I got up early yesterday, planted some seeds for the fall garden, then got busy pulling all my onions and preparing the bed for next year. Bruce and I took a look at the corn and it hit us at the same time. We need to get the new freezer! Right now as in we should have done this weeks ago.
I don’t care for canning corn. It takes a really long time and the result are only acceptable. Without electricity, I would but I have electricity so I don’t. I dry some and it actually tastes a lot better that way but again, it takes a lot of time and space and the corn all seems to be ready at once. Well, three at onces. We plant three varieties and have it over a long season but we have a lot in each season. The pigs will be ready soon too. I got on line and did the research to find the model I want and made some calls to find out who had one and would deliver within the next day or two.
We settled on the 24 cubic foot Kenmore. It’s huge and expensive but it has some features I wanted. It’s Energy Star and actually uses less power than some of the smaller models, has a quick freeze option so I can freeze large amounts at once and has a pop out lock and lighted interior.
This will give me three freezers. The one on the top of the refrigerator, the small upright in the mud room and now the huge chest in the basement. Bruce and I rearranged the food storage and he built a small freezer room yesterday. He framed in three walls and a floor and painted them up. The walls and flooring are insulated now and they will protect the freezer from some of the basement moisture. Eventually, the whole basement will be sealed from moisture and insulated but we won’t get to that until winter.
This whole project, as tough as it was on back, served the very useful purpose of making me take stock of my inventory. I went through a lot of food last year! I need to do a big shop this week and fill in around the edges. I have very little left in the way of canned juices and nearly no pineapple, the only canned fruit I purchase other than mandarin oranges when the are on sale. I got rid of some canned food that we are not going to eat like outdated green beans. The reason they were outdated is because nobody here can stand canned green beans. The pigs got those.
The other thing I did since I was down there and cleaning anyway was to rearrange my canning supplies. I had way more rings than I will ever need as I remove them as soon as the jars cool. A lot were rusty too. I took a rubber band and a paper clip and made a kind of bungee cord that I slipped through canning rings in groups of seven (a full canner load). I did this for 6 sets of large and small rings. I put these and all of my canning equipment like jar lifters and funnels in one 6 gallon bucket with a gamma seal and twist off lid. Now I have everything I need in one place and none of it is cluttering up my kitchen drawers. It will stay clean in the bucket and I can stop searching for a good lid in a bag with hundreds of lids. I love getting organized. Systems are our friends.
I will do a whole post on this later this week but Bruce questioned the number of jars I have. I see his point as there are many extra but here is my reasoning. I pick up jars at tag sales and occasionally when I get to the market. They don’t deteriorate, I have the space and they are one thing I would really need if the grid ever collapsed. I could set up an outdoor kitchen and can all of the meat and frozen vegetables. We would have to work round the clock and use both pressure canners and it would take days but we could do it. If I ended up with some of kids at home, we would have to enlarge the gardens and can a lot more produce as a matter of course. Jars are alos a great barter item. I keep a couple of new boxes on hand and donate one to the occasional raffle along with a copy of my book. I am also trying to rid myself of most of the plastic in my house. Now that I have the space, I will be freezing many vegetables and fruit in jars. I will be able to reuse the lids and extract the air with my my food saver. This will save the money I would have spent on plastic bags and keep those bags out of the landfill. Win, win.
August 25, 2009 at 8:10 am
I love your idea of all the canning supplies in a bucket. I did the hunt thing a few weeks ago and it wasn’t pretty. I just managed to grab a dozen milk crates from a neighbor who is moving, I’m going to designate two of them for canning supplies. Thanks!
August 25, 2009 at 9:27 am
I like the plastic lids that are made to fit canning jars. Not a necessity, but they’re good for storing an opened jar in the fridge and you don’t need to play with the two piece lid every time. But they cost money, so I realized that certain plastic mayonnaise and peanut butter lids fit the canning jars, yay!
August 25, 2009 at 10:01 am
My canning supplies are pretty well organized on a rolling cart I picked up from a yard sale. The drawers hold the funnels and jar lifters, labels, and plastic lids for pickle making. The shelves underneath have the water bath canner, a big box of (good) lids and rings, and supplies for my dehydrator. All of the jars are in another room, along with new jar lids. When I run out of usable jar lids near the kitchen, I can restock.
If you haven’t tried it yet, another way to dry corn is to make “chicos”. Roast the corn first and then dry the kernels. This yields a different tasting product from dried raw corn. I air-dried (in nylons) a lot of field corn a while back and plan to make hominy. Finally found the food-grade hydrated lime at a local tortilleria but haven’t gotten around to making the hominy yet. I did it years ago and the result was delicious.
