Against the Grain

Canning 2011

I plan to keep canning chicken broth as we eat chickens and I bought an extra canner rack so I'll be able to can 4 lbs of dry beans at once throughout the winter. The tomatoes are still coming now and then so there might be one last round of those too. But for the most part, canning season is done here. My jars are stored in my basement where the lighting is terrible and they're spread all over, but I wanted to show off what I've done, so I took one jar from each batch I canned outside. Overall, I canned 317 jars this season, which I think is just behind my 2009 total. I lacked a crawling-then-walking baby then, so I'm pretty happy with what I've got stored. I'll also be going to a friend's canning swap this weekend and hope to trade grape jelly, apricot jam, and dill pickles for other intriguing canned goods.

Photo 1: Most of the berry-type jams
Grape jelly (20 jars various sizes totalling 33 half-pints); Blueberry butter (6.5 half-pints); Rhubarb-blueberry jam (3 half-pints); Blueberry-raspberry jam (5.5 half-pints).

Photo 2: Stone Fruits
Peach jam (6 half-pints), Peaches in light sugar syrup (15.5 quarts), Pear butter (8 half-pints), Pears in light syrup  (21 quarts), Apricot jam (6 half-pints, 7 pints). I also made  5 half-pints of apricot-raspberry jam and 7.5 half-pints of rhubarb-strawberry-orange jam that got forgotten when I took pictures. The internet told me that the blueberry and pear butters were amazing but I probably won't bother with them again. I'll stick with the smooth taste of apple butter and leave the blueberries for the freezer (although the jams were pretty tasty) and pears in slices.

Photo 3: Apple Products
The three in the back are all applesauce from Paula Red seconds. I'm hoping to go get another half-bushel of maybe Haralsons this week because I can't stop myself. And is there ever really too much applesauce? I don't add any sugar, just a little cinnamon sometimes. I like varieties that make pink sauce. I bought a bushel myself and made 26 pints of applesauce and 8 half-pints of apple butter. Then some friends and I went in together on two bushels of apples and spent the better part of two days processing them. My portion was 10 pints and 10 quarts.

Photo 4: Straight Tomatoes
I've tried a variety of techniques over the years resulting in whole, crushed, and quartered tomatoes. This year, my preferred approach was to blanch, peel, and core them, then to squeeze them whole and room-temperature into hot jars until the jars filled with their own juices. It takes 85 minutes in the canner that way, but it was less putzy then the crushed tomato method used in one batch, shown at the right, where I cooked them before jarring them. It seemed like a lot of juice was lost that way and it wasn't really faster overall, but required more hands-on time.  Total tomato count: 6 pints crushed, 29 quarts, 5 pints, and 1 half-pint whole.

Photo 5: Tomatoes Sauced/Chopped
Thanks to Pick-Your-Own,  I found a better way to cook down tomatoes into sauce this year. After peeling and coring them, I'd squeeze out the juice and seeds (not perfectly), leaving more pulpiness and less liquid. I haven't been happy with the super-thin liquid my KitchenAid attachment produces (although I adore it for applesauce) although that would eliminate the need to blanch and peel. I still end up cooking things down for hours but I like thicker sauce and this is the first year I feel like I accomplished that. I did two rounds each of pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce. The kids don't like the second pizza sauce batch because it's more peppery. I used separate recipes for teach batch of spaghetti sauce. The boys don't usually eat spaghetti sauce on noodles (how is that possible?!?) or I'd make a lot more of it.

In the middle is salsa that I made with friends. I make salsa but refuse to eat it. Dan likes it and that's enough for me. On top is ketchup. Very easy (but slow) in the crockpot. It took overnight and into the next day, but requires little watching and is SO GOOD. I was nervous that I wouldn't like it but I will definitely make it again.

Totals: 15 pints salsa, 8 pints pizza sauce, 15.5 pints spaghetti sauce, and 5.5 half-pints ketchup.

Photo 6: Ugly-colored jars
I've made chicken broth from leftover carcasses for awhile, but have always frozen instead of canning it. Freezing is easier, but I tend to misplace them at the bottom of the freezer and just lose track of whether I have any or not. I never thaw them ahead of time and it's one more thing to do to prep for dinner. So this year I've canned two batches of chicken broth. It's awfully handy to just grab a jar off the shelf. Making broth feels like the best bargain since it's made from stuff that would have gone into the trash.

Next to the broth jars is my rhubarb ketchup. People raved about it online and I'm always interested in new uses for rhubarb. This one is not my cup of tea. It's okay, but I feel like I sneak it into things like sloppy joes and don't want to bother adding it to burgers. I'll stick to tomato ketchup now.

I have 6 quarts and 4 pints of chicken broth and 5 half-pints of rhubarb ketchup.

Photo 7: The Leftovers
3 years ago, I made a half-bushel of dill pickles (first attempt) and they were amazing. We ate all of them between October and January. So in 2009 I was more ambitious and went for the full bushel. Unfortunately I waited until September and farmers' market cukes were expensive and rare. I lined up dozens of rows of pickles, waited weeks until they were ready, and then they were softer than we liked. They weren't completely mushy but they weren't great. So they sat there. I've given a few away to use chopped as relish but slowly I've been dumping them to use the jars. It's depressing. This year, I made sure to make pickles in August and stuck to half a bushel. They aren't as good as 2008's batch, but we're eating them. Which is good because we have 16 pints and 11 quarts.

