Canning Tuna

I'm making a link here to a show that I've been watching on hulu.com, and this particular episode is about water, but for my interest it shows canning tuna in Italy. In this video there is only a short highlight of canning the tuna. It shows cooking the tuna in boiling water, scraping the skin off and boning the tuna, cutting it into pieces to fit the jars and putting the jars into a pot of water.

What I get from watching the video is that the tuna is packed in jars with screw tops unlike the canning jars we use in the U.S. but tops that things like our pickles from a store come in. I forget the different names for the different tops. Blast getting holes in my mind. Regardless of canning warnings from Ball, I frequently can things in recycled pickle-type jars. They seal. Period.

I also get that they are canning the tuna in a water bath. My Ball Blue Book calls for processing tuna in a pressure cooker for 1 hour and 40 minutes for half-pints or pints.

Now I know that the canning guides for the U.S. are litigation driven nowadays, and that the way people canned things in the past was different. People can argue that science is better, and we have more knowledge of bacteria, its survival and affect on our food than people used to have. It's still a subject that I ponder frequently.

At ORNL I worked with a man from a city west of Nashville, TN, and he used to talk about his youth and how his mother did things. He was from a large family, like, 14-15 siblings, and they weren't well off. He has talked about his mother canning fish whenever the kids brought a large one home, and she would pack the jars and cover them with melted, hot bacon fat or lard.

At one time I priced tuna for home canning. I was wondering how effective it would be cost-wise. My conclusion was that living in the middle of the country made buying fresh tuna prohibitive. Maybe if I lived on a coast and could go out fishing for tuna, it might be worthwhile. Otherwise, nah.

Here's the link to the video:  http://www.hulu.com/watch/85506#i0,p0,s1,d0

Canning Pumpkin Question

At the end of fall in 2011, I canned some pumpkin and have what may be a problem with it. There has been some discoloration which I can't decide is actual spoilage or something home canned pumpkin does. Because I'm unsure, I'm tossing it.

It's seeming to come from one particular pumpkin - I only had two, but I'm not sure. I may have been sloppy with one pumpkin and took too long to get it from the roasting into the jars. That and the fact that I've never done pumpkin before is why I'm so unsure about this.

I'm really hoping someone that reads the blog will know something about this and can give me some information on it. Please, if you've canned pumpkin before or seen this let me know what you understand about it.

Following is a picture of the discoloration. It's a bright orange that seems to develop around where the pumpkin has bubbled during processing.

Pumpkin Canning Finished for 2011

Okay. The canning of pumpkin for 2011 was finally finished a couple of weeks ago. Yay! All in all, I got 4 jelly jars of seeds, both roasted and brined, 15 pints of pumpkin puree for pies or bread, 7 jelly jars of pumpkin butter, and enough puree for 2 pumpkin pies to bake tomorrow from two pumpkins.

One of the pumpkins was a monster pumpkin that Uncle Charles gave me (Thank You!) , and one was a regular-sized one that I rescued from shooting practice from the neighbors across the street. "No! Stop! Don't shoot that pumpkin!" They had 5 or 6 so didn't mind me saving one from an explosive death.

It took me quite a few days to get through the process of cutting, seeding, baking, skinning and pureeing (is that a word?) both of the pumpkins. It took hammering the knife with the meat pounding mallet to get through the monster pumpkin. On the right is the pan of the cooked pumpkin.

Max talked about his mother cooking their on the stove when he was young. I wanted to try a method of removing the seeds and baking the pumpkin before removing the skin so that skinning wouldn't be so difficult.

The monster pumpkin was so large, I could only bake 1/2 of it at a time. Each bake took almost 2 hours. The normal pumpkin fit in the oven in one baking. So all in all it took 6 hours to bake the pumpkin. However, I didn't have to try to scoop raw pumpkin away from the skin. Skinning was very easy after the baking was done. I could also do other things while the baking was going on.

After the quarters or halves were baked, I easily skinned the pumpkin meat and then pureed the meat in a food processor. Note for simmering the puree:  Use a deep pan; this stuff spatters like its only purpose in life is to burn you. It took a few days to get the puree canned, the butter recipe figured out and canned, and the seeds done. Remember that there were other things going on - plumping repairs, Mother care and old age, sigh.

