Pickled Beets, 2015

Full disclosure: this recipe is 100% not our own. The reason? Every year, I forget from which source I located the pickled beets recipe because I have never blogged about pickling beets. I go searching online, browsing through other cookbooks....only to just choose something random and different each and every year. So, I'm shamelessly blogging about a recipe I found in a cookbook.

And ... the beets in this cookbook are wonderful! Slightly sweet, tangy, and perfectly pickled, this is my favorite recipe for pickled beets thus far. At this pint, I fully endorse The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving. Granted, this is the only recipe from the book that I've seen to fruition, but I bought this gem only a month ago. I love that the cookbook focuses on small batches because, let's be realistic, I live with only one other human: we can only consume so much food. 

Anyway, try this pickled beets recipe! We used chioggia beets and golden beets, hence the interesting colors in the jars. We also a little more than doubled this, so we ended up with 4.5 quarts

Easy Spiced Pickled Beets (makes 4 pints)

8-15 pounds of fresh beets

2 cups sugar

2 cups white vinegar

1/3 cup water

16 whole cloves

8 whole allspice berries

2 cinnamon sticks, about 4 inches long

2 tsp pickling salt

1. Trim beets, leaving 1 inch of stem and taproot attached. Put in pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, and then turn down heat, cover, and simmer for 25 to 45 minutes. Be careful not to overcook them! Cook just until tender..... 

Once tender, drain and rinse with cold water. Remove skins and cut beets into desired size pieces. If you have chickens, be sure to save the scraps! They loved them....

Chicken treats or compost ingredients?

2. Combine sugar, vinegar, and water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Stir occasionally. 

3. In sanitized, hot jars, place 4 cloves, 2 allspice berries, and 1/2 cinnamon stick in each jar. Pack beats into jar. Pour hot liquid over beets to within 1/2 inch of rim. 

4. Process 30 minutes for 2-cup jars and 35 minutes for 4-cup jars. 

A Produce Plus Weekend: Sweet Peppers, Edamames, and Cucumbers

We spent the better part of our weekend in the kitchen. But, as I've written before, spending time in the kitchen with a large glass of wine and some good tunes with the one I love is a beautiful thing. So, what did we make? Well...

On Friday, Andy brought home a large pail of cucumbers from his colleague. What a generous lady! We decided to make those in the crock like we did earlier this year. The recipe for that is here. Our first batch is in the fridge, and the pickles are wonderfully crunchy. So, we figured why veer away from a good recipe? (Well, other than the fact that our fridge is very near capacity...we really need a second one to store all of this live food we've been creating.)

On Saturday morning, we picked up 5 pounds of mini sweet peppers and 10 pounds of edamame from the Harmony Valley Farm stand at the Farmers' Market. Juan happily handed us our boxes in return for our check. We love produce plus opportunities ~ they always lend themselves to weekends in the kitchen, preserving up food for the winter, but we are relishing the day when our gardening skills are so fierce that we won't even be tempted to order and pay for produce plus. We look forward to the day when we're swimming in tons of tomatoes and crowded out of the house by piles of edamames and peppers. But until then, produce plus is a perfect way to support a local, sustainable grower, while making an effort to eat  both seasonally and locally.

Funny thing about this week's produce plus pepper purchase is that we had no idea what we'd do with the sweet peppers once we got them. When we received the email that for the first time ever, these mini bursts of goodness were for sale in huge increments, we leaped at the chance. We began receiving these in our box about two years ago, and since then, they're one item we can't seem to tire of. As the summer winds down, at least there are mini-sweet peppers!. Honestly, they are mouth-poppingly delicious. Andy and I both eat them raw, plain or stuffed with cheese. So, what to do with 5 lbs of them? We tossed around roasting and freezing some, just freezing others, pickling them, making them into jelly, or even candying them. But then, this week's CSA newsletter featured mini sweets and provided a recipe for sweet pepper marmalade, and we were sold on that idea. The cans of red, yellow, and orange sweetness are gorgeous, and we're looking forward to sharing some over the holidays. The newsletter suggested serving with pretzels or crackers and cream cheese or goat cheese. Don't those ideas sound absolutely delicious?

