At Home

One weekend in Vermont, exploring the countryside farms with my love, going to a farm auction and spending a night at home with my parents (and totally not taking even one picture). 

The next extended, wonderful weekend in Cape Cod without my love, but with four happy kids, brother, sister and parents.

So here i am, Sunday evening.  Feeling so grateful for my weekend at home.  For my routines to be restored, and my family to eat dinner together.  To work Sunday morning in the garden.

Buying a new-to-us rototiller for the tractor from a Alpaca farm in Canterbury.  The barn was beautiful, actually heavenly.  Hay filled the third loft, alpaca babies cozied up to their mama's on the second floor, while adult goats, turkeys and alpaca's grazed the back pasture and took their rest on the first floor.  The lady of the home spins the wool.  Workshops coming this fall, I'll be there.

To finally finish our dear friend's baby girl's quilt.  Feeling pretty good about it, except the binding, that needs work.

Canning Dill Pickles and Bread & Butter pickles.  Yum!

Baking chocolate chip cookies and Nana's macaroni & Cheese on Sunday afternoon.

Loving my beautiful glads from my husband for my birthday. 

Marveling at the tassel's that suddenly appeared on our corn and the miniature corn cobs growing.  Holy Moly i am going to have a ton of corn to freeze :)

 Picking so, so, so many vegetables every day.  Loving our garden and the plans we are making for next year.

Learning to use my new pressure canner/cooker from hubs.  We cooked up some fresh beans out of the garden in it.  Added a hunk of salt pork and made some Delicious string beans.

Looking at my kitchen and the sink that is full for the billionth time this weekend.  But loving the process that creates this lovely mess.

Thinning out the carrots and bringing all of the small ones in to munch on.

Getting excited for these hot, humid New England summer days to wind down, and the cooler temps to creep in.  Sweaters, flannel, wood heat, cooking on the cook-stove again, apple picking, making homemade apple cider donuts.  Oh how i love Autumn.

Yet also wishing time to stop, to let me catch up, give me time to pick the last of the blueberries and preserve so much more.

 

Enjoying my time at home.

Summer Evenings

Two nights ago, i got home from work and looked around at all of the projects i needed to finish.  I looked at the zucchini relish waiting to be boiled and canned.  I noticed the baby blanket for a dear friend, waiting to have the binding sewn on....

I walked down to the garden to find green beans, zucchini, cucumbers and summer squash ready to be picked. 

I thought about my upcoming weekend away and all the packing and organizing i need to do.  So many tasks that i love, all needing my time & attention. 

I took a deep breath and just went forward.  I drove up the hill to the blueberry patch and picked all the berries i could find.  I came home and cooked a chicken stir fry and canned my zucchini relish, finishing at 9:30 pm. 

In these months, there is so, so much to do.  So much canning i want to get done before the winter ahead.  But i know i need to pace myself.  I need to truly soak up and enjoy my evenings before the work day ahead.  So that night i did.  I picked blueberries, had a lovely dinner with Jason on the front porch at 8pm and happily canned in my kitchen. 

These summer evenings are my time.

Raspberries & Garlic

Not in the same recipe, but all in the same week.  Two recipes, put up for the year ahead.  Berry Jam & Garlic Scape Pesto.  It felt so good to get back into the canning groove.  To dust off the water bath, to sterilize the equipment, to put on some James Taylor and happily work in my kitchen.  

This is my second year canning, and getting back to it felt refreshing.  Summer is truly here.

I wanted to do the usual batch of strawberry jam, but that didn't happen.  The big juicy red fruit came and went within two weeks.  I totally missed it, and i was so bummed.  Looking back now, I'm glad it happened, because it forced me to try a different jam.  I didn't pick quite enough berries for the jam, so i improvised with some blueberries off of our own bushes, and that did the trick. 

Raspberry Jam:  1 quart & 3 pints of fresh raspberries, along with 1/2 a pint of blueberries.
Yield: 8 jelly jars along with 1 small jelly jar i found in my stash.

Garlic Scape Pesto:  30 garlic scapes, 1 cup Parmesan cheese, dash of pepper, some toasted pine nuts and some olive oil.

Yield: 2 jelly jars & 1 pint.

I had never tried this before, but boy, do i love a new recipe!  Suroweic's farm had garlic scapes so i tried it out.  Next year i will try adding a bit of basil in, as i didn't realize how intense the garlic would be.  The great part about this?  We can use it in place of minced garlic.  Yes!  Yet another item i can take off our grocery list :) 

Happy Monday Friends

2011 Preserving Review

This post i have been meaning to document for some time now.  2011 marked my first year preserving the harvest for my family.  Oh how i truly enjoyed the hot summer days, canning in my kitchen.  Growing up, helping my mother preserve, i learned at a young age the beauty and craft of canning & preserving.

