Hearts Full of Joy

got green tomatoes?

(this lovely photo is not mine. i found it on google images.)
green tomato harvest has become one of my favorite times of year. last year when brock wanted to bring in our green tomatoes before the first frost, i was hesitant. there were so many tomatoes and i had images of them rotting in our garage before they were ever used. but i got online and found amazing recipes to try with them. the challenge was on, and i eagerly piacked them all in anticipation of trying every recipe. we tried this green tomato salsa recipe, and it quickly became our favorite salsa ever. in fact, as soon as we started getting baby green tomatoes this spring, the kids started asking if we could pick them and make salsa. well, i had too many plans for the ripe tomatoes, so i made them wait until october....which is now! forget about halloween candy, this is much more exciting!

last year we also made green tomato cake, which was quite good, and green tomato jam, which wasn't (so i won't share that recipe).

yesterday i tried a new recipe i've been excited about since my friend traci shared it with me in the summer, along with the sweet and sour recipe that i fell in love with (and canned 21 quarts of).

Green Enchilada Sauce
5C chopped green tomatoes
1 1/2 C seeded long green chilies
1/2 C (or to your desired heat) jalepenos
4C chopped onion
1C lemon juice
6 cloves garlic (chopped)
combine all over high heat bring to a boil. then simmer for 20 min. process in water bath for 20 min for alt. 1000-6000 ft

traci says:
"my family loves this sauce over chicken enchiladas! when i use it i usually wisk 1 can cream of chicken soup per quart for sauce just to make it a little creamier or cool the jalapeno taste..enjoy!"

this is very similar to my green tomato salsa recipe, but has only lemon juice, and not vinegar, has a much higher ratio of onions and jalepenos - it's hot! it's very good, and i'm planning to make another milder batch with fewer jalepenos.

for sunday dinner we tried green tomato gratin. it was unusual and very good. if you like fried green tomatoes, i think you will like this. and speaking of fried green tomatoes, i found a wonderful looking recipe for them on the same blog as the gratin.

i also want to try pickled green tomatoes with all of the green cherry pear tomatoes we've harvested, and possibly some green tomato ketchup... and maybe even some green tomato chuteny. british blogs rave about green tomato chutney and i am very curious to give it a try. chutney is not something that americans usually get excited about, but i do love unusual flavors... i really do think i'd like it (but will my family?). we'll have to see how many tomatoes are left after another batch or two of salsa and enchilada sauce. i'm actually getting upset about all of the tomatoes that are ripening into lovely reds and oranges as they wait for me to cook and preserve with them - i can't seem to get enough green tomatoes to do everything i want to with them. but one thing i love about the green tomatoes is that they go so much further than ripe tomatoes - because they are hard and firm you don't lose the juices as you cut, and you don't need to peel, and really don't need to core. so you can get more lovely goodness out of every tomato.

quince-ing words

it has been a month since we had our quince picking adventure, and we are still using the quince. most were unripe when we picked, and i have been gradually using them as they slowly ripen. in the photo above (and below), you can see how they range in shape from apple to pear, and everything inbetween. a friend on facebook recommended drying them and using them to scent my linen drawers, which is a very good idea, and one that i haven't tried yet. they smell very fragrant, almost floral.

when i last posted i had made a large batch of juice, and then sauce (like applesauce) from the quince, and found that they both needed a lot of sugar to be very agreeable. since then i have made a large batch of quince jelly, a large batch of quince syrup (made just like the jelly, but not cooked as long), and a large batch of vanilla quince butter - this is a variation of a martha stewart recipe. the juice is very light, paler than apple juice, but it turns a lovely rosy red when it is cooked into jelly/syrup/butter.

emily from spain commented on my last quince post about how they eat quince in spain. it sounds almost identical to the way i made the quince butter. she said:

"Hello, I came here from your Etsy shop. I am from Spain (but live in the US) and over there, quince is very appreciated. The way we prepare it is:
Peel the fruit, take the core off and cut it in four. Put it in boiling water and boil for about half hour. Take it out of the water and mix the quince with sugar, same weigh in sugar as in quince. Put it in a pan, medium heat, for anogher half hour, stirring continuously with a spatula to avoid the sugar to burn and stick to the bottom of the pan. While stirring, cut the quince pieces with the edge of the spatula. It will thicken. If you want it to be very smooth, you can use a blender when it is completely cooked. Put it in a rectangular pan (silicon works great) and leave it in the cooler for one day. Take it out of the pan to a plate. We usually have it as a dessert, just a small amount, a couple of bites. It is very good with cheese. Yummy, I wish I could have some quince here!"

