When I preserve food in glass jars (aka. “canning”) almost everything in the process is reusable from year to year. However, the one disposable element is the jar lid that comes in contact with the food.
In previous years, I’ve opted to buy lids when I need them, but this year I’ve decided to bulk order lids so I could get them as cheaply as possible. Here were the places I was able to find lids (locally and online) and the price per lid.
Price per lid is based on the volume of lids purchased, so smaller packages might have higher per-lid prices.
Note that I couldn’t find the shipping charges for Freshpreserving.com, which may increase the cost per lid. At Amazon.com, I only used Prime merchants, so I wouldn’t have to pay shipping charges, and use the cheapest price I could find.
Big props to the Coop for having the cheapest lids. In addition, being a Coop member, I may get an additional 10% discount on my lids, lowering the price even further. I will stop by and order a case!
I’m hoping to make something tasty this weekend with a 5-bone rib-in pork roast that has been sleeping in my chest freezer. Somehow the idea of pork and garlic really appealed to me, but so did the idea of honey glazed ham. Bringing these two concepts together, I made roast garlic jelly which I will use to baste the pork roast.
Unfortunately, what I wanted to make was roasted garlic JAM – with lots of chunks of roasted garlic and a little sweetness. Best-laid plans of mice. I ended up with Jelly instead – wine, vinegar, sugar infused with roast garlic. To make it a bit more interesting, I added the garlic cloves back into the jars, but they floated up to the top and separated from the jelly. I guess I’ll just roast more garlic to use with the pork roast.
My neighbor Cindy and I walk our dogs past this Orthodontist office that has an tree just hanging full of wonderful, ripe, flawless apples. Tasty apples, too – I’ve eaten a few that I could reach from the ground – Juicy and not too tart, with firm flesh. Just wonderful apples going to waste on the tree.
I vowed to steal them.
I figured there’s no orthodontist that sees patients on Saturdays – so I drove over in my car, parked under the tree and climbed onto the roof. Wouldn’t you know it, I could only reach a handful of apples. The fruit hung from the branch, just out of my reach. Many people would give up in defeat, but something about these apples lit a fire under my butt. I needed help and a way to reach the apples.
Pidi and I went to West Lebanon Feed and Supply to buy an Apple Picker. It’s a wire basket on the end of a pole with some rake-like fingers to pluck fruits from high up in the tree. I splurged the extra dollars to get the full 15′ model. I was going to get those damn apples come hell or high water. I called up Cindy and recruited her to my cause. Petty Crime and Free Apples. I mean, who doesn’t want that?
Evidence of the crime.
Now armed with implements and a co-conspirator, I load up the car and drive back to the Orthodontists office. I’m standing on the roof of my car and Cindy’s down on the ground unloading the apples from my picking basket into a bushel box. We have about half a bushel when up drives a guy in a black Porsche 911 from the 1970s. Instead of dropping the pole and running, I hopped off the roof of my car, walked up with a big smile and an armload of apples. I asked if he wants an apple. I ask if these are his apples. My heart is pounding in my chest.
The Porsche 911. The Orthodontist. Yes, I’m still standing on the roof of my car. Aren’t those great boots?
Turns out, this is the orthodontist who owns the apples we’re stealing. He also happens to be a very nice guy and willing to trade pie for calling the police. He needs to wash his Porsche, so decided to come over to his office where, I guess, all orthodontists keep power washers. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I suspect somebody tipped him off that there were hooligans stealing his apples. He seemed surprised to find reasonably nice people willing to pick his apples for him for free. What’s an orthodontist going to do with a bushel of apples? Kids in braces aren’t supposed to eat them…
Petty crime and free apples. I mean, who doesn’t want that?
We picked a bushel of apples off his tree over the course of an hour. The orthodontist power-washed his Porsche and we all went home happy.
The apples were beautiful. I had to throw out 3 of the whole bushel. I made applesauce and got about 12 pints. I felt guilty keeping all of these free apples for myself, so I left a pile on the stoop of the orthodontist’s office, gave a bunch to my neighbors, and sent Cindy home with a weeks’ worth of fruit. She was my co-conspirator…
I think I may recruit Sam to go with me to steal a few more… I’m craving an apple pie.
This year’s Caselot controversy was over Barilla pasta. The company has been in hot water after their Chairman made some blowhard comments about “family values” and using homosexuals in their advertisements. This led to a boycott and lots of Liberal rage (and NPR coverage). Nothing wrong with Liberal rage, mind you… But, when I dug into the order form for the Caselot sale, there was organic pasta at $1.83 per pound and Barilla pasta at $0.98 per pound. I can’t stomach the thought of buying organic pasta.* BUT, I also was conflicted about supporting a company making pretty terrible comments. More than that, I was really surprised that the COOP would purchase that much pasta from a rather controversial company-must have been a timing issue.
If you remember, last year I had quite a time at the COOP Caselot Sale. Thankfully, as you’ve been reading, I was able to put food by this season, so I didn’t have to buy tomatoes, green beans and the like at the Caselot sale. Instead, we took advantage of the Caselot sale to stock up on canned black, pinto and garbanzo beans, frozen peas and cleaning products. Plus, Clif Bars at $0.90/ea and olive oil for $30/gallon. In fact, we went Thursday morning at 9am before Sam went to work, and were in and out in under 30 minutes. Success!
*As a sidenote, in the organic v local debate, I’m firmly on the Local side. I often don’t spend extra on organic foods when conventional foods are available. Local+Organic > Local+Conventional > Remote+Conventional > Remote+Organic
The guys that fulfilled my caselot order. (Note the thick fog at 9:25am…)
The Chest Freezer Fairy. If you set out a dish of homemade jam, she’ll leave presents in your chill chest. Mostly frozen food, but the occasional frozen human finger has shown up.
