Dilly Green Beans

Despite staggering the planting of the seeds, for some reason, my green beans still managed to get ready all at once.  Since I didn't feel like eating them, my sister decided we should just pickle them.  What a lovely idea, I said.

These are so easy, I'm afraid they're going to taste weird. They'll be ready in three weeks so I guess I can let you know how they are then.

We started with maybe a little over two pounds of beans. I sterilized 6 taller half pint jars, the lids, and the rings and kept them in the dishwasher to keep them warm.

We mixed the following to make the brine:

* 3 cups of water

* 1 1/2 cups of apple cider vinegar

* 2 cups of white vinegar

* 1/3 cup salt

* one clove garlic, peeled but kept whole

These were all mixed and brought to a boil.  In the meantime, the beans were rinsed and the ends were trimmed. Into each jar, we added a sprig of fresh dill and 1/8 tsp of red pepper flakes.  The jars were then packed with beans standing on their ends.  Once the brine was ready, we filled each jar up to a quarter inch from the top.  We screwed on the lids and let them simmer in a canning pot for about 12 minutes. Once they cooled, all the lids sealed well so we had a 100% success rate.

So now we wait.  I hope they're good...

Cider Results

Hey friends, this is a post a long time coming.  I apologize for the major delay in letting you all know how our cider turned out.

After the first step of brewing that I showed you all in our first post, we did a quick transfer of the whole lot into a bucket so that we could clean out the yeast that had settled on the bottom.  Once cleaned out, we transferred it back into the glass carboy and let it brew again for another week.  We could have bottled it at this point, but we hoped that this quick cleaning out of the yeast and the settled solids would lead to a clearer final product.

After 3 total weeks of brewing and bubbling in the carboy, it was bottling time.  We saved a lot of old bottles and growlers but still needed a dozen 22 oz bottles.  At the same time we also bought some priming sugar and caps.  (Dan had the capper.)  The priming sugar is a small packet of corn sugar that is perfectly measured for 5 gallons of cider.  This adds just the right amount of sugar for the yeast to feast on in the bottles to create the perfect amount of fizzy carbonation.  Putting in too much sugar would create too much pressure in the bottles which may cause them to explode.  (No one needs exploding glass bottles.)

As you can see in the video, all of this process involves a lot of sterilization of the utensils and a siphoning tube to transfer the cider from carboys to buckets to bottles.

We tasted the first bottle about 10 days after we bottled it and was surprised at how much of a kick it had.  It was definitely on the drier side.  We had been so used to sweeter ciders that are mass produced today that we didn't realize what real cider tasted like.  It smelled really good and definitely held true to it's estimated 8.5-9% alcohol because we felt the buzz pretty quick.  Shawn did some research and we found that back in the day of Thomas Jefferson, when clean water was harder to find than cider, people would drink cider instead of water.

Since then, we've been drinking it really slowly, taking a bottle or two to parties and enjoying a bottle between us every now and then.  What we've noticed is that as it ages, the kick is replaced by a softer apple flavor.  We thought it was good at first, but it just keeps getting better.  We're thinking about saving a bottle or two for 6 months to a year to see how it ages.

All in all, this was a project that was not only really fun but really rewarding.  It feels so good to know that we're getting drunk off of our own hard work.

In case you were wondering, the total cost breaks down to:
$60-Rental of cider press
$20-A dozen 22 oz bottles and caps (Which we can reuse for next time.)
$20-Yeast and sugars

Total: $100 (We think.  We can't remember for sure.  This is also thanks to our friend Dan who had all the equipment.)

For Christmas, I bought Shawn a bottle of dry cider at a fancy beer store in Wallingford which was $14.  We tasted it, and though it was really good, we decided ours was better.  (We're not biased or anything. :))  If we calculate the amount of cider we made based on the price of the store-bought kind, we came to over $325 dollars worth of cider.  Yeah baby!

Final thought: We want to do it again.

Oh, and here is the YouTube link to the video.  http://youtu.be/Qpz8AcZi8YU

Makin' Hard Apple Cider!

Here it is folks!  I took our footage we got from this weekend's cider making extravaganza and made an easy-to-watch video.  The weather was perfect, everybody had a great time, it was just a perfect fall day.  Enjoy!

 

The words are a little too small to read when viewed small, but blogger made the quality too crappy to view full screen.  I've uploaded it onto YouTube so you can watch it here.

To see part 2, click here.

Bubba Gump Apples

Apple crisp, apple pie, apple sauce, apple cider... I feel like a Bubba Gump with all the apples we have up in here!