The recipe I used was adapted from one I found on the internet; however, it was changed extensively. Perhaps my pumpkin butter doesn't taste like the "real" stuff, but it sure is good.



Pumpkin Butter


3 cps pumpkin puree
3/4 cp Tampico Citrus Punch (orange juice type liquid)
1 cp sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
pinch of powdered cloves (to taste)
pinch of cinnamon (to taste)

Combine all ingredients in saucepan and simmer until thickened.

Making Hominy III

At the beginning, please let me say that I absolutely detest blogspot's interface for posting photographs. It's unstable and and nigh on to impossible to handle. I have never been able to place photographs exactly where I want them using blogspot. Yes. I've tried to edit the html, which I used to be fairly good at doing. No more, apparently.

I've cried uncle and given up to their terrible interface and accepted the pics will be put where blogspot wants them to be put no matter what I try. I apologize for the crummy placement of the photographs in the post. I tried. I lost.

Here's to another attempt at making hominy and an almost success! I finally found real lye and used the recipe in my Farm Journal book; said recipe is very close to the recipe in the Ball Blue Book of Canning. 

At the beginning

The main difference in the recipes is the handling of the rinsing after cooking in lye and rinsing the lye off. I'm so happy to find that using lye actually gets the dark nib off the kernels. The Mexican method of using pickling lime may make it suitable for grinding for masa, but doesn't make a product without the dark nib, which we Southerners are used to as our hominy.

After about 5 minutes

I didn't follow the cooking recipe exactly, and got voted down for it. Uncle Charles came over today with a bit of okra. He tasted one of the jars of hominy and declared it "grainy" and opined it likely did need that bit of cooking I didn't do.


What I did was to cut out the last step of cooking between making and canning. The recipe called for cooking for 40 minutes or so until soft and then processing in the canner for 60 minutes. I had thought it was pretty soft and decided to can it without the 40 minutes of cooking.  I needed another opinion beside my own, and Uncle thinks it needs the cooking. So I'll try that on the next attempt.

This post will mainly be a pictoral showing the process. Whenever I finally decide I've got it down pat, I'll write a recipe post.

After 10 minutes

After 20 minutes

The lye:  It used to be that there was a brand called Red Devil that one could buy in most grocery stores, and that was the brand most Southerners used in making hominy. Either Red Devil went out of business or was swallowed up by another company, and it can't be found anymore. In my little town, my local grocery store sells a brand by ComStar called "Pure Lye."  All of the recipes say use a food grade lye rather than a drain cleaner. Although that might be considered an oxymoron, it actually means to use a lye that is 100% lye. According the ingredient list on the container and its own website, the ComStar lye is a "drain cleaner" lye, but it contains no other ingredients than sodium hydroxide. Some other lyes do. This is the brand I used.

The first step is to mix 4 tablespoons of lye to 8 quarts water for processing 2 quarts dried corn. I used 1 quart corn and mixed 2 tblsp lye to 4 quarts water. I stirred the lye into the water in a stainless steel pan. Once dissolved, I added the corn and turned the heat to high. Your'e supposed to cook this "30 minutes or until the hulls start to come off."


Okay. Doesn't that sound simple? It really wasn't. It's not like you can see the hull sloughing off the corn. It took me two tries to decide that when the solution begins to get thick and you can detect a rather gelatinous glop in places that that's the hulls coming off. The first time I just cooked for 30 minutes. The stuff in the pan turned into the texture of a thick chowder. The second time, I cooked for 20 minutes and decided that gelatinous stuff I saw was actually the hulls coming off and quit cooking it. That's the key.

When you first start, everything is clear  and bright. Then the corn begins to turn dark. The solution begins to turn dark. The wooden spoon begins to turn dark. It darkens continuously through the cooking. If you cook 30 minutes, the solution is opaque, and you can't see through it; it's also terribly thick. When I cooked 20 minutes, the solution was mostly opaque, but it wasn't quite as thick.