Thinking back to your Elementary School Geology class, rocks come in three forms, igneous, sedimentary and some other type that I certainly can’t spell. Metamorphic? Point is, sedimentary rocks are made from silt and sand and other types of stuff that piles up in layers and gets packed down by the weight of the stuff on top of it.
My chest freezer is a 15-cubic-foot frozen sedimentary rock.
As we put food by, I freeze bags of stuff, and pile it into the chest freezer. Down at the bottom are the frostbit remnants of previous years’ preserving. Above that goes the strawberries and blueberries in the spring, through other fruits, herbs, corn all the way to the broccoli that sits at the top.
Once the fall comes, a massive geologic event hits the chest freezer.
We don’t eat our food in the order it went into the chest freezer, so each Fall I have to stir up the layers, bringing the spring fruits to the top and moving some of the fall vegetables to the bottom. To do this, I don thick gloves to protect my hands from frostbite (learned that lesson real quick) and I have to unload the whole chest freezer, spread out piles of corn, strawberries, etc, across the floor, then reload the whole thing in a mixed-up order.
I often find presents in the bottom of the chest freezer left by the Chest Freezer Fairy. This year I found some chicken stock frozen into 1-cup cubes, ham hocks, and Japanese fried tofu pockets to make Inarizushi. We’ve got a 4-rib bone-in pork roast that I should defrost and cook into something yummy. I moved the strawberries from the bottom to the top, and made room for the broccoli that should be arriving next week sometime.
We’re getting close to the end of the season of putting food by, and into the season of eating it all up.
I am way too excited about 10% sale on canning supplies at West Leb Feed and Supply… On the shopping list: Jar Lids, wide-mouth pints, and maybe a 7-pint rack for my 20-gal water bath canner.
Yes, I get my pet food and canning supplies at the same store.
A few weeks ago, I started the Sauerkraut – or the salted, shredded cababbage as it was known back then… Now it’s matured into full-fledged sauerkraut. And it tastes like sauerkraut. It has a little bit more character than store-bought kraut, especially because it has less salt and because I haven’t applied any heat to kill off the culture. Otherwise, it’s mostly interchangable with the store-bought product.
In total, we had 4 pounds of cabbage and that became 1 quart and 1 pint of finished kraut. (6 cups for the non-canning inclined).
That’s just enough for a batch of Cabbage Rolls and one dinner of kielbasa, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut.
Now I have to figure out what to do with 4 pounds of red cabbage…
Part of putting food by is that I feel responsible for my larder. I want to cook the best food from the ingredients I have preserved. I also want everything to last as long as it can. I cried the first time I broke a canning jar, and don’t even ask why I hate rutabagas. I have had nightmares about opening my pantry and hundreds of rats streaming out, leaving nothing behind but some crumbs.
My heart broke today when I found mold in my dried tomatoes. I hadn’t kept up with their curing, and there must have been some pockets of moisture left. Plus it’s been humid here, so that doesn’t help.
I went through all of my tomatoes and checked for mold. Then I went through the dried apricots-all were okay.
This was the last weekend of major canning for the year. Sam and I made 20 pints of Salsa, following the recipe from the USDA Home Canning Guide.
I’ll have some wrap-up statistics later this week. But, for now, let’s start with the basics:
18 lbs of roma-style tomatoes. 5 lbs with our CSA. 10 lbs @ $1.60/lb (Seconds). 3 lbs at $4/lb (Firsts).
2 lbs tomatillos for $3/lb.
3 lovely anaheim chilies for $0.75/each.
3 bell peppers at $1/ea.
3 yellow onions for $2.
To that we added:
4 jalapinos from our CSA.
1 lb Garlic from our CSA.
1/2 lb red onion from our CSA.
2 cups lemon juice.
3 tbsp salt
1 tbsp black pepper
4 tbsp cumin
2 tbsp dried ancho chili powder
4 tbsp dried oregano
4 tbsp minced fresh cilantro
We did most of the pepper, onion and garlic chopping the night before and the WHOLE FRIDGE reeked of onions. I’m not doing that again next year. But it did save us about an hour of chopping.
The salsa before cooking. I like the color contrast of the red onions.
Going back to the earlier post on when to water bath can vs pressure can, tomato salsa is one of those marginal products that, depending on the ratio of onions/peppers/garlic (low acid vegetables) vs tomatoes (high acid vegetables), the overall acidity may be too low to water bath can. In this recipe I add 2 cups of lemon juice to ensure that, no matter how many peppers and onions I add to the salsa (and I like a LOT of peppers in my salsa) the acidity will certainly be high enough to water bath can my salsa. Good thing too, because pressure canned salsa gets much too over-cooked and is more like a smooth taco sauce than a chunky salsa. In addition to tomatoes, I add tomatillos to my salsa. Tomatillos have more pectin than ripe tomatoes, and so they add thickness and body to the salsa as it cooks.
We ended up with 20 pints of salsa. We water-bath canned 18 pints, then ran out of jars, and put 2 pints (a quart, for those inclined to the backwards English system of measure…) into the fridge for use later this week. We’ll make Chicken Tortilla Soup for dinner one night, and I may split the remainder for Sam and I to take to work to share.
The salsa after cooking for 30 minutes, just before being canned. Note the rings on the inside of the pot. The salsa reduced about 2 inches during the 30 minutes of vigorous boiling.
I need some ideas, quick, about what to do with 4 cups of tomato liquid. It’s not tomato purée, it’s the liquid that I got after straining the jelly and the seeds from middle of a bunch of tomatoes. It’s much thinner than tomato purée, and doesn’t have any fiber in it. What should I do with this?
ReLocavore: Redefining "local" 