Disclaimer: The pictures in this post are pre- DSLR camera.  Have i mentioned how much I love my new DSLR Canon?  So anyways, please excuse the poor quality :)

Put up for Winter:

Carrot & Tomato Soup- find the recipe here: Soule Mama
Preserving method: Freeze- 2-cup portions

Fruits-  Our friends we make maple syrup with every spring, also grow and sell blueberries and raspberries.  

Preserving method:  Freeze.  Lay your fresh fruit in a single layer on a cookie sheet.  Pop that in the freezer for about 0.5 an hour.  Remove and put into storage bags (i used zip-lock).  Doing this keeps the berries from sticking together.  Freezing fresh berries from the summer has made some delicious treats this winter; berry crisp, berry cobbler and a nice addition to accompany my morning yogurt.

Strawberry Jam: Although i took no photo's of this, i produced about 15 jam jars.  My first time making jam without my mama by my side.  It actually came out very well!

Preserving method: Hot water bath- canning.

Dilly Beans: A old family recipe from my Nana.

Preserving Method: Canning.  I used pint sized jars in a hot water bath.  This is one of our family favorites! 

Tomato Sauce & Stewed Tomatoes:  I started out using  This recipe, then tweaked it a bit to fit our family.  

Preserving method: Canning.  I started out with one batch (i only had six fresh tomatoes).  It produced 5 pint sized jars.  I was bummed after the 5 hours i put into it.  That wasn't the yield i was expecting, especially at 10:30pm on a work night.  At the end of the season, the farm up the road had 1/2 bushel's of Tomatoes for sale for $10!  Perfect for canning!  I was so excited.  I hopped up there, came home and buried my hands in the sweet red juices for the rest of the day.  That produced twenty pint sized jars!  Yes, that felt much better and certainly filled up our shelves for the winter.  Six of the mentioned twenty jars were stewed tomatoes.  To prepare, simple drop your whole tomatoes in boiling water for 3-5 minutes, until the skins crack.  spoon out, peel off skins, place in pot with garlic and oil.  Simmer for about 40 minutes or until tomatoes fall apart easily. 

Applesauce: Made from my mother's family recipe.

Preserving method: Canning in a Hot water Bath.  One sunny, crisp beautiful fall day, we ventured up to the farm and picked all the Macintosh apples we could muster.  Applesauce is one of the easiest homemade things to made.  Cut up your apples in big chunks, remove the stems (middle section).  Place in pot with desired seasonings.  Bring to a low boil and simmer until apples are tender.  Process through food mill to break up skins.  Process in hot water bath.  

                                                       

Zucchini Relish:  I decided to make this simply out of need.  I had mounds of zucchini, ready to go bad.  I needed to save it, to use it.  I did slice up a few and put them in the freezer for some dinners this winter.  I also shredded a few in my food processor for zucchini bread & "Summer Linguine" from Heidi Swanson's book: Super Natural Every Day (awesome book with a fresh, inspiring recipes!).  But back to the relish.  While visiting my Nana one day, on our way home from the beach, she had me try some zucchini relish she bought at a local farm stand.  It was amazing.  Thank you Nana, once again, for the inspiration!  I found This Recipe on a blog i stumbled upon.  It turned out fantastic.  This zucchini relish was a part of our family & neighbor gift baskets during the holidays.  Everyone loved it.  I can see this becoming a yearly tradition :)

This picture above was before my talented husband built my "preserves" shelves.  Also before the zucchini relish was made and my second attempt of tomatoes sauce.  The mini maple syrups were from our 2011 maple season, left over guest-gifts from our beautiful wedding.  

Other ways we preserved this year: 

• Anything that we made and had way too many leftovers, went into the freezer for quick, healthy meals in the winter.
• In June we began buying all of our beef and pork from a local & natural farm.  I have never tasted such tender beef before in my life.  We have loved supporting our local farms, while also knowing that the meat going into us is pure and without antibiotics or hormones.  In November we purchased a package of different cuts of meat, that we figured would get us through the winter.  So far it has been perfect for the two of us.  Here is the farm we are using:   Miles Smith Farm.

And finally, here are some picutures (with my new camera) of my preserve's shelves! 

I can't tell you enough all the satisfaction that comes from making dinner, using vegetables that were fresh from the garden in August, and knowing all the love and labor that went into preserving them for this cold February night.  Not to mention the savings throughout the winter!