At this point you let the corn and solution sit for "about 20 minutes." Then you begin the rinsing. I was all cool with this until I started to dump the solution through a strainer and realized the drain pipes were PVC. Well, bull hockey. Was I going to eat the PVC out? Since I don't dare eat the drain pipes out, I drained the first rinse out into another pan and dumped it outside. Luckily we have a good place to dump it. Then you keep rinsing the corn in fresh water until you have the nibs out.

After 30 minutes

How thick the solution is

According the Farm Journal recipe, at this point, you cover the hominy with 1 inch of water, boil it for 5 minutes and rinse. You do this 5 times. What a royal pain in the patooty.  The first time I did this I got sidetracked by first Joe needing supper, then Lola needing supper, then deciding I'd faint myself without supper. So the pot sat for about an hour before the boiling 5 times. Originally I decided this helped turn the hominy to mush. Yet it's at this point the Ball Blue Book diverges from the Farm Journal and says to let the hominy sit in fresh water, changing it 4-5 times for 2-3 hours. This will take further experimenting to decide what's best. If I do let it sit, I'll at least change the water every 30 minutes or so.

Hominy after rinsing

After this, you're supposed to boil the hominy 40 minutes or so until soft. This is step I didn't do. I immediately went to processing for 1 hour in the pressure canner. What I discovered is that the corn kernels still suck up an incredible amount of water and swell considerably. I ended up with no head space, jars only about 2/3 full of water, 2 out of 5 pints didn't seal, and opinion is that it wasn't cooked enough. Okay. Cook the hominy 40 minutes at least before canning.

The hominy is a bit more translucent than store-bought hominy. It wasn't in perfect kernels like store bought. There were more smaller bits floating around than I wanted. Using a slotted spoon to put in the jars helps a bit with this. Also, I decided that using a separate pan of boiling water rather than the water you boil the hominy in makes a pretty, less cloudy product.

Canned Hominy

Canning Pickled Banana Pepper Rings and Okra

The last thing I've done this weekend is to make some pickled banana pepper rings to eat with pizza. Huzzah! I was amazed I got 12 half pints of pickled rings from the peppers Jill brought me, in addition to making white bean soup, eating a few with meals, and I've still got a bit I'll dehydrate.

Before I did the banana peppers though, I did up the okra Uncle Charles brought me. They turned out lovely. I've been sitting on pins and needles hoping I'd get okra to pickle. I used a recipe Jill gave me that comes from her husband's family. They've used it for decades. It's been a long time since I ate some of Joe's pickled okra, but I remember it was good. Well, if he wouldn't have put the red peppers in it (ducking and running.)













Following is Joe's Pickled Okra recipe. It can be used for all sorts of pickling. I used it on the banana peppers, and Jill says they've done Giardiniera (carrots, cauliflower, celery, peppers, onions, zuchinni). This IS NOT a USDA-approved canning recipe. It is a very old recipe from before the days of food scientists and litigation. One can't assume this recipe is absolutely safe for use, especially for people who live in states with high loads of botulism spores (west of the Rockies.)

1 quart white vinegar
3 quarts water
1/4 - 1/5 cup canning, pickling or kosher salt
1/8 tsp alum per pint jar

Optional: add garlic, dill or hot peppers to taste

1. Sterilize jars. 
2. Mix vinegar, water, and salt in pot and bring to boil.
3. While waiting for solution to boil, pack sterilized jars with fruit or vegetable of choice.
4. Pour boiling solution over packed jars and let cool enough to handle.*
5. Pour liquid in jars through a strainer back into solution in pot on stove and return to boil.
6. Do this four (4) times. According to uptake of solution by produce, 3 times may suffice.
7. On the last time, add 1/8 tsp alum to each pint jar.
8. Top with canning lid and ring.
9. Let seal and cool overnight. Remove ring and rinse jars. Date and store.
10. Let jars sit for 1 month before eating.

*When I can handle the jar this way, it's cool enough. I don't want to get burned doing this.

Making Vinegar I

Since I had so many cores and apple peels from canning the apples, I decided to give making vinegar a try. I found this video on youtube.com, and it seems simple enough. We'll see what happens.