So I told you folks about the apple crisp I made last week from our backyard apples that fell during the windstorm.  Well, they're falling off the tree with little more that a light breeze these days, so we're taking that to mean that these apples are ready for picking!  Shawn got up on the roof of the party shack and we picked some good ones from there.  We'll still need to borrow my dad's tall ladder to get up to the ones higher up, but we got a good 40 pounds or so with just this attempt.

The really good ones we saved in a separate bucket for good eatin'.

Most of them had evidence of bugs getting inside so I cut them open right there as Shawn tossed them down to me and I did a quick quality inspection and chucked the really bad ones into the compost.  The ok ones I cored and the buggy parts cut out and saved in a bowl.  Once I got a good ten pounds of these, I washed them and Shawn and I peeled them.  A majority of them were cubed and went into my big stainless steel pot to be turned into apple sauce.  Into a separate bowl went some other ones that were sliced for apple pie.

I'll give you my recipes for both of these, but for both, I didn't follow any recipe myself, let alone measure much so these quantities are best guesses.  Sorry.

Good Ol' Home Made Apple Pie
(Ever had an apple pie from a store that sucked?  You know the kinds with the gelatinous goo that surrounds the undercooked still slightly crispy apples?  Well making your own apple pie at home will help you realize how inferior those pies really are!)

The last slice...

Ingredients
8-10 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbs agave syrup (I've been putting this shit in everything!  It's my new fav sweetener.)
2 tbs flour
1 tbs lemon juice
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix above ingredients together.  Prepare two pie crusts.  Fill pie pan with apple mixture and top with second pie crust.  Crimp edges together and make sure to slice a couple air holes in the top.  Top with a nice sprinkling of cinnamon sugar and put into preheated 350 degree oven.  Bake for 45 minutes or until some bubbles of deliciousness start showing from your air holes.  Serve warm with ice cream for a dessert or chilled with a cup of coffee for breakfast.  Delish!

Grandma's Apple Sauce
(Much like apple pies, I don't really like store bought apple sauce because it reminds me of wet sawdust.  This applesauce is chunky, with a touch of cinnamon, just like my grandma always has with dinner at her house.  I know most of you haven't had dinner at my grandma's house but trust me, it's always awesome.)

Ingredients
5 pounds of apples peeled, cored, and cubed
1/2 cup white sugar (or to taste)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup agave syrup (here it is again!)
1 tbs lemon juice
5 cups water

Canning Stuff
Mason jars with lids and rings (All washed and sanitized)
Large stockpot that will hold the mason jars
Tongs to grab hot jars and stuff
Funnel (optional, I made one out of the top of a bottle of lemon juice.)

Wash the jars, lids, and rings in a dishwasher or in hot soapy water.  Fill the larger stock pot with water and place it on the stove to heat up till hot, but not boiling.  Add the mason jars before the water gets too hot and have them wait there while the apple sauce is made.  As far as how many mason jars to have ready, just guess and prepare one or two more jars than you might need just in case you guessed wrong.

Put all the ingredients into your other large soup pot.  The water amount is really a guess, you just need enough to bring the water level up to just below the level as the amount of apples you have.  Put it on medium heat, stirring occasionally.  Once the apples heat up and start cooking down, stir them more.  This will break them down little by little so you have a sauce and not justa bunch of soggy apple bits.  Once the apple mixture has boiled for a little bit and is the consistency you like, it's time to start canning.

Get your tongs ready.  Pull out a jar and fill it quickly with sauce (using the funnel like in the pic or not.)  It's generally a less messy procedure with one.  Fill the jar to a 1/2 inch from the top and quickly screw on the lid and the ring.  Put it back into your large pot with the hot water.

Fill the rest of the jars until you have no more sauce and place them all into the large pot to process.  The water level in this pot should be an inch over the top of the jars, but mine's not like that because I like to break rules.  Do as I say, not as I do, folks.

Process (or boil) those jars for 15 minutes, then gently lift them out to cool and wait for the familiar "plink!" as your jars seal in the goodness.  If done correctly, these jars should last in a cool dry place for 2 years or so.

And yes, I did mention apple cider at the beginning of this post.  That is for next time...

Purple Fingernails

In case you haven't noticed it's blackberry season.  I have a love/hate relationship with blackberries.  I love the excessive amounts of free deliciousness that can be foraged in nearly every urban park in the Seattle area, but hate the fact that it is taking over in every urban park in the Seattle area.  Himalayan blackberries, which constitute probably 99% of the blackberries that can be picked around here is a horribly invasive plant that has no regard for where it grows and who's habitat it is stealing.  And once it's around it's a major bi-otch to try to get rid of.  You can't just cut it down (which is hard enough with all the thorns) but you have to dig up all the roots or it'll just grow back stronger.  It really is horrible stuff.