my favorite part of her comment is:

"We usually have it as a dessert, just a small amount, a couple of bites."

wouldn't it be amazing if we americans could learn to approach dessert in a similar fashion - just a small amount, a couple of bites?

speaking of desserts, my most favorite quince creation is this recipe for honey poached quince pie (shown above). it was so good that i've canned 8 quarts of the pie filling. it will be heavenly over french toast or pancakes or ice cream. it is by far the most delicious pie filling i have ever tasted. brock came across some online info that said the recipes have been found from ancient rome for cooking quince with honey, and although i had my doubts as to how it would taste, it is divine.

a quince-ident

a friend from church invited us to come and pick apples, or pears, or asian pears? she wasn't sure what they were - from her over-loaded tree. i had prayed recently that we could get some free apples or pears for canning this year, if possible, and so i really had to take her up on it, even though i didn't know what they were, or what to do with them. they are quite unusual - some are shaped like apples, and some like pears.  they have an asian pear type texture - crisp and juicy, and are very aromatic, almost lemony - with a good but distinctly bitter taste, similar to a crabapple, but not as strong. we picked a huge tub for her - she is recovering from a serious  injury and couldn't do the picking herself, three boxes for us, and a box for another friend whose daughter came with us. this last friend told another friend about the mystery fruit, and she said they sounded like quince, a relative of the pear and apple, that originated in persia (thank you google - and according to photos online, that must be what they are).  i have juiced a batch - they make a lot of juice - 5 1/2 quarts from one batch! - the juice is good, but needs sweetening - i added stevia extract. and then made quince sauce (like apple sauce) from the remains. i added brown sugar and apple pie spice, and it is a little unusual, but yummy. i would prefer not to need to sweeten, but a great bonus is that these fruit weren't sprayed. i love that! i love pesticide free!

i've searched for recipes, and plan to try quince jelly, which is supposed to be very good, and quince vanilla butter (like apple butter).

and speaking of yummy recipes, we made whole wheat, oatmeal, banana pancakes for dinner tonight (teddy bear shaped pancakes are a tradition for our conference weekends, and we hadn't had them yet), with this new recipe i found. so yummy! i added chocolate chips, which was messy, but extra yummy! i don't recommend using this recipe for shaped pancakes though, it was a ltitle too thick to lend itself well to teddy bear shapes. i added chopped bananas to the pancakes just before flipping them to cook on the second side.

whole wheat, oatmeal, banana pancakes

well, of course i can...

i love to can. and i'll tell you why.

canning has always been a way to save money, be thrifty, and a way to prevent waste - preserving garden produce that would other wise spoil before it was eaten - or, in other words, provident living. and i do love provident living. it seems to be in my genes.

today there are even more reasons to can, at least as i look at it. when i can, i have control over what goes into the jar - so there is no msg, no high fructose corn syrup, no articficial colorings or flavorings, no chemical preservatives. and i control the salt and the sugar content. i love that. and i am generally using my own home grown, organic, non gmo produce - hooray!

there is also a great deal of satisfaction that comes from making a dinner mostly from things i have canned myself - chicken, black beans, salsa for example. and a happy feeling when my kids prefer my applesauce over store-bought, and when they get excited about helping me with the process.

finally, it is a way of making cooking last. i like to do things that last, which is one of the reasons i love to cook and sew. i tend to not feel that way about making a birthday cake, or even a wonderful dinner. i work and work, and then it is eaten and gone. but with canning, i can see the rows of shiney jars on the shelves, and i know it will last...at least longer than tonight's dinner.

....oh, and i almost for got one of the most important reasons - it tastes better than store bought - delicious yumminess!

a sampling of this summer's canning:

roasted tomato sauce, dill pickles, pickled beets, french cut green beans, pickled banana peppers, and mandarin (or sweet & sour) sauce.

 

i hoped for bumper crops of green beans and tomatoes this summer, and we got them (to be honest, i prayed, and my prayers were answered). we followed the expert gardener in our neighborhood's advice, and never watered our garden once, even though it was hot and dry - not raining for a month and a half. he was right - it gave us an amazing tomato crop. i never imagined i could fill as many jars as i have. i've lost count, but it's much more than 100.

this summer i've canned (asterisk means it's a first time for me to can it):

strawberry jam

dill pickles

*japlepeno jelly - we usually make crabapple jalepeno jelly, which we like even more, but we had huge amounts of jalepenos that were going to go bad, and our crab apples won't ripen until next month.

green beans - 46 quarts, all french cut

beets & pickled beets

tomatoes

*tomato juice with 5 vegetables (V5 juice)

*roasted tomato salsa

*roasted tomato sauce - base for pasta sauce and tomato soup

*sweet & dill pickle relish

*mandarin (sweet & sour) sauce - 21 quartes!