Here's a picture of the first jar I had going.

Day 1

Day 2
You can see the foam at the left.

Below is the juice from combined of two jars I started using the peels from the apples Lola eats each night. It's in a quart jar. I was a bit surprised at how little juice I got. Perhaps you can use less fruit and get the same bang. I poured the juice off the jar when it foamed. Then I poured water over the apple bits and went for a second round.

Here are pics of the two jars I started using the cores and peels from the apples I canned. I don't know what size the jars are. 1/2 gallon maybe. They're too big for me use for canning but seem to be perfect for this. I discovered that if I cut the plastic disc about the size of the jar there's no need to weigh it down with a jar. That works better for me because the kitchen is so small there's really no place to set this with a cloth draped over it to keep fruit flies out of it. I covered the jar mouth with a paper towel and screwed a canning ring on it.

Now I just have to wait a month or so and hopefully have apple vinegar.

Two jars of hopefully apple vinegar

Close up of plastic disc.

Canning Apples and My New Dish Pan

My friend Julia gave me a few apples, and I canned apples for the first time yesterday. Jill and I talked about dehydrating them, but since Lola likes cooked apples so much I decided to try canning them. I did them without any sugar, in just plain water. I figure when I warm them up, I can add a bit of sugar, some butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon. They were a bit soft (old), and after canning I decided it might have been better to dehydrate them. We might have applesauce by the time they're warmed up for eating. They look pretty anyway.










You're going to think I'm nuts getting excited over a dish pan, but I just got a great one. On my way back from Mayfield, I stopped in a store in Fancy Farm, that I thought was a hardware store. Of all things, it's both a hardware store AND a grocery store. I'm so glad I did since our local hardware store closed, and it's nice to find this one almost as close. To make it sweet, they had a ton of canning jars, and Granite Ware brand enameled dish pans. These are the ones you can cook in and wash in. My grandmother, Ninny, had a couple of these, and I've wanted one for years. Now if anyone chips my new dish pan, I'll be out for blood! It was just perfect to slice the apples in. Nice rim and handles make it easy to use. It fit right into the sink at a good level. I love it.

Below are the steps I used to can the apples. My Farm Journal of canning says to use water or thin syrup for canning. The Ball Blue Book says to use thin/light or medium syrup and doesn't even mention using only water.

1. Wash, drain, core, pare and slice apples into water with either citric acid, lemon juice, or 2 tblsp each vinegar and salt to 1 gallon of water to prevent darkening. 
2. Drain, boil in water or syrup for 5 minutes.
3. Pack hot apples in hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch head space.
4. Cover with boiling liquid, leaving 1/2 inch head space.
5. Put on lids and rings.
6. Process pints 15 minutes and quarts 20 minutes in boiling water bath. (Ball says 20 for pints.)*

*Adjust for altitudes above 1000 foot.

Canning Beans

White Bean soup

 Whew! We'll have to get out our gas masks sometime in the future (grin) as I've been on a jag of canning white bean soup and dried beans. I wanted to go about it 2 different ways to see which one I like best. Oh, and this can all be blamed on my lovely cousin, Jill, for bringing me a brimming full sack of banana peppers. As she handed it to me, she started in on the deliciousness of white beans with banana peppers.

For the first batch, I made a white bean soup with, of course, sliced banana peppers, onions, carrots and celery. Once it was cooked up, I canned it in quart jars. The jar on the right has been shaken to mix up the soup. On the left is how it came out of the canner.

Dried White Beans

For the second batch, I followed the directions found on the gardenweb forum, click here to see it, and canned beans not really cooked fully. I took a package each of white beans and pinto beans, sorted, rinsed, and put each in a bowl, covered well with water, and soaked them overnight. The next day, I started with the white beans. They were boiled for 30 minutes and ladled hot into quart jars; I added a small handful of the sliced banana peppers, carrots, celery and onion after the first cup of beans went in. I filled the rest of the jar with beans to the shoulder where it begins to turn in. Then I topped with the boiling water they were cooked in, leaving 1 inch headspace. They were processed for 90 minutes in my pressure canner.

