Strawberry jam

Show me a good sale on frozen foods and it's a pretty good bet I'm going to grab a few bags. A couple of weeks ago, the local grocery had a buy two get one free offer on sliced strawberries - and they were at a sale price to boot! So I got some and tossed them into my already crowded freezer with the intention of making jam as soon as I had time. 

It's time to make time for some of those projects. I've been freezing Roma tomatoes, too, and space in the freezer is now at a premium. This morning I decided to make the strawberry jam. 

I remember as a small child "helping" my maternal great-grandmother make jams and jellies. I'd sit in her kitchen and watch as she turned hot mashed fruit into jelly. When it was time to harvest elderberries, I held the basket for her as she snipped off clusters of ripe berries. Grandma used a jelly bag made from feed sacks to strain the juice from the pulp, and then I got to "help" give the pulp to the chickens. I have so many rose-colored memories of Grandma, and now being older, I realize how hard her life really was compared to our lives today. So much less complicated, too. 

While Grandma had to pick her own strawberries, the process, for me, is easier. I open the bags and empty the contents into a saucepan. My preferred method to make jams and jellies is to follow the Sure Jell pectin recipes. Sure Jell has never let me down and it came through again this morning. Five cups of mashed strawberries, one envelope of Sure Jell, and seven cups of white sugar. Yes, seven cups. It seems like a lot but jams and jellies are consumed in small amounts so I don't angst over it. 

I ended up with nine half-pints of jam, which will probably last two years. We might border the Southland, but we don't serve biscuits at every meal. We go weeks at a stretch without using jam or jelly, but when it's time for some, homemade is the very best! 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, a writer's life, strawberry jam, Sure Jell pectin, home food preservation, home canning, simple country pleasures, rural lifestyle, country living, live simply, family heritage, pantry building

Cheesecake and meatballs!

 Yesterday, I fed my addiction: I canned meatballs! And not only did I put seven dinners worth of meatballs into jars, but I also made a cheesecake in the Instant Pot while the pressure canner was busy cch-cch-cching away. And then there are the four meals worth of diced potatoes blanched, bagged, and into the freezer. 

It was a busy morning! 

At first, I thought I'd can the potatoes but after a brief discussion with the man of the manor, I decided to go the diced route. The potatoes were just on the cusp of beginning to go soft so this was a good way to save them. They will make great home fries or even potatoes and eggs. 

The cheesecake was done on a whim and is the dessert for Sunday dinner, which will be something with meatballs. I had one jar that didn't seal because I think I tightened the ring down too far. I could freeze that batch, but meh. Let's eat them! As for the jarred meatballs going into the pantry, as the price of ground beef rises, I'll have six dinners at yesterday's beef prices. I have another five-pound pack of ground beef (88/12) to brown off and then decide if I want to freeze it or can it in pints. 

It was a labor-intensive morning, but it was for a good cause - my pantry. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

I think I'm having withdrawal

It's been an interesting summer. I had a bountiful garden for what select veggies I planted, and I took up home canning again at what must be the worst time in history to do so. I enjoyed all of it! And now I'm having withdrawal...I think. 

I want to preserve something and for the life of me I don't know what. I have fall carrots, beets, and radishes still growing but not ready to harvest. Most fruits are over for the year. 

But I have jars left to fill! 

Trust me, those jars were hard-won. I had to hit the stores, namely Walmart, when the doors opened in the morning to get quart jars. And lids? If you live around here, you're fucked. I ordered several batches of Tattler lids, so screw you Newell Brands. Today and in the future. Tattlers work great and they're reusable and most importantly AVAILABLE. 

I've been researching soups. I've already processed chili, vegetable, and chicken corn soups. We just popped the seal on the second to last jar of chili a few evenings ago. It's really nice to pour a jar into the saucepan and heat it up - no waiting for it to thaw. I'll definitely make a larger batch next time. 

So what can I preserve this weekend? Surely there is something I can work on.  I'm infusing avocado oil with lemon balm to make a balm or salve, but it's not steeped long enough. I have some calendula blossoms drying but they're not ready to do anything with. Of course! Banana bread! I do have a couple of really ripe bananas, enough for two loaves, and one and a half loaves can go in the freezer. That might get me over the hump for this weekend. I'll get it figured out and add something to the pantry. 

And speaking of the pantry, the prevailing wisdom is not to let people see what's in your pantry. There's concern that when times get really hard, people will try to steal from you. I see the validity to that fear, but please remember this if nothing else. 

We also spent the summer upping our level of security.  