*pickled banana & jalepeno peppers

 

and i'm looking forward to canning:

green tomato salsa

green enchilada sauce

green tomato ketchup (?)

green toamto chutney (?)

apple juice

applesauce

 

last fall i looked for ways to use the huge amount of green tomatoes that we had, and now green tomato salsa is our family's favorite salsa we've ever had. it's amazing what you can find on the internet. the friend who recommended the sweet & sour (thank you!) also gave me the green enchilada sauce. i will report. and i am interested in green tomato ketchup and chutney recipes that i've found.

my two absolute favorite new canning recipes from this year are:

1 - roasted tomato sauce - lexi found this and recommened it. i can't say enough good about it - our house smells like an italian restaurant while it roasts with the balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and garlic. here's a link:

http://goddesshobbies.blogspot.com/2009/08/preserving-food-roasted-tomato-sauce.html

(i love this girl's blog!)

2 - mandarin (or sweet & sour) sauce. a friend recommended this, and i am in love. i've made three batches for a total of 21 quarts. and each time i've made a batch, it perfectly filled 7 quart jars (the numer of jars that fill a canner). that never happens. it's the perfect recipe. here's a link:

http://idahofergusonfamily.blogspot.com/2010/09/sweet-and-sour-sauce-for-canning.html

 

i'm also enjoying this one, because we have a bumper crop of banana peppers. it is a little too sweet for me, next batch i make i will cut the sugar at least in half. but it is easy and fun (and very pretty). i added a few jalepenos into each jar i made. it's a very small recipe. i tripled it and filled 6 pint jars:

http://www.food.com/recipe/sweet-pickled-banana-peppers-17254

 

if you have favorite canning recipes, i'd love for you to share!

 

 

 

cleaning green

three of most favorite things to discover are ways to simplify my life, ways to save money, and ways to improve my family's health. and when i discover one thing that helps me do all three at once, it is something i just need to share. so, here are some great links with helpful hints about cleaning your entire house and solving household problems with nothing more than  vinegar and baking soda. both are inexpensive (much less expensive than icky chemical cleaning products), both are healthy (unlike the nasty chemicals in most cleaners), and they are very simple to keep stocked.

clean your entire home with baking soda & vinegar, from mother earth news

8 household uses for vinegar, from circle of moms

10 more household uses for vinegar, from circle of  moms

mother earth news points out that you should check the label on tehe vinegar you buy to be sure it's made from natural products (grain, wine, etc), rather than petroleum (yides! i didn't know that was possible!)

i'm excited to get scrubbing!

 

 

 

the simple life

doing domestic, thrifty, and down-to-earth things makes me really happy. and i'm glad it does. i recently had a sweet elderly lady in our neighborhood bring me a lovely antique dresden plate quilt to mend so she could give to her grandaughter. it was a simple fix, and although i didn't really have the time, i was happy to do it for her. then she said something that rubbed me a little wrong, "i come form a long line of southern women who would just as soon have someone else do it for them, so i'm having you do it for me". it almost made choose not to do it. but as i thought about it, i felt gratitude that i come from a different line of women...the "i can do it, or at least i'll give it my best try" type of women. i treasure that heritage, because even though it isn't the easiest way of life, it is satisfying.

this summer, for the first time, we have been harvesting and drying our own herbs. after drying, we vacuum seal them in canning jars - i love this new discovery, vacuum sealing in jars - we can preserve so many things this way - chocolate chips, rasins, nuts, grains, even granulated things, like salt, -and they last for 20 years or more. the photos above shows kale (green leaves), calenduala (orange, similar to marigolds), and echinaccea (pink cone flowers). red clover flowers and japanese shiso are in the jars. i hope to use them to make healthy herbal tea and other fun concotions. shiso is also wonderful sprinkled on rice - furikake, as the japanese call it.

i also really love hanging my laundry to dry. i love feeling the sun shine down and the breeze blow on my and my alundry as i hang it, and the wonderful feeling of saving electricity, and lengthening the life of our clothes. i even enjoy color coordinating the laundry as i hang it....making lovely color patterns and combinations - when i have time. it must be the quilter in me.