Since my canner is very small and only holds 3 jars, I had to do them in two batches. All in all, I got 5 quarts from a 2-pound bag of white beans. Aren't they pretty! You can see quite a bit of difference between the cooked soup and the dried beans. The cooked beans have a thick soup. The dried beans have a watery soup and have held their shape.

Dried pinto beans

For the third batch, I did the pinto beans. I put them up in pint jars, without adding any additional veggies, and got 7 pints.
















For my own information, following are the steps for canning dried beans adapted from the Ball Blue Book.

1. Sort, stone and rinse dried beans.
2. Cover well with cold water and let stand 12-18 hours in a cool place.
3. Drain, put in pot, cover well with water, bring to boil and boil 30 minutes.
4. Pack hot beans in hot jars, leaving 1-inch head space.
5. Add 1/2 tsp salt to each pint or 1 tsp salt to each quart.
6. Cover with boiling water, leaving 1-inch head space. Remove air, add additional water if needed.
7. Top with lids and rings.
8. Process pints for 75 minutes ad 10 pounds pressure below 1000 ft above sea level.
9. Process quarts for 90 minutes at 10 pounds pressure below 1000 ft above sea level.

A/C and Salsa for Jill

Hallelujah! The air conditioner is working. OMG, it is the best thing in the world today. The HVAC guy arrived Monday at 7:00 p.m. Again, the problem was a fuse. Argh, this old house and it's buss fuses. The last time it was a fuse outside of which I had no knowledge. Being a little wiser, this time I tried to check all the fuses.  I flipped the outside switch to no avail. Went into the basement and looked at all the fuses. None were broken, except there was one double one that I couldn't tell because you couldn't see an obvious failure device. That little fellow turned out to be the evil culprit. You have to have a meter to tell if those have failed. Wahhh! I want an electrical system with little switches that pop off and all you have to do is flip them back.

So the HVAC guy hosed the A/C down to clean it a bit and put a new fuse in. The $85 house call and half hour of work hurt a bit, but, hey, I'm glad to pay for his knowledge. You have to remember it's not the ease of the work you're paying for, it's the education and experience that you just don't have that you're paying for.

Uncle Charles tried to kill me Monday by offering a mess of purple hull peas if I picked them. Of course, I couldn't turn that down. I think I sweated a bucket and was just about sick to my stomach by the time it was done. However, I got about 2 cups of lovely peas for supper, and my fingers aren't purple today.

Then he made up for the assassination attempt by gifting me a lovely mantle clock. The spring is wound too tight, and it needs a visit to a clock shop. We have one only a block from the house in Memphis, so that's no problem. He strapped it in the back seat of the car, and all the way home I kept thinking my cell phone was getting messages until I finally figured out it was the clock lightly singing to me. Lovely sound.

He'd just pulled all the cucumber vines from his garden, and declaring they had all the pickles they wanted, gave me the last of the harvest. I hope you're okay with that Aunt Agnes.  He opined that some of the pickled squash and green tomatoes I'd given him had too much vinegar. I agree that the first batches did. However, I've reduced the amount I use to about as little as I dare. Maybe the last of the ones I've made won't have too much vinegar for him. I suspect they will, but I'm not sure about reducing the vinegar anymore than I already have. Today before I go home tomorrow, I'm going to put up the last of the cukes. That will end the pickling season.

We also picked some okra while I was there. I was going to pickle it, but decided instead to do an experiment with a way of canning it I'd seen on the internet. It calls for 6 tblsp of vinegar and 2 of salt to a gallon of water, boiling for 6 minutes, sealing, and mentions no processing time. That makes me a bit nervous, but I wanted to try it. They said you could even bread and fry it. The jar sealed well, looks lovely, and the okra stayed a bright green. It doesn't appear to be at all soft. They said the okra stayed good for months. That said, I wouldn't at all trust it for long-term storage, but doubt it would be terribly unsafe for a season.

