Locavore In Training

I can't explain why I bought so much fruit knowing that I'd be out of town half of this week. Way too much fruit! So, inspired by Food in Jar's Skillet Jam, I got to work!

I used basically the exact recipe, except I used 3 peaches and 1 pear to get 2 1/2 cups of chopped fruit and subbed mint leaves for lemon verbena leaves (wish I was cool enough to have that on hand, but I'm not). Local honey was used, and bam! Just over 1 pint of jam in 20 minutes.

Bam = cook on high heat, stirring often for about 10 minutes, until it's cooked down and has gelled into jam.

Can't taste the pear, or the mint... but it's still delicious! Will definitely use this method again - I love that it uses honey instead of sugar, and that you could use a water bath to make it shelf stable.

Next time around, I'd probably use less honey to fruit and add scrapings from a vanilla bean or cinnamon. Maybe both... mmmmmm.

I mentioned the other day that my canning was a success... I wanted to share the recipe, because while I haven't tasted this batch, we did taste them in class and they were awesome.

This recipe comes from my canning instructor, Marla Luther who got it from a USDA canning book.

Recipe: Reduced-Sodium Sliced Sweet Pickles

So, those monster zucchinis...

The left and right ones are just over 1 lb each. The middle one... 2 full pounds!

Finally, I shared this on Facebook the other day, but I wanted to share it here too... A beautiful triple lily I had no idea grew in our yard.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday on Food Renegade.

One of my lovely readers asked me about what's needed to get started with canning, preferably without spending tons of cash. I thought it was a great question, and one I should address here!

I'm not known for just dipping a toe into a project, but in this case, I actually did. I didn't buy every available option and gadget... and turns out, I've got enough!

I have two books, Homemade Living: Canning & Preserving with Ashley English (which I already discussed here) and Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Ashley's book is charming, and makes canning approachable... and the Ball book is chock full of recipes for ideas and inspiration.

As far as supplies, if you want to order online I'd suggest Amazon. (This is no surprise to those who know me, I love Amazon. ) There are, of course, other options if you'd prefer to price shop or buy from a traditional store.

I bought this water bath canner and I've been pleased with it:

Granite Ware 21-1/2-Quart Steel/Porcelain Water-Bath Canner with Rack

You'll also want to get one of the nice kits they have out, something like:

It's cheap, it looks cheap... get it anyway. You'll thank me later!

Back to Basics 5-Piece Home Canning Kit

I haven't ventured into the world of pressure canners, but if you know you definitely will be doing that, you can save some money and just buy the pressure canner. You can use it as a water bath canner as well, as long as you don't seal it! One word of caution, and PAY ATTENTION TO THIS!!! If you have one of the glass top cooktops, you'll probably want to stick to water bath canning. The weight of the pressure canners can damage your stove!

When/If I buy one, this is the one I plan to buy:

Presto 23-Quart Aluminum Pressure Cooker/Canner

Because I have the glasstop stove, I'll have to get something like this (or someone should build me my outdoor stove!)

Camp Chef Explorer Series EX-60LW 2-Burner Modular Cooking System, Black

If you wanted to buy locally, True Value and Ace Hardware are your best options. I bought my jars from True Value recently, and they had other supplies there as well. For some reason, those stores seem to stock more of the canning supplies than the larger big box hardware stores.

So, as you can see, between the books, the water bath canner and the kit, you can get started for about $60 with all new materials. There are cheaper ways to do it, but it's not a huge upfront cost either.

I haven't tried this, but I've heard yard sales and thrift stores can be a good source of used jars. Just check that there are no chips or cracks, particularly on the top rim. You'll need to get new lids (they are not reusable) but other than that, you're all set!

If others have things that they love and want to recommend, please do!

There are some days when I feel like I will never "get it right" with this local food thing. (Please do not talk to me about kohlrabi until at least next Spring.) It can be hard... running to multiple markets, farms, farm pickups, etc.

Well, yesterday was not one of those hard days. The stars aligned for me, I guess.

I left the office a little early because my day ended with a conference call that I could just as easily take from the car. I rolled into the community garden just before 5 to do some much needed watering. Weird transition from work to farm hand... but after a quick 911 call to one of the coordinators to figure out how to turn off the electric fence, I was in business.