 

 

 

loving the yard

i am so in love with our yard and neighborhood in the spring.....and really all year long, other than january and february. this spring we have planted a dogwood, almond, and white peach trees, more rhubarb, wisteria, summer daffodils, clematis, more asiatic lilies, more peonies, toad lilies, blue pearl polemonium, red coral bells, lily of the valley, more hydrangeas, caladium, and gladiolus.....maybe more? next week a fig tree, kiwi vines, and 2 replacement grapes are coming, which will bring our total number of fruit trees to 16, plus 5 nut trees, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and 4 types of grapes....so excited for them to keep growing and producing!

 

our crabapple

close-up

our neighbors' redbuds blooming

our early garden starts - tomatoes, peppers, mums, zinnias, scabiosa, foxglove, basil, etc.

we've made big changes in our garden this year, which we are excited about - putting in fencing and raising our beds, finally buying a composter. and i got all of our early planting finished yesterday - lettuce, spinach, snow peas, regular peas, kale, candy onions, green onions, pak choi, potatoes, carrots, and beets.....jus tin time for torrential rainfall. i'm afraid to go out and investigate - afraid all of the little seeds were washed away.

in love with pumpkins

i adore pumpkins. i love the way they look and how they taste. years in japan where it was a real treat to find a small pumpkin for $20 only increased my appreciation. growing up, my mom wouldn't let us put candles in our jack o'lanterns, only flashlights, so they wouldn't be damaged and we could cook, puree, and freeze them for making pies all winter.  on special monrings, we even got pumpkin pie for breakfast.

this year a friend taught me how to can pumpkin with - something i had wanted to do, but couldn't find information about. i also found some pumpkin butter recipes online, after being inspired by pumpkin butter at the local pumpkin farm, and tried a few. this is my favorite. it makes a huge batch and is super easy - just dump it all in the slow cooker and let it go. all the online recipes say that you need to freeze or refridgerate pumpkin butter, and not can it. but i processed mine in the pressure canner for 45 minutes.  

 top and center is the pumpkin butter. canned pumpkin on the left, fresh pumpkin puree on the right.

mia drew faces on some of our pumpkins to express how they felt as they watched their friends get baked.

first she drew these faces: not sure what to think....

then turned them around and drew these faces: coming to a full realization of the truth.

i finished my last batch of canned pumpkin this morning, and now have 22 1/2 quarts of canned pumkin. that's a lot of pies. and lot and lots of pumpkin butter....mmmm...tastes just like pumpkin pie on toast.

going nutty

one of the fun finds i made at the dutchman's general store last month was a 5 lb bag of cracked pecans. to my surprise, no one could resist shelling them, and just by leaving them out on the counter, the shelling job was suddenly done. it's somehow much yummier to bake with and eat pecans that we shelled ourselves.

that was a welcome discovery, because this fall we have planted our own pecan tree,

and two chestnut trees,

and an almond.

 

our trees are still babies. these photos represent what they hope to grow up to be.

in the last year we have planted 14 fruit trees, 4 nut tress, 5 grapes, a raspberry patch, 3 blackberries, 3 blueberries, rhubarb, asparagus, cranberries, and 25 strawberries.

maybe we have gone overboard, that seems to be my tendency.

and maybe we are just completely nutty, but.....

it feels really, really good.

from the bounty of the earth

one of my most delightful experiences this fall was discovering the dutchman general store in cantril, iowa. a friend took me to this mennonite store (where you can watch happy rosy cheeked children playing in their traditional clothing. we drove through scenic, rolling, autumn farmland, and i repeated this magical journey for my in-laws when they visited.

i came home with boxes of apples, pears, and tomatoes, delicious and decorative squash, bulk spices and other goodies that i haven't been able to find here in the midwest, like millet, flax seed, unrefined sugar. oh! and unbelievably yummy dark dutch cocoa. and all at great prices! dreamy!  

i am enjoying a continuing love affair with canning this fall. the apples and pears combined made scrumptious juice, apple/pear sauce, and my favorite sauce that i discovered last year by accident: follow the apple pie filling recipe on the minute tapioca box (using both pears and apples), cut the sugar by 1/3, and cook until very juicy, then can it to put over pancakes, waffles, etc. so yummy!

i used the tomatoes to make surprisingly delicious fresh chunky past sauce and salsa.

we had fun with crabapples again.

and have been canning more chicken and beans with the new pressure canner.

we've picked apples at baxter's vineyards down the street more than once this fall, and on our first visit found 10 old blue glass canning jars waiting for a new owner. here they are with spices and goodies from the dutchman's store.

now they are full of apple/pear juice. somehow so much funner than clear glass jars.

i'm still drying apples from our last apple picking at baxter's last week.

i thrill at the bounties of autumn.