I also made a batch of salsa. Jill and I were talking about different salsas, and we both opined we liked the watery kind you get in the restaurants. I've always made that kind fresh, but she hadn't. So last night I made up a batch of salsa and canned it. I couldn't find any fresh jalapenos, but substituted 2 cans of chopped green chilies. Since I despise cilantro, I used fresh chopped parsley from the patio planter. Mine isn't nearly as hot as Jill would like, but it's about as hot as I enjoy.

Pears in Honey

Last night was another canning pears night. I took a page from my friend, Debbi's, method and substituted 1 cup of honey for one cup of the sugar. Have to say, it was the darkest honey I've ever seen. When I first picked up the bottle, I thought it was molasses. That's pretty dark for a honey named "Golden Honey." It's from Michigan, and I'd love to find a local source, or at least Kentucky. I know a beekeeper in Oak Ridge, and my friend Carol has two hives, but she just gets enough for her own use. I don't know any beekeepers around here; I figure there have to be some. Will look in the Beekeeper Association's member list and see if I can find one.

Edited 8/21/11 to say that, as usual with almost everything, west Kentucky doesn't seem to have many beekeepers. Per the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, the closest beekeeping association is Lake Barkley Beekeepers Association based out of Mayfield. I sent an email to the president asking for info on local beekeepers. We'll see what turns up.

Searching further, I found Broyles Apiary in Paducah from the Buy Kentucky page of the KY Dept of Ag.  Here's one that's a bit too far to travel to, 12 miles east out of Mayfield - Honey Hill Apiary. Apparently, they sell at the Trading Post, 127 W. Broadway (between 7th and 8th on 80.) The Kentucky Nut Corporation in Hickman comes up as selling honey on the KY DA page, but not on their website. I'd still probably get lost trying to find it. You can buy their pecans online, but I didn't check out the shipping. Their prices seem to be pretty good if they're updated.

The Tennessee Beekeepers Association has a bit more information than the Kentucky Assoc., and has a map showing a few bee colonies just south of the Kentucky state line. Click here to see that. While you're looking at that, you can note that I lived for more than 20 years in Anderson County, in the upper center of the red, east, district, where I was used to seeing local honey for sale all the time.

Pears!

To my great delight, I discovered one of the trees in my dad's yard is brimming over with pears. Since there was no pruning or spraying done, I really didn't expect much from any of his fruit trees. The apple trees produced little knotty things that I didn't even try to do anything with. But the other day while sitting on the patio talking to Cuz Jill, I looked out and beheld a tree dripping pears.

Since I've never done anything with pears, I hopped onto the internet and learned that pears should be picked green and allowed to ripen in a cool dark place to discourage the seediness (I forget the name) that you find in the center of the pears. The description of when to pick the pears says that they should break easily off the tree and also that whenever they start falling off, they're ready.

Okay. I feel the pears, and they feel like rocks, so I have my doubts. However, I harvested 4 sacks and sat them in the basement. After 4 days they hadn't changed much, but a few were beginning to have a little give when gripped. That was the point the internet said you should start canning them.

Lemme tell ya, peeling, pitting and slicing those babies didn't go quite as quickly as I'd dreamed about. They still feel pretty hard to me. My hope is that the canning process softens them up. I did a batch of 7 pint jars in a thin syrup, and they sure look pretty. I left one in the refrigerator overnight to check the next day. I just went and opened it, and by golly, it worked. There's a little bit more tooth than commercially canned pears, but not much, at least not in the pieces I tasted. Yay!

So now I guess I've got my work cut out for me. Aunt Agnes? You want some pears to can? You're welcome to them.

Because these are homegrown and unsprayed, they're not the largest pears in the world. Certainly not up to what you'd see in the grocery store. I figured about 4-5 pears per pint and added an extra jar's worth to make up for bad spots cut out and variable sizes. That came out just right for the 7 jars that fit in the water bath canner. That makes about 32-35 pears per batch. Now I just need to find a personal pear peeler to work for me for free, yeah.

The Latest Canning - Okra, Dill Relish

Uncle Charles gave me a sack of okra the other day. I was looking forward to pickling some, but these were a tad too large for that, so I canned them for gumbo. Yum. The seed pods turned brown, and I wonder if I had added a bit of vinegar or lemon juice that wouldn't have happened. Anyone know?