Picking the berries is actually doing good for the environment because every berry that is picked and ingested by us means all those seeds in there aren't planted somewhere else.  So go out and pick berries people!

That's what we've been doing for the last several weeks.  But what to do with them?  The possibilities are endless!  We've made several berry cobblers and muffins with them, but the majority have been juiced to become jam. 

Juicing blacberries is a little painstaking but a necessity when making jam because their seeds are so big and tough.  Blackberry jam with or without seeds is delicious but the lack of seeds makes the eating experience just a little better.

Today, I started with the 10 pounds of blackberries my parents picked for me over the weekend.  I had to do three batches because there were just so many.  I put some in a pot and put the heat on medium low.  As they were warming up, I took a bottle (in this case a sake bottle) and mashed the berries with it.

Once it was pretty warm (it doesn't have to boil) I poured it into some cheesecloth that was placed over a bowl.  Depending on how warm the berries are, you may have to let them cool before starting the squeezing process.

 This is what results in purple-dyed fingernails.  You really have to caress and work the bag to get the most juice out of the pulp.  It can be pretty hot so watch out.  I probably spent about a good 5-10 minutes for each squeezing session.

This is the result.  Five quarts of berries equals 2 quarts of pure, thick, blackberry juice.  That should get me about 5-6 batches of blackberry rhubard jam.  Time to start chopping rhubard and preparing jars!

Yeah, I make this look gooood...

Pop! Goes the jam jar!

Today was a day off for me.  Though I have mountains of school work I need to do, I still need to maintain my sanity.  Today, that sanity came by way of jam-making.  I was going to wait a couple weeks before doing that, but a pint of terrible strawberries sped up the date.

So that pint plus a small bag in the freezer wound up to be about 3 cups of strawberries.  The recipe on the Pectin box called for six and a half cups of rhubarb for plain rhubarb jam, so I added what I guessed to be another three and a half cups of chopped rhubarb... plus maybe another cup or two.  I'm really bad at measuring things, which is pretty important when making jam, so don't follow my lead on that. 

That's what you call a rollin' boil

Here's what else I put into the pot:

2 cups of water
1/4 cup lemon juice
8 cups sugar
one packet of Pectin

I got the fruit to a rolling boil first, then added the Pectin.  Once it was boiling again, I added the sugar.

Meanwhile, you gotta wash those jars, and wash 'em good.  And then boil 'em.  (This includes the double lids too.)  Like this:

Once the fruit has boiled for at least 4 minutes (that's what the directions say), turn off the heat and start ladling them into the jars one at a time.  Leave the jars in the boiling water until just before you need them.  This does get a little hot, but doing it all on a towel and using that to screw on the lids prevents sad fingers.

I put the filled jars back into the pot of boiling water and boiled them for 10 minutes.  I usually don't do that and it's fine, but the pot was just sitting there so I did it just to be sure they were good and sterile.  They all gave the much sought-after "pop" as the lids sealed, a sure sign of a future of a long shelf life.  Success.

And there you have it.  I put in more fruit than the recipe called for, and it looks like the jam is going to end up being a little runny.  I don't really care because it tastes awesome.  And now I have nine jars of delicious strawberry rhubarb jam.  Anyone want some?  There's plenty more where it came from!

Ruby red

Pears Be Gone!

I mentioned in my first post that we had a really good year of pears. There were so many on our tree at one point that the thing looked like a freakin' weeping willow, it was so weighed down with fruit. We had to duck even lower than usual to get to the chicken coop.

At one point around late-august, the tree started dropping 'em all. I really didn't think I was going to do much with them because the tree never did so well, and the fruit was just so damn ugly. And, just like in the past, the guys were just as ugly as ever. BUT, when you peel them and cut them open, they're beautiful. Super white, juicy, and sweet. Once I realized how many of these little sugar treasures I had, we busted out the ladder and just started collecting them. 15 minutes and a fat lip later (Shawn accidentally dropped one right on my face,) we had about 15 pounds of pears. Whoa.

So went to canning. We got 5 pints plus several small jars nicely set. Half of them went straight to friends, family and helpers. (As you can see, Nikolai likes to help me out around the house.)


A week later, I had another 10 pounds of pears. I didn't feel like canning anymore, so I took it upon myself to find as many pear recipes as I could. This resulted in pear gorgonzola penne, pear and butternut squash soup, carmelized pear appetizers, and a pie. Nevertheless, we are pear-ed out.

But guess what? I still have pears in my 'fridge! So tonight, I decided to make pear applesauce cake. (Since my refrigerator also houses some uneaten applesauce.) Even now, with the cake in the oven, I am still being haunted by 7 small, semi-shrively PEARS. I give up. They win. But I suppose there are worse battles to lose.