...oh...and about that gardening goal, we saved a ton of sweet pepper seeds.

And, as for the ten pounds of edamame, simple! We blanched them (in shells) for three minutes, put them in a water bath, divided them up into freezer bags (2 cups per bag) and froze them. How great will an edamame salad be in the middle of a Wisconsin winter? So good. I'm already planning out my day of "summer eating" on a negative degree day: frozen watermelon juice-vodka drinks, edamame salad, and grilled veggie burgers perhaps?  I think I need to start getting bikini-ready for that fun day inside the confines of my cozy home now.

Here is the recipe we used (courtesy of Harmony Valley Farm) for the pepper marmalade:

1 cup sweet peppers, small dice
1 cup onion, small dice
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup white distilled vinegar
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4-1/2 tsp chili flake

Combine all ingredients in a medium saute pan.

Simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes. Reduce heat and simmer another 20 minutes or until liquid is syrupy. You can store in the fridge for several weeks or can and process 10 minutes in a hot water bath.
 


Our weekend totals are:
1 crock full of pickles
approx. 6 pints of sweet pepper marmalade (1/2 quart for the fridge)
17 frozen cups of edamame

Carrots: Spicy Pickles, Pesto, and More

Carrots test our patience as gardeners. Their germination time is long, and weeding them is a pain! I can never tell what's a carrot and what's a weed at the start of the season. But then, the parsley-like leaves begin to develop, and these sweet, orange Popsicle-like roots take form under ground. Once the foliage begins to identify itself, I feel I'm golden. All I have to do is wait a good 2-3 months, and soon, I am digging up loads of carrots.

This year, we had our first successful crop of Danvers Carrots. We planted them in a raised bed which helped tremendously in terms of weed control. To get them out of the ground without breaking them, we saturated the dirt around them with water and pried them up with a shovel.  We harvested about 5 lbs. Then, the question was: what should we do with all of them? We also had another pound from my parents' and our CSA boxes.

We thought about juicing them...but then realized how quickly said juice would be consumed in comparison to the amount of patience exuded to grow and harvest them. We thought about pickling them all, but realized we still had 1.5 jars from last year's canning season. So, we decided to pickle most and freeze some. We also used the greens to make carrot-top pesto.

In the end, we canned four quarts and froze three quarts. We used the same recipe that we used last year, except that instead of guallijo peppers, we used chipotles and dried super hots. And again, we sliced them into rounds versus into spears.

 We also froze four bags (2/3 cup each) of carrot-top pesto. Apparently, carrot tops have a ton of Vitamin K and chlorophyll~ much more than carrots themselves. People drink carrot top tea (sweetened with honey) as a way to quickly get all the nutrients. We thought about drying ours for tea, but decided we'd probably be more likely to eat them up if they were on pizza ~ hence, carrot top pesto.

Use all in varying amounts to your taste (and freeze for the winter, if you'd like!):
Carrot tops (chopped)
garlic
walnuts or pine nuts
Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
honey
olive oil

Put in a food processor and mix to desired consistency. It's that simple.

Livin' in the Kitch'n

The end of August=bustle, bustle, bustle. Of course, the garden is at its peak right when work is at its most stressful time, right?  Luckily for me, I feel comfortable and happy, alongside my cooking partner/husband in a hot, steamy kitchen with loads of bubbling pots, a whistling water canner, the smell of vinegar and vegetables, and pets running rampant.

Last Saturday, we made pizza sauce. We loved the recipe we used from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle so much last year that we used it again this year. We cooked down 25 lbs. of Roma tomatoes and ended up with 10 pints of pizza sauce. Our only change to last year's process is that we used a bit less cinnamon, and we cooked it down a bit more, so we ended up with less pints, but thicker sauce.

