogurt, thus the "Lacto" prefix.
I know that once you have the cukes all happy in their briny bath, you will be tempted to peek more than you should, a Mrs. Kravitz of the kitchen if you will. DON'T! no matter how tempted you may be, just let them sleep in their briny bath for a few days and let the bacteria do it's thing. Eventually you will have a lovely pickle. Also by opening and closing the vessel too much, you run the risk of introducing bad bacteria to the party. If this happens all your work will be for nothing because you will have produced a putrid pickle!
I know that this is a brief and hasty introduction to preserving, but if you are interested, look into it further. Try out some pickles, move on to some jam, you never know, you may get bitten by the canning bug and never look back. These are life skills that you will have forever. Share them with your children. I hope if you do, you find joy in the quiet solace that comes from putting up your own jars of love.
Kosher Dills; Fermented Pickles, a Tutorial
Here is what you need to make these pickles:
5 pounds pickling cucumbers (Kirbys)
2 bunches of fresh dill
2 heads of fresh garlic all cloves peeled
1/4 cup pickling spice
3 to 4 or more hot peppers either Jalapeno or Serrano
1 quart white vinegar
3 quarts filtered water
1 cup pickling salt (do not use iodized salt, sea salt or kosher salt)
Wash cucumbers well in a sink full of cool water that has had a bit of white vinegar added to it. Scrub well, avoid bruising or removing skin.
In a large pot combine the water, vinegar and pickling salt. Bring to a boil making sure the salt is totally dissolved. Allow to cool to room temperature.
In a clean 5 gallon pickle crock or 5 gallon plastic bucket that has been well cleaned and sanitized, place the cleaned cucumbers, vinegar/water mixture, garlic, peppers, pickling spice and fresh dill in crock/bucket.weigh down with a plate or some form of weight. You need to make sure that the cucumbers are submerged below the liquid. Place lid on bucket/crock but do not seal. Sealing will allow gases to build up and could potentially lead to an eruption when too much gas accumulates and then you will have a mess you don't want to deal with that could have easily been avoided. Leave alone for at least 3 days.
After 3 days has passed, lift lid and inspect. You may notice a foamy scum that will build up on the surface of the water or even a nasty looking milky skin on the surface. This is normal and it means that the lactobacillus bacteria is doing it's job. take a stainless steel spoon and remove the scum and throw it down the drain. Remove the weight or plate and rinse with filtered water. Return the plate to the crock/bucket making sure to submerge the cucumbers fully. Return the lid making sure not to seal.
Continue this process every few days or even once a week. After 3 weeks, try a pickle, remove one and try a slice. Inspect the interior. Does it look somewhat translucent and no longer opaque? Does it taste like a pickle? If you find that you want a more intense flavor, let them stew a few more days, repeating the test at that time. Do not allow fermentation to exceed 4 weeks.
When you are ready to can your pickles, remove them from the bucket to a clean and sanitized sink of cool water, making sure to reserve the brine. Rinse the pickles well and drain. Slice as you wish either in spears or slices in preparation of canning.
Strain the brine into a large pot and you may want to remove some of the liquid, you will not need 8 quarts of brine to fill the jars, a little more than half will do. Bring to a boil and continue to boil for 10 minutes.
I used the cold pack method of canning for this application. This simply means that you will be putting the cold sliced pickles into clean cold jars. Into each jar place the following: 1 bay leaf, 1 clove of fresh garlic (do not use the garlic from the brine) 1 teaspoon of mustard seed and one fresh chili pepper. Add the pickles to the jar packing firmly without tearing or breaking the pickles. Ladle hot brine into jars to within 1/2 inch of the top. Wipe the jar rims with a clean damp paper towel and place the lid on along with the ring, tightening to resistance. Don't tighten too much or you may risk your jar cracking in the canner.
In a water bath canner, place as many jars as will fit. Since I did pints I was able to fit 7 jars at once. Allow the water to come to a full rolling boil and allow to boil for 15 minutes. Remove the jars from the canner to a wooden surface or a surface which you have covered with a bath towel. Keep out of drafts and away from open doors or places where the temperature is likely to change rapidly. Allow to cool for 24 hours after which time you can wipe your jars with a clean damp cloth and label appropriately. You may store with or without the rings, your choice, they say if you store them without the rings you run less risk of contamination by rust, in a cool dry, dark place. Even though you will most likely not have any after a years time, try to eat your pickles within that amount of time. This is the time recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I have found, however, that properly stored home canned goods often last far beyond the recommended consumption date. If done properly, home canned goods can last quite a while.
Remember, canning is a scientific process. If done right, you can feel safe in knowing that you have produced a product that is good to eat. If done with abandon, you can run the risk of food poisoning from Botulisum which can be life threatening or even deadly. Cleanliness is important and sanitary sterilization even more so. Just keep your surfaces clean and your pets out of the kitchen when doing your canning and you should be good to go.
I hope that you try this and I hope you enjoy it. It is certainly a labor of love, but the rewards are great. You will know what is in your food and you won't have to worry about poisons or preservatives when feeding your family. Give this a try and until next time, See ya!
The best part of summer, for me is my garden. I loathe summer for any other reason. I hate the heat, I hate the humidity and heck, I can't even say I like the beach that much. I am much more an autumn/winter kind of girl, but summer does have one perk and that is the satisfaction of seeing hard work come to fruition through the garden. This time of year we have lovely offerings coming out of our garden in the form of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, peppers and berries. We have plums and lemons as well. While we can all year long, this time of year is really crunch time because you want to can at the peak of freshness. So while summer may seem endless and canning may never seem to end this time of year, the good folks at Ball have made it a fun celebration of an age old tradition! 