August 25, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Chile, I love the cart idea! Just wheel it out for work and then back to the pantry. I may do this soon as I am planning to do some reorganizing in there this week. Right now I am deep cleaning and organizing the kitchen.
Kathy, did you go for the chest type or upright freezer. Sounds like the chest since it is 24 cu. ft. I’ve never bought the new freezer because I couldn’t decide. I really want the ease of the upright, but my head knows the chest is a better buy in terms of price, capacity, and energy savings. I think you’ve already heard me whine about this decision before. I am typically a
VERY decisive person, so this is rare for me.
August 25, 2009 at 9:34 pm
We went with the chest because of the energy use. I will still use the upright for the everyday stuff but the big chest will be hoe to things like turkeys and pork. I also want to freeze cider. Chili-I have heard of drying corn this way and just might give it a try.
August 25, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I love using glass as opposed to plastic. I found a lot of useful bottles in the tip shop (right next to the rubbish tip LOL – it’s amazing what you find for nearly next to nothing – and what people throw out!!). I find that foods taste better from glass, especially milk.
Just a query: Why do you focus so much on canning? Aren’t you worried about the sugar content and lack of vitamins in all those canned fruits? I know you need sugar for preserving but what about the health of your teeth?
August 26, 2009 at 7:05 am
Good question. The sugar content is one of the reasons I home can fruit as opposed to buying it. I control the amount I use. I generally use a light syrup for peaches and no sugar at all for berries. When I make applesauce, I add sugar to taste and that depends on the apple variety. Early apples need very little sweetening while the later, keepers need a bit more. I will switch to canning with honey next year as I will have a home supply by then. I like the convenience of cans of fruit. My kids can open one and have fruit for cereal or oatmeal or to pour over pancakes or biscuits, a side dish to lunch or dinner or, shat they most often do, fruit to add to yugurt and granola. I think we tend to stick with what is familiar, especially during a crisis. What method of preservation do you use most?
August 26, 2009 at 7:11 am
I should add one other though about teeth. I have seven kids, 3 by birth and four adopted. Two of the four adopted came to us as babies while two were adopted as older children. Of the five I have had since babyhood, I have only had one cavity between the lot of them and a couple of brown spots that where removed but did not require filling. I think it has to do with being deligent about brushing, good preventative care and having a good diet. It’s the soda and sticky candy that will destroy the enamel on your teeth. Dried fruit is actually terrible for teeth unless you brush really well after. The fruit sticks something awful.
August 26, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I haven’t gotten into preserving much yet. We seem to eat everything we grow! This is more a matter of us not getting things right yet than anything else.
In the veg department we’ve pickled our tiny bits of surplus, one of my favourites is pickled radish which ends up tasting like pickled onions (and it’s much easier to grow where we are). I use organic apple cider vinegar for that, some spices (whatever takes my fancy) and of course it needs sugar as well.
Our orchard is only just starting (the trees are now 2 years old) so the amount of fruit we’re getting is minimal — I eat it all! But… in a few years’ time, we’ll have more fruit than we can handle. Apart from wanting to try a lot of different alcoholic beverages — there are some fascinating recipes out there! — I was going to focus on root cellaring and drying fruit.
Interesting what you said though about dried fruit and sticking to your teeth. Unfortunately I don’t have very strong teeth, I think years of mainly a fruit diet with lots of grapefruit has seen to that. This was fresh fruit but according to my dentist it still amounts to sugar. So much for trying to be healthy! But that’s why the preserving methods are a concern to me.
I’m trying to rectify that now by drinking large amounts of raw milk from my Jersey cow Emma and eating (even more) pulses and grains, and less fruit, as well as focusing on eating parts of animals that will provide bone marrow (reasoning being that the combination of bone marrow and raw milk help the uptake of calcium).
It still leaves me with a big questionmark on how to go forward on preserving though.
August 26, 2009 at 10:15 pm
There is a great book out there, The Busy Person’s Guide To Preserving Food that lists all the possible ways to preserve a food and tells which is easiest and which gives the best finished product.
August 28, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I love the idea of using jars in the freezer to avoid buying plastic and eventually having it live in a landfill for a thousand years! But I heard once that when jars are in the freezer it somehow weakens the glass so that there is a greater possibility of breaking when used later in canning . Thus, I’ve never done it. Please tell me it isn’t true!
August 28, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I have done it but as I never marked the jars I have no way of knowing if that is the cause of occasional breakage. I will contact the ball people and ask them to clear it up for us. I sure hope I can do this as I would love a more eco friendly option for freezing.