Also, we processed  25 lbs. of Romas into 8 quarts of canned diced tomatoes. These are spectacular to have in the pantry for everything from spaghetti to soups to pizzas in the fall and winter. Last year's lasted us through this May. We'll have to can more to make that happen again this year. 

And, we have more cabbage fermenting right now. This time, the crock is full! I think we'll be kraut-ready this fall and winter. Bring on the Ruebens and Ritz crackers!

Plus, the freezer is receiving the fruits of our labor. This week, I froze carrots, celery, and green peppers.

Tomorrow is beet day!  Stay tuned...

Mouth-watering kraut: step one

Franklin (and the chickens) wanted to eat all our cabbage!

Is it odd that I have a head-full of memories associated with sauerkraut of all things?  Whether or not it's strange, I get nostalgic for this nearly calorie-less, antioxidant-packed food. As a child, I absolutely loved sauerkraut-and-sausage night. My freshmen-year college roommate and I bought cans of Frank's kraut to eat with Ritz crackers. It was nearly guilt free. Plus, it was salty and cheap. Our floor mates didn't appreciate the smell....but I recall many "deep" conversations (mostly about boys) occurring over a package of buttery crackers and a tin can of fermented cabbage. And, I remember wanting so badly to have salty, "real" sauerkraut on my travels in Germany to find (to my disappointment) extra spices in the mix. Apparently, my perception of "real" is the Americanized version?!

My tin-can sauerkraut was divine and beyond satisfactory until Mom and Dad brought home a homemade jar from their friends' house. This duo canned a cupboard full of sauerkraut from their garden every year. When we were fortunate enough to obtain a magical Ball-jar full, I couldn't keep my fingers out. I paced back and forth from the living room to the kitchen continuously on several occasions to sneak a finger full.I found a near substitute in Bubbie's Sauerkraut, but I've nevertheless longed for the homemade-by-someone-I-know kind.  Hence, I was more than excited when we decided to finally buy a crock to make fermented foods. Today, we harvested three heads of our cabbage. We shredded those three along with two that we had saved from our CSA boxes.

We washed all five heads, cut out the cores, shredded the remaining cabbage, and got the crock ready.

Then, we put roughly three  handfuls of cabbage in the crock, added about a teaspoon of pickling salt over the top, and then repeated the process until all of the cabbage was inside the crock.

Salt/cabbage mix

 Next, we used a plate to cover and weigh down the cabbage and salt mixture. Then, we put a heavy, full glass jar on top of the plate and covered that with a damp towel.

Waiting ...

We'll be keeping an eye on this for a few weeks, I guess. Then, hopefully, everything will meld together the way it's supposed to, and we'll be processing quarts of kraut.


My mouth is honestly watering just thinking about it.

Need another ramp recipe? We've got one!...Pickled ramps

If you've been following us lately, you've realized we're in love with ramps. We've blogged about ramp scrambles, ramp lasagna, Wisconsin sushi (made with ramps), and now, up today: pickled ramp bulbs! I guess we just can't bear the thought of eleven more months without the taste of these deliciously wild leeks.

This is our first attempt at pickling the little buggers, so we can't attest to the taste of them quite yet. With that said, pickled ramp recipes are abundant on the Internet and in recipe books, so someone out there thinks they're pretty amazing. If you've tried them or end up making them, let us know what you think.

Here's the recipe (adapted from Seasonal Chef) we used:

Ingredients:

3 bunches of ramps, bulbs separated
1 cup white wine vinegar
1 cup bottled water
½ cup sugar
¼ cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon coriander seed, mustard seed, black peppercorns, fennel seed
1 dried hot chili pepper

Instructions:

1. Clean white bulbs. Go ahead and save stems and leaves for Wisconsin sushi or another recipe. You can also freeze them! 

2.  Bring white wine vinegar, water, sugar and brown sugar to a boil for 1 minute. Add dried spices and remove from the heat after 1 minute.