Watered two rows - one each zucchini and pattypan squash - 90 seconds for each plant. Watered myself a little too, thanks to the 90+ weather we've been having. (Mother Nature, it would be lovely if you turned down the heat a bit, and gave us some rain. Thanks much.)

I was on the very last plant when a gopher ran out from under the plant - wet and scared. Not sure who was more scared though!! A nice reminder that while I might be alone in terms of other people, you're never fully alone outside!

Then I went in search of the promised pickling cucumbers. I think they meant prickly! Ouch. My goal was to pick 4 lbs for my low sodium pickle chip recipe from canning class. Yum. (Recipe to come.) Turns out, I can't judge weight very well in a field. Ended up with 8 lbs! Also, 3 of the largest zucchinis I've ever seen. I'll post a picture soon, I promise - you have to see these to believe!

Once I got home, I set about pickling those 8 pounds of extremely fresh cucumbers. Thanks to my food processor, the chopping was almost completely eliminated. And by 8:30, 8 beautiful pints of freshly made pickles were sitting on the counter. Horray!

CSA pickup tonight, and they promised NO KOHLRABI.

For the record's sake, here's what I would have gotten this week at the CSA (week 6) had I made it over there...

4 pounds combo of the following:

Photo by fooddesign @ photoxpress

• kale
• turnips
• kohlrabi
• green head cabbage (1 head maximum)

• 2 1/4 pound zucchini
• 3/4 pound carrots
• 1/2 pound peas
• 1/2 pound Swiss chard
• 1/4 pound lettuce
• 1 bulb onion
• 1 bunch bunching onions
• 1 head garlic

Mmm... sounds good, right?! But, alas, I had to work late Tuesday night. It's actually been quite busy around here, as evidenced by my lack of posting. Though I really enjoyed it, I welcomed the end of my canning classes. I will very much welcome the end of the intense course I'm taking to help with work. That should free up quite a bit of time!

In the meantime, skipping last week's share may have paid off. I'll pick up a double share on Tuesday, and the CSA is taking the following week off to catch up on farm chores. Since working at the community garden, I have a new appreciation for all the work that goes into raising food... so if they need a week off, I'm more than happy to step back and let them have it.

Speaking of the garden... holy cow, is that more than I anticipated! There are some very dedicated souls who spend most of every weekend out there. Even if I could hack hours and hours and hours in the sun, I'd never get anything else done in my life! I'm getting out there when I can to help, and I'm learning quite a bit! (Even more than how hard farming is!) The garden boss asked people to come out and harvest zucchini and cucumbers today... I'd love to do that, since my last canning class covered pickling but if I go over there, I'll spend a couple hours working and then not have time to actually do the pickling! It's a dilemma.

I haven't been to a farmer's market in weeks (no need with 2 awesome sources of produce that's already paid for!!) but I do miss it. Two news ones have opened for the season, so I definitely need to get over and check them out!

Well, I think that's it for me! Time to get out and do stuff

I had some pretty good puns going around canning, but I decided to spare you.

Some of my awesome readers may have noticed that I haven't been posting as often as before. It's not for lack of material... Turns out, I got a little over-scheduled. And if I'm over-scheduled now, I can't even imagine what life will look like later when there's a small farm's worth of chores on top of normal house and work chores, along with our somewhat limited social calender! But, such is life. And even more so, the life I want eventually.

Everything is going well though! I over-scheduled because there's so much good stuff to do right now. The chore that's been suffering the most is the community garden. I really need to start pulling my weight over there - I'm going to work on better fitting that in. (I was there part of the weekend of 600+ tomato plants and 300+ squash and melon plants, so that's something!)

This weekend, however, has been dedicated to catch up, clean out and canning. As I mentioned yesterday, I was off for the first of the series of canning classes held at the Accokeek Foundation. (So happy I found this place! Wish it was a little closer to me, but it's worth the drive.) The full series of classes looks like this:

• Food Preservation
• Canning: Jams and Jellies
• Canning: Low Acid Food
• Canning: High Acid Food

The first two classes were yesterday - one in the morning, one in the afternoon. The class is hosted by Marla Luther, who grew up on a family farm, canning all the way and ended up with a PhD in Food Science (the exact degree might be something more technical than that) and working for the FDA. So, someone who knows the practicality and the technical side of canning and food safety. Someone you want to learn from. Plus, she's probably around my age and has a fun, casual presence.