Okra is such a funny vegetable. So many people are turned off by the slime and won't try it or only eat it fried. Yet there are ways to get rid of the slime, and it helps with thickening a good gumbo, which I absolutely love. I also love popping the little seeds.

This is the way I got turned onto eating okra that wasn't fried, because I was a slime avoider, too. When I was in the Air Force, my best friend was a teeny petite gal, with white blonde hair, named Dove. Perfect angel material you'd think. She actually could beat a sailor in a cursing contest. Anyway, one day Dove declared she couldn't wait to get home and have some buttered okra. Stopped me dead in my tracks. Dove wanted to eat slimy okra in butter? So she drug me to her house after work and showed me how to lightly steam it to just barely done, bathe it in butter and lightly salt it. I was a convert and haven't looked back. Delicious stuff, that okra.

Another thing I made was a batch of dill cucumber relish. I like dill relish on a hot dog better than sweet relish. I found a recipe to adapt and made this by shredding the cucumber and onions on a grater. Right at the end of cooking it, I added a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch and thickened it a bit.

You'll likely notice some glaring things the USDA would have cows over with my dill relish. First thing is that I used non-approved, previously-used jars and lids. This is another one of those things that "my mother did for years and none of us have died" that sends the food scientists into fits. DO NOT get the idea that I am encouraging anyone to do this. It's my own personal choice.

Shredded cucumber and onion

The second thing I did was add a little thickening by adding cornstarch. There are density issues in canning thick foods that can cause problems down the road. I also think cornstarch is not supposed to hold up well in the long run. I didn't add more thickening than I've seen in recipes vetted by the Ball Blue Book.

I'll just have to wait and see how well the cornstarch holds up since this is the first time I've tried it. The author of the recipe I mostly followed didn't make any comment about thickening breakdown, but I have no clue as to his/her experience with the recipe. Too many times people post things on their first try and never follow up if they realize later it was a flop. Since the relish tasted so good, I really hope it does age well.

Another batch of canned goods I've done courtesy of Uncle Charles is a batch of garlic dill pickle spears. They are so pretty in the jars my mouth waters just looking at them. I added a handful of green pepper and onion slices to each jar. These are the treat of the jar. You never add enough to take away the joy of getting some. There should always be a skirmish over the rare treats in pickled things, ya know!

Making Hominy II

So far, my experiments in making hominy are big flops. The first batch might have eventually turned to hominy, but I had no clue it was going to take hours and hours of cooking. It looked like a big glop, and it was 2:00 a.m. I abandoned it.

Boiling the corn in the lime solution.

Making Hominy I

First attempt and it seems
to be starting to become hominy.

I'm giving making hominy a try. I almost feel deprived growing up in the South and not having had any relatives that made it. Alas, I didn't; therefore, I'm having to do research on the internet. I've found quite a few recipes for making it with lye or potash. Lye seems to be something that is rare in stores around here. I remember buying it once for soap making, but Uncle Charles says they don't sell it anymore. Likely I could get it online. Nor do I think in this heat I want to start a fire and putz around making woodash/potash lye.

There are relatively fewer recipes on the internet for making hominy with lime, but in my search I stumbled across another method for making it using baking soda, which they claim was done a lot in the South. Since I've been making lime pickles and have a lot of pickling lime on hand, I'm going to start off using that.

Searching on the internet has led me to a lot of interesting sites and much more chemistry than I really want to remember. I had more success searching on nixtamal or nixtimalization, which is the name of the process of making hominy, and the Mexican word for it. They are the ones, ya know, who invented the process. However, here are some links to various sites I thought were helpful or just plain interesting.

Squash II and Pork Taco Meat

I'm so excited to have some more squash canned. The other day I used a jar of the first batch and made soup from it, yum. It was a simple soup, yet, so delicious. I simply heated the squash, drained the water, added butter and put it in the food chopper. I pureed it until smooth and returned it to the pan. At that point I shredded a small bit of cheddar cheese in it and mixed that up when melted. It made a thick, creamy, beautiful yellow soup with a good aroma and crisp taste.