4. Blanch ramp bottoms in heavily salted water for 15 seconds. Drain and cool quickly in ice water.
5. Pour brine over ramps. Let them sit in the fridge for 3-5 days before eating them. Or process them for 10 minutes in a water bath for later use. 

Spicy Pickled Carrots

When we first moved to Madison, we frequented Casa de Lara where we experienced spicy pickled carrots served in our chip bowl. Such delicious memories of those that my mouth actually started watering typing that last sentence. Our first year as Harmony Valley members we acquired enough carrots to can a few batches of our own. That was several years ago, so it's been a long time since jars of orange pickled goodness have graced our pantry shelves.

A few weeks ago, Harmony Valley Farm offered a produce plus box of 10 pounds of carrots to its members. That means that members can buy an item in bulk in addition to their regular vegetable boxes. Our intention with all of these carrots involved lots of juicing (and freezing that juice for later consumption) and canning spicy pickled carrots!

Tonight, we canned 5 quarts of these spicy treats for later and pickled 2 quarts for refrigerator storage. I wish we had found time earlier this month to get this work done. I'd have loved to share these along with some homemade tortilla chips and canned salsa over the holidays. Oh well! Easter, perhaps?

The recipe is here, on one of our favorite fellow foodie blogs, Hitchhiking to Heaven. If you haven't, check this blog out! It's ripe with recipes for anything you'd ever want to jam, jelly, and/or can.

The only adaptions we made were:
1) we cut ours into slices instead of spears to make it easy to add these sour-spicy-sweet snacks to our chip bowl.
2) we added one dried guajillo pepper to each jar for an extra kick!

Final Canning Weekend of the Season?

This weekend, Andy was sick...and we had 25 pounds of Romas and 10 pounds of tomatillos to can. He mustered through parts of the process, but my role was much bigger than normally expected on a CANNING WEEKEND.

We canned 7.5 quarts of diced tomatoes, using the same process we've used for years.

And, we made 10 pints of canned salsa verde. This year we've frozen quite a haul of various salsas, but this is the first time in our lives that we've canned salsa. We're wondering what the difference between the frozen salsa and the canned salsa will be. All of the our canned and frozen salsas are blended for the sake of consistency. I don't like slimy cilantro, for example. What do all of you think? Have you had better results with canning or with freezing salsa? Obviously canning is more work and often takes more of the nutrients out of the food than freezing does, so we're wondering: what's the benefit? Please comment!

We used a recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Here it is (copied and pasted):

Tomatillo Green Salsa

• 5 cups chopped tomatillos
• 1-½ cups seeded, chopped long green chiles
• ½ cup seeded, finely chopped jalapeño peppers
• 4 cups chopped onions
• 1 cup bottled lemon or lime juice
• 6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin (optional)
• 3 tablespoons dried oregano leaves (optional)
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Read more about ingredients. Yield: About 5 pints
Please read Using Boiling Water Canners before beginning. If this is your first time canning, it is recommended that you read Principles of Home Canning.
Procedure:
Caution: Wear plastic or rubber gloves and do not touch your face while handling or cutting hot peppers. If you do not wear gloves, wash hands thoroughly with soap and water before touching your face or eyes.
Preparing Tomatillos: Remove the dry outer husks from tomatillos; wash thoroughly. They do not need to be peeled or seeded.
Preparing Peppers: The skin of long green chiles may be tough and can be removed by heating the peppers. Usually when peppers are finely chopped, they do not need to be skinned. If you choose to peel chiles, slit each pepper along the side to allow steam to escape. Peel using one of these two methods:

• Oven or broiler method to blister skins - Place chiles in a hot oven (400°F) or broiler for 6 to 8 minutes until skins blister.
  
  
• Range-top method to blister skins - Cover hot burner (either gas or electric) with heavy wire mesh. Place peppers on burner for several minutes until skins blister.
  
  
• To peel, after blistering skins, place peppers in a pan and cover with a damp cloth. (This will make peeling the peppers easier.) Cool several minutes; slip off skins. Discard seeds and chop.
  