And the class was great. The morning session went over "Garden to Table" concepts, growing your own for later preservation - drying, freezing or canning. A couple of takeaways:

• Blanching is important before freezing. It always seemed like extra work for no reason, but it's apparently pretty important. It stops a chemical process that breaks down the food (even while frozen). Good to know.
• There might be a way to determine when something is dry enough (for shelf-stable safely) by weighing the original item(s), and then weighing after drying. You're looking for 50% reduction in water, and there may be charts that show how much water is in a particular food. (Sounds complicated to me, but then again, my first drying experiment results in crispy tomatoes.)

After a break for lunch, we all moved into the (tiny) kitchen to get our hands dirty. We made 3 kinds of jam: strawberry freezer jam, strawberry jam and jalapeno jelly. Turns out, a few of the steps suggested by one of my favorite bloggers in her canning book might be "nice to haves" not really "need to haves." Instead of boiling the jars to sterilize, and then keeping them warm while everything else is cooking, run the dishwasher. Well, sure. Not only will it sterilize, if you time it right, it'll also keep your jars warm. Another really good tip - we did two recipes that needed to be processed in the water bath canner so we saved the first batch to process with the second. So, everything doesn't have to be done immediately but can be a little relaxed.

(I know I didn't write about my first canning experience here - I kept meaning to, but it's been hectic! Basically, I overcooked the jam - burning my pan quite badly - but I think the final product turned out decently. The before-water-bath-canner samples tasted good anyway. It was stressful and not at all the casual experience of my class environment. Also, don't try to multi-task two things you've never done before. See Beer Fail.)

Anywho, the class has given me the confidence and desire to try again. That jalapeno jelly was awesome. Next week's low-acid canning will most likely add a pressure canner to my list of desired kitchen gadgets. That an some sort of outdoor cooking setup because (and this might be the single best thing I learned yesterday) pressure canners + glasstop stoves = bad, bad things.

I already want this outdoor stove, oven, grill and smoker, maybe this will help get it on the priority list?

Now, I'm off to clean out of the freezer because a day of discussing food safely has deemed it so.

Oh, the excitement. I have been hearing about and anxiously awaiting Ashley English's first two books in her Homemade Living Series. And only a teeny tiny bit of it is my "I wanna be like her when I grow up" desire. (Let's ignore the fact that I'm mostly grown up already.) I got both her Canning & Preserving and Keeping Chickens (more on this one later) books the day they came out.

Right off the bat, the first sentence, "A movement is building, in city apartments and country kitchens, as more and more of us reconsider how food ends up on our plates" grabs me. Obviously, this book was written for me. Just for me. Thanks, Ashley!

Seriously though, as someone who is intensely interested in understanding what's in my food and where it comes from, canning is near the top of my list of things to learn. (Ice cream was first, but can you blame me?) Wanting to learn canning may also have something to do with the upcoming CSA shares (ones we had trouble consuming with 4 people in the house, and now we are 2), loot from the community garden, and an already packed chest freezer.

I had trouble getting to the end of this book. Not because it was difficult to read, but because I wanted to savor each and every page. Charming from cover to cover, she makes canning approachable. I also own the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
, and while I'm sure it will be a great resource for me in the future, it's intimidating. As in, sits next to my computer scaring me. Not Ashley's book. Her book accomplishes just what she set out to accomplish:

My sincerest desire is that this book provides you with just the right amount of instruction, creative challenge, and comfort to get you started on your own canning adventures.

No question, I'll be starting with her Strawberry Jam. Soon, so soon, they'll be in season here. And I love her suggestions about fresh herbs you can add. Strawberry Mint Jam? Um, yes, please!

Because I also see pickling as a solution to some of my upcoming produce problems (oh, woe is me, too many fresh veggies...) I'm looking forward to using her Basic, All Purpose Brine for Pickling.

If you've ever wondered about canning, go by her book right now. She also writes a really great blog. You can check out it here.

I'll report back as I put her book into practice.