Squash for Soup

Here is a pic of the pork taco meat mix I made while in Memphis, carted back here to Arlington and canned right after I got back this month.

Something for Aunt Agnes and Canning

I've run across a product that may be of interest to my Aunt Agnes. I don't know for sure if she cans things like this, but I wanted to post the link here just in case she's interested. It's a product called Clear Jel which is for thickening things to be canned.

It's recommended not to home can things that have flour in them because of issues with density, thus food poisoning, and separation - the foods end up separating and being icky when you try to use them down the road. I've recently learned of a product called Clear Jel, which is a modified food starch, I think corn, that's becoming available to the home canner that is supposed to solve this problem.

So just in case Aunt Agnes wants to can some Sweet and Sour Sauce or other things, I thought I'd post this link from imstillworking on youtube.com.

Squash - Canning

Tonight I canned a few jars of squash. If you are a person who likes your veggies crisp and barely cooked, canned squash definitely doesn't fit that bill. Canning squash does cook it thoroughly and makes it soft.  However, if you cut it up chunky, it doesn't turn to mush in the jar.

If you are a hardcore locavore, or just someone who tries a bit to have local food, canning your own local squash solves the problem of variety out of season.  And talk about soups! Canned squash is perfect for smooth, creamy soup. It reduces both the prep and the cooking times. These recipes have my mouth watering:

Summer Squash Soup with Parsley Mint Pistou (which is a French version of pesto) from Epicurious.com

Creamy Summer Squash Soup which sounds delicious with a lemony, creamy taste.

Thai Red Curry Squash Soup which has me drooling, although personally I'd likely go easy on the red curry paste. For Max, I'd have to cut back on the ginger.

Dill Pickle Recipe Tweak 1

On Tuesday, I worked on tweaking my dill pickle recipe. I got out a jar of my favorite dill slices and worked on getting my recipe's vinegar and salt content as close to the bought pickle juice as I could. It took 3 tries and nearly choking Max on it as a taste helper before getting it as close as we could. Additionally, I didn't want dill spice in the jars, so I steeped the dill seed in the vinegar solution and strained them out prior to using the solution.

 I'll taste test them in a week and see what the conclusion is about this tweak. I'm pretty confident of it, which is why I am posting the recipe. I do know that pickling slices takes a lot of time. Whew. I have a mandolin, but it's almost more trouble than it's worth - getting out, setting blade, test, reset blade, avoiding cutting a finger off, and cleaning up. Facing that, I just sharpen the knife and start slicing. Maybe finding the perfect setting on the mandolin should be a test for another time.

Here's a picture of the finished slices and following that is my tweaked 1 recipe.

Dill Pickles with Garlic
All slices except for 1 lone jar of whole cucumbers.
Ain't they pretty!

Dill Slices

I wished for cucumbers for dill pickles, and lo and behold, Uncle Charles arrived at the house Saturday morning with, ta da, a sack of cucumbers and squash in hand. This Sunday morning I got to ooh and ahh over my gorgeous 9 half-pints of dill slices. To boot, I put up 3 jars of squash just to see what they'll taste like. Tonight Mom and I will dine on fine squash.

Now if I can just get my pickling solution recipe tweaked for when the okra come in. Those are my and Lola's favorites. Max and I still laugh about an incident from when we were first married in the early 90's. I had canned my first pickled okra and proudly took a jar to his mother. She eagerly bit into one, and the look on her face was priceless. I think her eyes crossed and her pucker was uncontrollable. Oh my, that recipe was horrible, so very sour. She tried so hard to hide how bad they were, and Max and I were about to fall out of our chairs laughing at that look. That taught me the hard way to never give away something I've canned without tasting and checking the recipe first.

Gorgeous Dill Slices

Canning Meat

Here are some pics of the meat I've been canning. I had a leftover roast, a lot of taco meat, and decided to throw sloppy joe mix into the canning spurt.

Taco meat and cubed roast beef for stew.

Sloppy Joe mix. Yum!
Half pints, the perfect size for 2 4-ounce portions. 

Oh, my. The Mess!