The jalapeño peppers do not need to be peeled, but seeds are often removed.
Hot Pack: Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and stir frequently over high heat until mixture begins to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 2O minutes, stirring occasionally. Ladle hot into clean, hot pint jars, leaving ½-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if needed. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened, clean paper towel; apply two-piece metal canning lids. Process in a boiling water canner according to the recommendations in Table 1.

Table 1. Recommended process time for Tomatillo Green Salsa in a boiling-water canner.
		Process Time at Altitudes of
Style of Pack	Jar Size	0 - 1,000 ft	1,001 - 6,000 ft	Above 6,000 ft
Hot	Pints	15 min	20	25

Note: You may use green tomatoes in this recipe instead of tomatillos.
IMPORTANT:
The only other change you can safely make in this salsa recipe is to change the amount of spices and herbs. Do not alter the proportions of vegetables to acid and tomatoes because it might make the salsa unsafe. Do not substitute vinegar for the lemon juice.

Nutrition Information (Estimated values using Nutritionist Pro™ software)
Per 2 Tbsp: Calories 10, Total Fat 0 g, Sodium 89 mg, Fiber 0 g, Protein 0 g. 
Daily Values: Vitamin A 1%, Vitamin C 17%, Calcium 1%, Iron 1%.
Percent Daily Values based on Dietary Reference Intakes.
 -------
We'll see what the future holds, but I'm wondering if this is the last canning weekend of the year!  The pantry is looking good, and the freezer is loaded with goodies. There is always a sense of bitter-sweetness at the end of the season. On one hand, being done frees up some time, but I believe solidly that there is nothing quite like listening to This American Life or some good tunes, drinking a cup of tea (and later wine), and steaming up the kitchen with cooking. Until next year though... enjoy the harvest!

Pizza and a Good Book

We had to let this cook down for hours and hours. 

For years, we've been searching to find a thick, flavorful pizza sauce to make and to can. Lo' and behold if my favorite author didn't include the very recipe in her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Throughout the book, Barbara Kingsolver's family writes personal narratives about food, and so this pizza sauce recipe actually comes from Camille, her oldest daughter. She shared the family's secret recipe in a chapter entitled, Living In a Red State ~ both to imply the political leanings of Kentucky at the time and the fact that they harvested nearly a ton of tomatoes the summer about which they wrote the book.


Anyway, our tomato crop has been hit or miss this year, so we ended up purchasing two 25 lbs boxes from our CSA farm, Harmony Valley. Combined with our own tomato crops, we have put quite a lot of work in . . . and we have quite a lot of work ahead of us.

On Sunday evening, we prepared the sauce, using some of our tomatoes and one of the boxes. The house smelled great, our cats acted as if they were about to die from heat stroke (see photo of Tucker to the right), and we ended up with 5 pints and 9 half-pints of pizza sauce. Between those and our freezer pesto, I think Andy's pizza addiction should be covered throughout the winter and spring.                        


Here's the amazing recipe, Family Secret Tomato Sauce, from the book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Our assembly line. L to R: boiling for 2-3 seconds, ice bath, and then skinning/de-seeding.

 

Look at all of those onions!

Dilly Beans

Carmen's opinion of canning in 90+ degree weather. Hehe.

For the last several years, we've bought a 10 pound box of beans from Harmony Valley Farm. This year we canned 6 quart jars of dilly beans and froze the rest of the beans for fall and winter casseroles and soups.

Dilly beans are great accessories to a Bloody Mary and fabulous snacks for any time you're craving something salty.

Ingredients:
4 pounds of green beans
8-16 heads of fresh dill
8 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup canning salt
4 cups white vinegar
4 cups water
hot pepper flakes -- optional (we used approx. 6 dried peppers' worth)

Materials:
6 quart jars or 12 pint jars
canner
jar grabber
tongs
large pot
funnel

The process is as follows:

1. Snap the ends off of the beans. (This is a fun step. My parents usually come over, and we gossip over wine while bean-snapping like crazy people. Now the chickens run around, scavenging for bean butts.)
 
