Category: Eat

Before I ran a bunch of errands I spent the morning in the kitchen. Last week my friend Justin gave me some pears. So today I canned them. It was so easy! Just make a simple syrup and warm up the pear slices and put them in the jars to can. Can’t wait to have those. After pears I started on dinner. I put a pot roast in the crock pot with carrots, garlic, onions, and potatoes all from the garden. I am cooking it on low for 8 hours. It smells so good in my house right now!

After my running around I came home and planted garlic. I planted 6 heads this year, I tripled the amount over what I did last year. Love me some garlic!

Tonight I decided it was time to do something with all my tomatoes. I filled a 5 gallon bucket with all the ripe ones. My husband and I made roasted and smoked tomato sauce. I had pans of tomatoes roasting in the oven, one on the grill, another on the smoker, and the leftover ones in a pot on the stove. I combined a few recipes but it was pretty simple. Onion, garlic, bay, oregano, and basil. I have never made sauce before but I was surprised that I only got 5 quarts out of about 20 pounds of tomatoes. I guess next year I will double the amount of tomato plants. But it turned out great. We had the leftover sauce with dinner, dipped focaccia bread in it. So goood!

Yesterday I got about 7 pounds of italian plums from my friend. So today I made plum bbq sauce.

Today is also my husband’s birthday and he wanted ribs, so it was a perfect match. The recipe was really simple, I just adapted it for plums instead of peaches. I let it cook down for about 2 hours, then another hour on the smoker to add some smoky flavor. It turned out so good!! I also have had a bunch of dill leftover from making pickles, so it’s been in all my recipes this week. Today I made garlic dill potatoes and they are my new favorite way to make potatoes! I also harvested our lemon cucumbers and made a creamy salad with them, onions, and of course dill. What a great birthday dinner. For dessert we have cake pops. My son wanted chocolate and my husband wanted lemon, so I made both. Great day in the kitchen, hanging out with my loves ♥️

Today’s harvest was carrots from the garden. I also bought 12 pounds of cucumbers at Schuh Farms. I ran around to 4 different stores to find more canning jars. I finally found a store with some and I stocked up. Today I canned spicy dilly pickled carrots and spicy dill pickles. I even taught my husband how to can his own jar of pickles with one cucumber from the garden. All in all a good productive day.

Well it took 2 days but I’m finally done making apple pie filling. My mom helped me the other day and today I finished up. Total of 7 batches or 24 quarts, at 5 pounds a batch. And that is only HALF of my apple harvest! I gave about 30 pounds of apples away to friends. And I still have a drawer full in the fridge. I think I’ve processed about 75 pounds of apples between the apple pie filling and applesauce I’ve canned. I can’t imagine having more than 2 apple trees. But it’s been fun and it’s actually relaxing now that I have the rhythm down of how to can.

I also made some spicy dill pickles out of a couple cucumbers I harvested. I just added some garlic cloves and a jalapeno to the mix. Easy peasy ?

Yesterday I harvested our potatoes. I waited as long as I could, and it was set to rain so it was time. I guess that I harvested about 25 pounds. I made mashed potatoes last night with the yukon golds, so yummy! Now I just have to wait for them to cure before I store them for the winter.

Today we went out to the church park and picked more blackberries. This time I brought berry pickers with me! My husband and brother in law both picked massive bowls of berries. I had enough to make a double batch of blackberry jalapeno jam and a blackberry cobbler. I used jalapenos from the garden. Can’t wait to try the jam with some creamy brie on crackers tomorrow. Yum!

My rhubarb was getting quite large so I thought I would make some jam. I bought a flat of strawberries at Snow Goose produce stand and cut off 6 of my biggest stalks of rhubarb. I’ve never made jam before so I wasn’t sure what to expect but it turned out really good. I was able to can about a dozen jars. I had some fruit leftover so I made sauce with them. Going to top my ice cream with it tonight. Oh yeah, I also pulled up my first carrot to see how big they are…looking good so far!

I have been saving all the fallen apples the last week in two crisper drawers. They were packed and I had my harvest basket full so I needed to do something with them. Last week I made a jar of applesauce to keep in the fridge, to test the method and the recipe. For that jar I left the skins on and it left a little bit of a gritty texture so this time around I knew I needed to peel the apples.

I finally got to use my KitchenAid attachment to peel. It worked great. Then I added 1/2 cup water, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1 TBS cinnamon to the apples and cooked them in the instapot for 8 minutes. This was my first time canning all by myself so I was a little nervous. But it was actually really simple. I blended the cooked apples and added them to the hot jars. Then canned the jars in a water bath for 10 minutes. I repeated that process for 3 batches. I ended up with a dozen jars. And they all popped! I love that sound, it is so satisfying.