The Lady of Holly Tee Manor (The Hideaway)

Pantry prepping - canning ground beef

Yesterday, a trip to Walmart gave me a sticker shock. I was going to purchase a pack of 85/15 ground beef. I did not. Instead, I stopped at our local grocery and got it two dollars cheaper per pound. When a local store can undercut Walmart, I begin to think we may be in trouble. 

I bought thirteen pounds of 85/15 for $56.00. The same amount at Walmart would cost $71.00. 

What did I do with all that ground chuck? I pressure canned it. My Presto canner will hold sixteen wide-mouth pint jars. That's almost a pound a jar of shelf-stable meat in my pantry. I probably could have forced more into fewer jars, but I stuck to the amount of beef we typically use for spaghetti sauce. That's a good measure for us. Yours may be different. 

The National Center for Home Food Preservation gives instructions on how to safely can meats. If you want to can ANYTHING, that should be one of your "go-to" resources, along with the Ball book I've mentioned several times. Read and learn about the process so you do it correctly.

I even broke out the Ball lids for this project. I like the Tattler lids, but this was meat and I didn't want to risk operator error. 

I must confess I never thought I'd can any sort of meat, but times have changed. Inflation is running wild and all any of us can do is purchase wisely and practice whatever measures we feel necessary to save what we can. 

Will I go get more ground beef to can another batch? Not this weekend. Now I'll be on the watch for sales and then can another batch. 

Eat tomorrow at today's prices. Yep. That sounds like a good plan.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Curried Apple Chutney from the Ball book

Curried Apple Chutney

Last summer I purchased the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. (not an affiliate link) It's a great resource for experienced and newbie canners alike. I want to try many of the recipes in the book, and yesterday, I got a headstart on canning apple goodies. The original plan was to do apples in season, but one should never walk away from a good deal or a free deal. Preserve it! It looks like apple season will be all about apple pie filling and that's okay. 

Chutney, sweet or savory, has always interested me. I had everything needed for the Curried Apple Chutney so last evening, I went to work and got it done. It didn't take too long to do, either. I spent about half an hour peeling apples, chopping the onion, and measuring out everything. The chutney needed to cook for about forty-five minutes, during which time I prepared the jars. Once the mix has cooked, it goes into the jars, and then it's time to follow a water-bath process for fifteen minutes. Then the jars came out, I tightened down the Tattler lids, and scampered off to my Kindle. 

Curried Apple Chutney jarred

First thing this morning I checked the jars, gleefully discovering all the seals are good. The book says the recipe makes ten pints, but no. It made twelve half-pints or only SIX full pints, and I measured everything very carefully since it was my first time using a recipe. Sometimes you get what you get. The Ball book is usually very accurate in the recipe yield, so I'll give them a pass on this one. 

I also learned something else this morning. Apparently, the Jarden company, which makes Ball jars, is now owned by the Newell company. Is this why we can't find metal lids? At this point, I'm liking the Tattler lids more and more. 

There are many additional recipes I want to try in the Ball book, but what I need to do next is simple apple jelly. As I peeled the apples last night, I saved the peels and the cores to cook along with some sliced apples to make the apple juice for the jelly. Waste not, want not as the old saying goes. The remaining pulp will go out in the woods for the little ones. I still have several jars of Caramel Apple Jam on the shelf, so no apple jam or apple butter this year. 

My coffee is cold and this entry is finished. It's time for a fresh cup and to check the weather forecast for the day. After that, who knows? The day will unfold, with or without a decent game plan.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

**You can find a bit more about this chutney here.**

Cherry jelly - first time making

Growing up country, having a cherry tree was not a big deal. My grandfather had several "wild" cherry trees that produced cherries growing in odd locations. Not every "wild" cherry bears fruit, so having several was quite a boon for my family. 

These trees produced an abundance of fruit, but the cherries were small. It took a lot of work to harvest enough fruit for everything my grandmother wanted to "put up," but it was worth it. I haven't had cherry jelly since she stopped canning. And I do mean jelly, not jam. She strained the pulp and used the clear juice. 

When I was making grape jelly a few short days ago, I saw that the Sure-Jell insert had the formula for cherry jelly. I finally had the chance to make a stop at the local fruit stand and brought home about four pounds of fruit, enough for one batch of jelly. 

Making the jelly was much the same as making the grape jelly. The cherries are cleaned then heated to release the juices. Being that I was making jelly and not jam, I didn't need to pit the cherries before heating them. My grandmother was no one's fool. She knew how to streamline the work and I learned from her. 