2. Put beans into a sink full of water to get them clean. 

3. Sterilize quart jars and lids by placing them in boiling water for 1-2 minutes. Or if your dish washer has a sterilize cycle, use that.

4. Prepare the brine by combining salt, vinegar, dill, water, and red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil.

5. Put the garlic, dill, and hot peppers (optional) into the steralized jars.

6. Tightly pack the beans into the jars, leaving 1/2-inch head space.

7. Pour brine over the beans, again leaving the 1/2-inch head space on the jar.

8. Put the lids on the jars.

9. Put the jars into the canner and process for five minutes - though depending on your altitude, times can vary.

What to do with all of those tomatoes? Can 'em!

Tomatoes chilling in an ice bath.

Canning can be a looming task to food preservation/gardening newbies. This blog entry is to reassure those of you nervous ladies and gents out there that it really is quite a simple process that's well worth the effort.

The first food that we ever canned was a batch of diced tomatoes. So versatile, we used them in winter spaghetti dishes, as pizza toppings, and in soups. Since year one, they've been a staple item in our pantry.




Ingredients:
Tomatoes
Lemon Juice
Salt (optional)
Sugar (optional)

Instructions:

1. Sterilize quart jars and lids by placing them in boiling water for 1-2 minutes. Or if your dish washer has a sterilize cycle, use that.

2. Prepare tomatoes for processing. Cut an X onto the bottom of the fruit. This will help make peeling super easy.

3. Prepare an ice bath. We usually fill our sink with cold water and ice, but a large pot or bowl works too. 

4. Boil water on the stove. Put the fruit into the boiling water for a few seconds (and no longer than a minute) to loosen the skin. When you see the skin split and loosen, remove the tomatoes.

5. Immediately after removing from the boiling water, put the fruit into the ice bath.

6. Take the fruit out of the ice bath. The skin should slip right off  (I like to save the skins for the freezer to make broth later and/or to give the warm tomato skins to my chickens.)

7.If desired, remove the guts from the center. Simply cut the tomato lengthwise, and with your fingers or a spoon, remove the seeds and pulp from the center.

8. Dice the fruit to desired size.

9. To ensure non-spoilage, add 2 Tbs. of lemon juice to each quart jar. Sometimes, we add sugar to make sure that the tomatoes don't have a lemony flavor. If desired, add a pinch of salt here.

10.Pack the jars with the fruit, leaving 1/2-inch head space at the top of the jars. Be sure that the jar lids are dry to ensure a tight, secure seal.

11. Process using a water bath or a steam canner.

 If doing pints, process for 40 minutes. If doing quarts, process for 45 minutes. Specific times are below (taken from: source):

Recommended process time for Crushed Tomatoes in a boiling-water canner.
		Process Time at Altitudes of
Style of Pack	Jar Size	0 - 1,000 ft	1,001 - 3,000 ft	3,001 - 6,000 ft	Above 6,000 ft
Hot	Pints	35 min	40	45	50
	Quarts	45	50	55	60

For you novice canners, a word of caution: canning is touchy. You have to follow a recipe exactly to avoid potential spoilage. Read the directions for your specific canner, and cross-check other sources for processing times to ensure a good, healthy, safe, product. We like: www.pickyourown.org.

With that said, please do can! It's a wonderful way to preserve farm-fresh produce for the fall, winter, and early spring months. Nature has seasons. Here, in Wisconsin, we're not meant to go to the store in December and find red, ripe tomatoes. It's not possible to grow them anywhere around here at that time. Duh, right?

One way to embrace the seasons (and avoid blindly trekking food across the country or world via excess petroleum, while dishing out money to Dole fruits or some other big name) is by eating fresh, yummy tomatoes in the summer, and then embracing in the delight and beauty of your Ball jar filled with prepared tomatoes in the winter. It's amazing how great both can taste when you give yourself time to miss them. Plus, you'd be amazed as to how beautiful a pantry full of a variety of canned food looks.