Pressure Canning Green Beans

I spent the day with my Mom yesterday and she taught me how to pressure can for the first time ever. I went in to this completely blind and was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was. Now I have a new skill to add to my list! Yay! Thanks Mom!


While this is in no way meant to be a guide to pressure canning I'll share a few pics and the basic process. That way if you find someone to teach you it won't be so mystifying.

The black pot has a strainer in it and boiling water. The silver one is the pressure canner with a few inches of water in the bottom. We snapped the beans in 2-3 inch pieces and removed the ends. Next, we rinsed them under cool water and put them in the black pot of boiling water. Once the water comes back to a boil they stay in for 5 minutes. At that point we pulled out the strainer, allowed the water to drain back in to the pot, and poured the beans in to the plastic strainer in the sink.


Then it is time to put the beans in the jars. I used the end of a wooden spoon to arrange them and filled them almost to the neck of the jar. The jars will get very HOT. Duh, but I'm a little slow.


You use the liquid from the black pot to fill the jars. Leave about 1 inch of headspace. Wipe the rim clean, then place the lids and rings on as usual.

Here's the fun part!! Put them in the pressure canner and secure the lid. We used the canner's owner's manual and the Ball canning book to figure out the specifics. For our canner we need moderate steam coming out of the little hole on top for 7-10 minutes. At that point we put the little weight on top of that hole. Stick with me here... each recipe calls for certain pounds of pressure. For our canner the piece with the black top equals 5 pounds and each silver ring is five additional pounds. So we put one ring on the black piece and set that over the steam hole. When the pressure reaches 10 pounds the steam comes out forcefully enough to rock the little weight back and forth. Once the weight starts rocking your processing time begins. I set the timer for 25 minutes.



When the time is up you just turn off the burner and wait. There is a little button thing on top of the canner that sticks up as long as it is holding pressure. When the button drops the pressure is gone. Then you can tip the weight sideways to check it. If no steam comes out it is safe to remove the lid. It took a very long time for the jars to cool, much longer than jam from what I remember. Therefore it also took a long time for them to seal.

By the way, 5# of grean beans from my garden = 4 full quarts. Not bad! :)

Do you pressure can? Isn't it fun!? What is your favorite food to pressure can?

Waste Reduction and Chocolate Muffins

I am very excited to be taking on the the Food Waste Reduction Challenge hosted by Crunchy Chicken (see sidebar for link). To start out I tossed any old food that I found in the fridge so that we can start fresh. Most of what I tossed were old dressings and sauces that we never use and brought here with us from the old house. I also threw out some shrimp and cocktail sauce from Christmas and one thing of leftovers from a restaurant. I plan to use my postal scale to weigh anything we throw out in February.

When I got to the freezer I was relieved not to find much that needed to be tossed. I did pitch some leftover cheesy potatoes we had frozen from our wedding. Then I came across the several bags of frozen shredded zucchini from last years garden. I had yet to use any of them. So, what's a non-wasting girl to do with all that zucchini?

Make muffins! Yeah, chocolate muffins to be exact. I pulled together a recipe from a few different ones to come up with the following:

Chocolate Muffins with (Shhh!) Zucchini
2 2/3 cups whole grain pastry flour (or whole wheat flour)
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3 eggs
1 cup shredded zucchini (could also use applesauce!)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream (or milk)
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped almonds and/or 1/2 cup Andes baking chips

I mixed the wet ingredients together first then added the dry. This was enough to make 24 muffins. I filled 12 muffin cups then mixed about 1/2 cup Andes mint baking chips in to the remainder. After filling the other 12 cups I sprinkled some tops with more chips and others with the almonds. I left some plain as well.

Bake at 325 degrees F for 20-25 minutes. These are delicious!! Let me know if you try them. I froze 8, took 8 to work, and left 8 for us to eat.

A Local Loaf

Today I picked up another order of local flours from Hampshire Farms (see sidebar for link). I got:

25# 100% whole grain bread flour
10# 100% whole grain pastry flour
2# cornmeal
5# sunflower seeds (dehulled)

Randy Hampshire, who filled my order was more than happy to show me around their farm. They have a USDA approved kitchen on site along with the brick oven that Randy built himself. It was very impressive! The farm also boasts a nice warehouse in an old grainery, where all of their flour and wheat is stored.

They also have, meandering around the pastures, a family cow. She is a nice looking Jersey and had a few other cattle keeping her company. I have given a lot of thought to having our own family cow and have thought about it more and more seriously lately. I don't think it is the right time for us, and it would take a lot to convince my husband. He probably has a point - it is a lot easier to find someone to throw in some grain for our animals then to milk twice a day when we want a vacation. In any case, of was jealous of Randy's family and I told him so.