A few months ago I started buying dry beans instead of canned because I realized they cost maybe 1/3 as much that way. It's not hard to cook dry beans but you have to start the night before you want them. Without my extra canning rack, I could fit 8 wide-mouth pint jars in the canner which translated to 2 pounds of beans. I tried doing 3 pounds at once the first time and had to finish cooking some separately and then freeze them. The time spent canning them is pretty close to the time they'd need to finish cooking anyway. But once I can do 4 pounds, it'll really be efficient. I now have 8 pints each of kidney and black beans.

My garden didn't start producing pole beans until August, which is really, really late for us. For about a month we got enough beans to eat them for dinner a few times a week. I never quite got enough to save so I bought 5 pounds from the farmer's market as the season was ending and got 10 pints out of that. At $1.00 per jar it's probably not cheaper than buying canned at the grocery store. Once again, I need to buy in August if I go the farmer's market route.

I've also put 5 quarts rhubarb, 4 gallons of strawberries, 1 gallon of apricot slices, and 4 gallons of blueberries into the freezer.

It's the end of canning season, must be the time for sewing

I've been working an insane amount (for me) over the past month and I sent in my last report at 3:30a.m. last night, so I've given myself permission to take a work-vacation for the week. I saw on Made by Rae that Kids' Sewing Week begins today and it was perfect timing. I actually can spend an hour sewing every day this week -- hooray! I've had no time whatsoever leading up to today, so I haven't really done any of the prep work beforehand. Hence, I spent what felt like an hour today chasing my kids with a measuring tape to update my sizing chart. While doing so, I saw that Peter's weight has finally surpassed his height (53 lbs, 50.5") and Peter and Tim really do have the same 21" waist. Once Peter heard that,  he figured Tim should try wearing his clothes. With some belt-cinching and letting shorts act as pants, it sort of worked. Tim did toddle around in Peter's clothes for quite some time.

The one thing I definitely want to sew is new flannel pajama pants for Peter. The cheap Joann's flannel must really shrink up with repeated washings because I know Peter's legs didn't get THAT much longer since last year. I always make them on the long side with big hems and have occasionally added a coordinating solid to the bottoms as the inseam gets ridiculous. But last's year's pair is still too short. Leo's in decent shape because he has all of Peter's outgrown pairs, although I'll probably make a new pair for him too so he won't feel left out.

I had Peter dig through the flannel bin and he requested the space print, although I've already made a pair from those so I'm not sure if there's enough. I think the pirates on the bottom right are his second choice. Leo will likely get the greenish airplane print on the top right. I think I'll do the coordinating red and orange right from the start to make them easy to lengthen later. 

I bought a yard of black wool to make Tim pants a year ago. Since that stuff is crazy-expensive, I'd better get around to sewing some before he potty-trains and I don't need them.  I need to felt (full?) the wool first and that freaks me out. Two minutes too long and it's ruined! Yikes. He's also outgrowing most of his fitteds and although I have plenty of prefolds (red-edged Green Mountain Diapers -- they're awesome and the perfect size with no fold-down) and flats (also GMD -- larges, which are going to fit forever and have been fun to tie-dye), but fitteds are nice for going out, babysitters, and nighttime. I probably don't need a ton of them, but to have 8 more for a dozen would be great. And there are always a pile of dress patterns for my niece calling out to me. First I'll have to dig my sewing supplies out from under the canning stuff. I received my grandma's nice Bernina and haven't touched it yet.

That's got to be enough to keep me busy for a week or three.

Tim the Toddler

A few tidbits about Tim at 14 months before any more time passes:

He has transitioned from crawling to nearly always walking over the past month.

He's at the stage where if we leave the bathroom door open, he WILL go in and splash in the toilet.

At the doctor last week, he weighed 20 lbs, 1 oz--my little peanut.

He's not doing a whole lot of talking or signing. I get "Mama" and "ha (hi)" and there's an occasionally "Dada", "ba" (bye), "all-done" or "cat". He signs for "all done"  and "plane" without prompting and sometimes "nurse", "sleep", and "more" with prompting.

He can climb onto our lower couch and onto some chairs and is pretty good at moving things around to pull himself onto higher things. He loves standing on a box or stool to look out our front picture window.

He's finally napping predictably, with a 1.5-2 hour afternoon nap. He used to fall asleep around dinner for a short nap and would sleep briefly if we were in the car in the morning, but now that the big boys are at school during the day and we can work around Tim's timing instead of theirs, he's finally napping long enough for me to get stuff done or rest.

His blue eyes are turning more hazel--as are Peter's . We had two blue-eyed boys a year ago and now I'm not sure how they'll end up. Dan and I both have green/hazel so I'd guess they'll be similar to ours. Leo's remain very brown.

His hair is blonder than either of his brothers'. Not quite white-blonde, but close. It's almost long enough in the back to get trimmed, but not quite. Dan's mom says it looks like his did as a toddler.

He loves putting things into other things. He tests everything to see if it will go in. Green beans don't fit into sippy cups but pens go into rolls of plastic wrap.

He won't let us read to him. Granted we haven't tried as much as we should have, but if we hold a book in front of him, he just tries to slam it shut.

He will eat almost anything and is by far the least picky of the three kids (although I think Peter and Leo weren't picky as babies either). He nurses at naptime, often when he wakes from his nap, sometimes in the evening at some point, to fall asleep around 9 (give or take an hour), and then is usually okay until 2 or 3am, at which point I'm in bed and I don't care or notice if he nurses until we wake up, usually between 8 and 9am. I think he's less of a comfort nurser than his brothers were. If need be, Dan can get him to sleep either at naptime or bedtime by lying down with him without my nursing him.