ReLocavore: Redefining "local"

Back to Wisconsin, my cheesehead friends

Tag Archives: canning


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Necessary equipment: a big damn bowl

A big goddamn bowl is essential for successful canning. My mom inherited my big bowl when we moved out to New Hampshire. I had inherited it originally from my mom’s mom… I made it through strawberries without one, but I’m staring down a bushel of green beans and I’m not going to screw around. I NEED a big bowl.

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To give you a sense, the new big damn bowl is 20-quarts in size. I put a widemouth pint jar in the big damn bowl in order to give you a sense of size. A big damn bowl needs to be large enough in order to successfully wash half a bushel of beans, or hold the kernels cut off a dozen ears of corn, or bathe small infants. Big.

Look for the story of sauerkraut… As made in the big damn bowl.

What to Do With 50 Pounds of Stone Fruit: A Photo Gallery

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We stopped at the Apple Bin Farm Market on the way home from visiting Sam’s grandmother in New York state. They had ripe apricots and peaches. We left with a full carload. So… What can you make from 50 pounds of stone fruit? Click on an image to read more about what me made.

The motherload…
We ate a LOT of apricots and peaches, and gave many away to friends and neighbors.
I like canned peaches. So, we made 7 quarts. In light syrup so we don’t get too fat eating these in the winter.
After canning peaches in syrup, we had some leftover, so it went into a bag and into the freezer. This will be a great cobbler.
Apricot preserves – 12 half-pints. I didn’t add any pectin. Instead we cooked it for a good 45 minutes to get the natural pectin out of the fruits. It’s a soft-set, but has REALLY GREAT flavor.
Peach butter. 4 pints. Peach butter doesn’t have any fat in it. It’s called “butter” because it’s very spreadable fruit with little added sugar. After canning, we had a few tablespoons left over. It went over the top of the apricot cobbler. Yeah, we baked too…
My friend came over to help with drying, and we ended up making an apricot cobbler. This is not a picture of my cobbler, but it looked just about identical…
Dried apricots. We didn’t use sulfur to keep the orange color, so they turn brown when they dry. They still taste really good. I forgot to set an alarm to wake up in the middle of the night and turn down the dryer. They got done in about 14 hours, instead of the usual 18.
I selected the prettiest tiny little apricots to make apricot bounce – apricots with sugar drowned in straight brandy. The jar will sit until Christmas, then we get boozy on fruit!

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Strawberry Jam

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The back-of-the-napkin calculation…

Yielded 25 jars of jam for $4.66 per jar.

Next year, when I don’t have to buy jars, but only have to buy lids ($0.16/lid), each jar will cost me $4.14.

And yes, I didn’t factor in the cost of the equipment that I used – both the general equipment (bowls, spoons) and the canning-specific equipment (canner, jar tongs, lid lifter magnet).

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