Randy warned that I would want to use a recipe that calls for 100% WHOLE GRAIN flour, not just whole wheat or white flour. A Google search revealed this recipe, and I altered it in to the following for use in my bread maker:

1 Tbsp active dry yeast
3 3/4 cup whole grain flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup honey
3 Tbsp oil
1 1/2 very warm water

This is a big breakthrough for me: I now have the option of making a nearly 100% local loaf of bread for our everyday needs. Although Hampshire Farms is based 1/2 hour away from here the wheat for the bread flour was grown in an organic field only 1 1/2 miles down the road from our home. The honey comes from a local apiary, P.W.R. Beekeeping. I did use a non-local canola oil in today's loaf but only because I'm out of my normal Zoye Soybean Oil, made in Zeeland, MI from a lot of our neighbors' soybeans. Soy Beginnings soybean oil is also available so I have a couple options there. The only non-local ingredients are the yeast, which I buy in bulk, and the salt. We will be switching to sea salt as soon as our last never ending box of conventional salt is gone.

Oh, one more nice thing: I was relieved to see that the 10 & 25# quantities came in a large brown paper bag with no plastic liner. The smaller quantities I got last time came in plastic and since we're trying to reduce how much plastic we use I was a little concerned. No worries!

Here is a pic of the pull out cabinets that came with our ancient farmhouse, a great feature that makes storing all of this flour much easier:



And Maci, she was jealous and wanted to lick the camera:



So, what local products were you surprised to find in your neighborhood? Are you at the point yet were you have entirely local meal options?

How to Store Carrots, and Save them for Seed

Today it was supposed to starting raining/snowing at around noon. I was determined to get some work done outside before the bad weather hit so I headed outside about 10AM. First I finished landscaping a spot near our back door. Now I have lawn edging and stone around two sides of the house. I'll do the other two sides in the spring. I'm still amazed at the difference - it looks so much nicer. I'll have to post before and after pics sometime.

I really wanted to get the garden mulched today but that didn't happen. Both of our wheelbarrows are full, one has a flat tire, and I really didn't feel like opening up the big shed doors to lug out a bunch of hay for mulch.

So instead, I dug up all of our carrots. The book Root Cellaring by Mike and Nancy Bubel is a great one to study in regards to food storage. Since the book said carrots can be left in the ground all winter in milder climates, I figured mine were safe out there for awhile. However, with lots of freezing temps in the forecast I needed to get them out before the ground froze. I think they were on the verge of getting too big, not sure how that would work if you left them in the ground all year.

Here is a picture of this year's crop:



After changing in to dry clothes (it did start raining on me) and warming up, I sorted and cleaned up the carrots. Any carrots that were affected by worms or too small to bother storing went in a bowl for the rabbits, along with all the green tops. I'll feed them a handful a day along with their regular diet. Most of the carrots I just snapped the tops off of, wiped them down with a dry washcloth, and snapped the long, thin tip off the root. I picked out 10 exceptionally nice carrots to save for seed next year. I just wiped them down and trimmed the tops down to an inch or two, leaving the tips long
Here's what I ended up with after sorting:


Seed carrots


Carrots to eat


Carrots and tops for the rabbits

According to the book, you can store the carrots by layering them in a box or can in damp sand, sawdust, or leaves. We have a lot of leaves but it seems like they would get very slimy and I don't like the idea of reaching in to slimy leaves for dinner. I also worried sand that sand might introduce bugs or, around here, remnants of cat poop. I felt safest using sawdust and our friends gladly supplied me with a huge bag full. It was actually more like wood shavings, which I think will work fine.
My husband just mentioned one of our coolers had lost the drain plug and sprung the hinges so he was going to put it in the garbage. I found it in the garage and it turned out to be the perfect container for storing carrots.
I didn't have a spray bottle to wet the sawdust with. Instead, I filled a pot with water and dumped in the shavings a little at a time. Then I could scoop out handfuls and squeeze them out. Per the book, I spread a 1 inch layer on the bottom, laid the carrots out in a single layer, covered them with another inch of shavings, and repeated. Like this:


Wetting the sawdust


One layer of carrots


Covering them with another inch of material


My workstation

When I was done I added another inch or two of sawdust and covered it all with a couple of layers of wet newspaper. The book says they should last until May or later if kept cool and moist. Specifically, they like 32-40 degrees F and 90-95 humidity. I'll be moving the cooler to our upstairs where it is not heated and should stay quite cold. If it gets too warm there I'll try the attic since that is not insulated. Frequent checks to keep the shavings and newspaper damp should help.
I stored the seed carrots with the rest and will pull them out and plant them again in the spring.

Feel free to share your storage techniques for carrots, or let me know if this helps you! :)

Again for the month, I'll be adding a note about something I'm thankful for to each post. Today was easy - of course I'm grateful to have all this great food! It is such a wonderful feeling being able to set aside food to feed us throughout the year. I'm lucky to have a place to do it and the resources to learn how.