Once the cherries were hot, I used a potato masher to mash them. Then I added a splash of lemon juice to preserve the color, ladled the hot pulp into a jelly bag so the juice could strain out, and went on about my other chores. Several hours later I had three and a half cups of juice - just the correct amount for the Sure-Jell formula. 

The juice was transferred to a large pot and reheated, the pectin added, and the mixture brought to a roiling boil. After a minute, the entire four cups of sugar were added all at once while constantly stirring the mix. Yes, you have to have the sugar measured and ready to go in all at once. It's important to do it that way. 

After the sugar is added and the mixture is at a roiling boil again, set a timer for one minute and keep stirring until the timer goes off. Then remove the pot from the heat and jar the VERY HOT liquid. Process in a water bath according to your altitude. 

Just like with the grape jelly, I used the Tattler reusable lids. Tattler lids are made in the USA and last for years. 

I'm pleased with the results. There was just a little bit of jelly left in the pot that I scraped out and tasted. I think we'll really enjoy the cherry jelly next winter. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

The garden corral

In an effort to thwart the local deer, my veggie garden is a container garden located in what I'm calling The Garden Corral. 

The garden corral is located on what was our pool pad. To our sorrow, the Lord of the Manor can no longer safely get in and out of our little pool. Well, he can hold his nose and fall in, but it's the getting out we're not sure about. It's one more thing he's lost the ability to do as his overall health declines. Fifteen years ago chemotherapy saved his life, but the damage it did has lingered long after the cancer was dispatched. Life is a series of trade-offs. 

My little garden space is a work in progress. I started this year with grow bags and quickly graduated to 5-gallon buckets for the peppers. Next year will require something different for the cucumbers and radishes. The much-anticiapted strawberry grow bags are, in my opinion, a real bust. I don't like them so the strawberries have already been replanted. 

So on we go. 

I have fifteen buckets with peppers, thirteen grow bags with tomatoes, five grow bags with cucumbers, one with beets, one with carrots, one with a bush pumpkin, one with a bush watermelon, and one with sugar snap peas. 

The peppers are what I'm most interested in this year. With any luck, Cowboy Candy, pepper jelly, and a good amount of salsa will be added to the pantry. Past eating fresh tomatoes and making a few batches of salsa, I'm not sure what will be done with the tomatoes. We'll eat the watermelon, and I'll likely freeze the pumpkin puree. I tried canning pumpkin last year and never again. If I'm going to end up with mush, I'll just freeze mush. 

Will the harvest make me sorry I went on this journey? Perhaps, but the idea of having even a small amount of food in my pantry that I know has no preservatives in it is worth a little work. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Garden fail: Radishes

 This is my year to experiment and learn about container vegetable gardening. As I've mentioned, an in-ground garden would be decimated by the deer, so my focus is on what I can grow in my little garden corral. 

Here's the link to a video of the deer in our woods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0JXEfL2vqk . As destructive as they are, we love watching them. 

It's a given that not everything I plant is going to prosper - case in point is the radishes. I purchased good seed from Burpees and got really good germination. It was downhill from there. 

Radishes are said to detoxify your blood, help lower blood pressure, boost immunity, and taste de-lish! I know not everyone agrees on that last item, but we like them. My plan was to serve up some fresh in a few salads and dehydrate the rest. Once dehydrated, they're stored in airtight containers until you re-hydrate them for use.  

But back to the garden fail. I did pull a few young radishes out for salad toppers, enough to be sad we missed out on the rest. 

Good seed germination doesn't equate to a good crop. Lots of things can go wrong like the gardener putting the grow-bag in the greenhouse and allowing the radishes to get too warm. Radishes are a cool weather crop, liking temperatures anywhere from about 40F to 70F. When the weather prognosticators predicted a hard frost, I set the bag in the greenhouse for protection - and then forgot to take it out the next morning. (There was NO frost, by the way.) And so the radishes died before their time. 

I'm disappointed, but I'll try again this fall. Radishes mature quickly so if I plant again about six weeks before our average first fall frost date, we should, hopefully, be able to harvest a nice little batch. 

Maybe, come fall, the radishes we harvest will look like the ones in the picture I ripped-off of the Internet and I can post a good photo for everyone else to use. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Oh, yeah. Meatballs.

 

Continuing on with my journey into the world of pressure canning, this morning I turned six pounds of ground chuck into five quarts of meatballs in beef broth. I'd hoped to get six jars, but I didn't allow for the way hamburger shrinks when cooked. Trust me, I know better. 

