Ty and I are both sick. I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I highly suspect he brought me home a gift from the daycare kids. He is happy as a clam, runny nose, coughing and all. Is immune suppressed Mommy, is absolutely miserable. I even slept upstairs last night. Partly so I wouldn't wake the two of them up, and partly cause I knew I needed some sleep. I slept like a rock, but woke up feeling worse than ever. My head may explode and I'm more than half way through a large box of tissues I only opened last night right before bed. Me neck is all swelled up and my throat is really sore, and I took Sudafed, so now I'm tired again.
Ty is napping. When he wakes up I am going to drag myself over to the farm to help with harvesting the winter squash. Mike and Ty are going to pick more green/yellow and Roman beans for freezing. We're also going to stock up on swiss chard, spicy greens, and Mike's getting hot pepper to make a sodium free pepper sauce. I don't know how long I'll hold up...I guess we'll see.
Tonight we need to finish the apples, blanch and freeze the beans, blanch and freeze some corn on the cob (we've only frozen corn cut off the cob so far) and cook up some batches of the card to freeze. I am not sure what to do with spicy greens, but I found a recipe online for a mustard green soup, and it sounds pretty yummy, so we might try making that with the spicy greens, and then freezing it. I'm trying to fill up our freezer because it takes less energy to keep the freezer cold when everything inside it is frozen. Need to put more meat away too though...wish we could afford that 1/2 cow or 1/2 pig now...maybe in the spring...
Showing posts with label canning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label canning. Show all posts
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Thirty-five pounds of Apples, three dogs, and a rainy day
Today was a really busy day. I made a trip up to Biddeford, ME (about an hour away) with Tyler. While I did that Mike went to Home Depot, and bought grout sealer for the laundry room, then to our local orchard and picked up the two bushels of apples we reserved, and came home. He sealed the floor and finished up just about as I got back home. We started working on one bushel of apples. 35+ pounds of apple per bushel. We currently have a turkey fryer sized pot on the stove full of apples cooking down into applesauce. We also have another 35+ pounds worth of apples sitting in our living room and I have no idea what to do next. I'm thinking spiced apple rings, or wedges, or maybe some cranberry apple relish.
Chopping, and coring 35 pounds of apples is not easy, or fast...especially when you are trying to do it while dodging three dogs that have glued themselves to your feet trying to catch every crumb that hits the floor. After almost tripping over them twice, I put a chair, and the trash can, blocking them out of the part of the kitchen I was in. Dewey...the little brat that he is, realized he could fit under the chair. So after he did that a couple times, I blocked off that\ bottom part of the chair with a laundry basket turned on it it's side. Mike and I were able to work in relative peace for about 20 minutes. Then all the sudden there was a huge commotion and the laundry basket was hopping across the kitchen floor with a panicked Dewey trapped under it. Mike and I were laugh so hard, we never even managed to make it over there to help him get out...he just kept jumping trying to run away from the laundry basket and it kept following him of course, but eventually it fell off. So funny. At that point he was so embarrassed that he didn't come back over near us for a while.
I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with us. We even broke out the juicer and juiced the cores and it was enough apple juice for us each to have a glass (so yummy) and to put some juice in with the apples so they wouldn't burn. then I took all the juice gunk and put that in a pot with some water and I'm cooking it down. I think I'm going to strain it with cheese cloth, and see if I can use one of my pectin packets and add some sugar to make apple jelly out of it. If I can reduce the amount of waste on 35 pounds of apples to the size of grapefruit, I'll be happy :)
I'm going to re-can the peaches from two years ago too. I'm thinking about making a peach chutney with it and canning that. We just haven't eaten up those peach halves like I thought we would. They are still yummy, but I want to put them in something we'll use more.
Chopping, and coring 35 pounds of apples is not easy, or fast...especially when you are trying to do it while dodging three dogs that have glued themselves to your feet trying to catch every crumb that hits the floor. After almost tripping over them twice, I put a chair, and the trash can, blocking them out of the part of the kitchen I was in. Dewey...the little brat that he is, realized he could fit under the chair. So after he did that a couple times, I blocked off that\ bottom part of the chair with a laundry basket turned on it it's side. Mike and I were able to work in relative peace for about 20 minutes. Then all the sudden there was a huge commotion and the laundry basket was hopping across the kitchen floor with a panicked Dewey trapped under it. Mike and I were laugh so hard, we never even managed to make it over there to help him get out...he just kept jumping trying to run away from the laundry basket and it kept following him of course, but eventually it fell off. So funny. At that point he was so embarrassed that he didn't come back over near us for a while.
I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with us. We even broke out the juicer and juiced the cores and it was enough apple juice for us each to have a glass (so yummy) and to put some juice in with the apples so they wouldn't burn. then I took all the juice gunk and put that in a pot with some water and I'm cooking it down. I think I'm going to strain it with cheese cloth, and see if I can use one of my pectin packets and add some sugar to make apple jelly out of it. If I can reduce the amount of waste on 35 pounds of apples to the size of grapefruit, I'll be happy :)
I'm going to re-can the peaches from two years ago too. I'm thinking about making a peach chutney with it and canning that. We just haven't eaten up those peach halves like I thought we would. They are still yummy, but I want to put them in something we'll use more.
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