This is more of an experiment than the chicken breast. We like meatballs but they don't figure high in our meal rotation. If these have a good flavor and texture, that could change. I do like the idea of opening a jar and having the meatballs ready as compared to pulling them out of the freezer and have to not only heat them but thaw them first. Plus, they tend to dry out in the freezer no matter how well the vacuum seal holds. The jarred meatballs will not have that problem. 

To process the meatballs, I first formed them and put them in the oven for thirty minutes to render out the fat. Then they went into the jars while hot, and I filled the jars with hot beef bouillon broth. Remember - hot food goes into hot jars goes into hot water in your canner. Three hots. Meat of any kind in quart jars is then pressure canned for ninety minutes. You need to pressure can meat for it to be safe to consume. Do not water bath meat. 

The Lord of the Manor hasn't said too much about the meat canning. I think he's withholding judgment until I open a jar and use it in a recipe. I'm sure the next time we have spaghetti, there will be meatballs in the sauce. Beyond that, meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy was a staple in my mother's menu rotation. I'm also thinking of meatball sandwiches and Swedish meatballs. The poor, misguided man has come to terms that just because I'm in the final countdown to retire, it doesn't mean I plan to make cooking to feed him my life. 

I do know that if the meatballs turn out the way I hope, I'll process more. Canned meat is shelf-stable meat. If the electricity goes out, we can eat meatballs or chicken. They might be cold, but the food will be pre-cooked and ready to eat. That's a win I can really get behind. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Ugly chicken? Nope. Beautiful chicken.

 Last summer, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I knew it was time to get serious and become a prepper. Not a doomsday prepper, but a prepared pantry prepper. I decided to follow in the footsteps of my grandmother and practice home canning. Never having used a modern pressure canner, I did what a lot of people do - I clicked over to YouTube and started watching. It didn't take me long to settle on a 23-quart Presto canner. 

One of the channels I watch belongs to a lady in Minnesota. She has quite the prepper pantry and I'm sure she needs it, living in a more northern clime. She does a lot of canning and puts out a lot of videos with some really good ideas so I watch regularly. Chicken is one of the things she cans, and she calls it "ugly chicken."

I did, too, until this morning. 

This morning I jarred sixteen pints of chicken. This meat is now preserved and is shelf-stable. A power outage won't thaw it out and ruin it. It's fully cooked and ready to eat, add to soups, add to potpies or casseroles, or drain and make chicken salad. 

No, there's nothing ugly about this chicken. It's beautiful.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Taking pantry inventory

 

We knew it would happen - we need to inventory the pantry. I keep a spreadsheet of what's in the dry pantry and what's in the freezer, but I get remiss about adding and subtracting items. Generally, this isn't a problem because the pantry isn't so huge we can't remember what's in it. Taking an inventory is more about refreshing the memory than updating a spreadsheet. That's not to say the spreadsheet isn't important. 

Our spreadsheet has both food and non-food items on it, and a couple of cross-referenced columns for things we buy only at Sam's Club and/or Costco. Theoretically, I should be able to check the spreadsheet and see if we need to make a run to the big box store but it only works if I keep the spreadsheet up-to-date, which I've admitted to doing a not-so-great job of. 

In this past year, we moved the pantry to an unused bedroom. The Lord of the Manor has some physical limitations and it's not safe for him to go up and down the stairs. Thankfully, our house is a rancher so building a shelving unit was both practical and easy for him. (Silver lining - the den is now all MINE.) The pantry is still growing as I add more home-canned items, but it will never be huge. If we have enough guests at once, plenty of room remains for them to sleep comfortably in that room and to easily grab a midnight snack of the Little Debbie of their choice. 

In the future, we will likely add to the spreadsheet. We don't really know everything we have in the shed or in the bins marked "electrical" or "plumbing." It's likely we often purchase little things like fittings when we should have checked the bins first. I have a lot of gardening stuff and I really should keep a list so I know what fertilizers and weed killers I have on hand, and how old they are. 

Taking the occasional inventory of the pantry is the only way I know to stay organized enough to be able to honestly say I'm saving time and money by having a working pantry. We won't go into detail about how well the pantry served us during the pandemic of 2020. Suffice it to say it did, and it's been worth all the effort we put into it.  

Take the time to plan a pantry and begin to work your plan. It won't happen in a week, or even a month. Building it to a good working level takes time, but it truly is worth it. If you'd like to know more about how we set about getting ready, you can visit the static page in this blog at Building the Pantry. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor