Trials and Learning

I found this great website this week, it is called Pick Your Own .   It has almost every canning recipe that I have wanted.  I discovered it while looking for a recipe for canning my own baked beans.  There are so many very exciting things on here that I am looking forward to having some harvests.  Maybe I should wait until more things are actually planted in the garden.  (By the way.... my peas are now peeking through the soil.  So exciting.)  Not knowing if I'll like this baked bean recipe, I decided to buy some dried beans before I go through all the work of growing, shelling and drying my own beans.  I also decided that if I"m going to can these, I should probably try out Grandma's pressure canner to see if all the rings and valves still work.  I was a bit nervous and the temp began to rise and then the pressure after I put the weighted gauge on.  There was some leaking at first, but then they all went away.  I am impressed that this 64 year old "vintage" canner is still working.  Now to make the beans tomorrow.

Not sure if anyone else out there has watched the show "Extreme Couponing," but I have seen it a few times and it got me thinking about actually couponing more than what I have been. I asked a local gas station if I could get the old papers before the tossed them. Now every week I clip the coupons that I want and go from there.  Granted I don't take couponing to the extremes like on the show, but today I did save $74.  One thing that bothers me about this.... most of the time to get the best deal you have to buy the smallest container allowed by the coupon which leads to more packaging waste.  I guess I'll just have to "Extreme Coupon" in my own fashion and be frugal by continuing to buy in bulk when it works best.  I am hoping by the end of the summer I'll have a lot of my own product canned and not only save money on the product, but reduce my part in impacting the environment negatively. 

While I was clipping coupons, I realized how many there were for laundry soap and how expensive all that stuff is.  On one of my many blog scanning evenings I came across a recipe for laundry soap, so today, instead of buying laundry soap, I bought the last ingredient to make my own.  Now right off hand I can't remember where I found the recipe, but I'll do some digging and find the blog and give the recipe owner full credit.  This afternoon I made up one batch (it has to sit for 24 hours) and tomorrow I am going to bottle it up in my good old milk jugs that I used for collecting maple sap.  I love reusing things when I can. 

So as you can see this has been a day full of trials and learning that will continue into tomorrow.  I hope that tomorrow will be as successful as today.  Until warmer weather brings more garden growth I'll keep learning and preparing for the harvest.

Picking, cutting and freezing

This spring we discovered a hidden blessing on our 20 ac., wild blueberries, and lots of them. We have a large oak ridge that runs the length of our property and it is loaded with blueberry plants. All spring we were out there checking on the flower progress and praying that they wouldn't freeze during our weird May snow storms and low and behold they didn't. We have been picking and picking blueberries. I think between Scott and I we have picked almost 2 gallons. It would have been more but we had a bit of "help" from the kids and Maya the dog. Would you believe that Maya only picked the ripe ones. Crazy, I have never seen anything like that before in my life, and she would beat us to the good bushes also. Adin deemed himself the "Blueberry Monster" and Lizzy just layed right down on the forest floor next to a bush and would eat away (I called her my little bear cub). The berries are mostly done for the year, but we had fun and now will be able to enjoy blueberry pancakes all winter.

This weekend I was able to get 6 cases of sweetcorn (for free - even better) so we have been cutting the corn off the cob, blanching and then freezing them. It felt like I was back on the farm as a kid doing this, the only thing missing was the cows to feed the husks too. No we are NOT getting a cow. Way more work than I want. The recipe is the best - it is what we always used growing up on the farm.

Home on the Farm Sweet Corn
8-10 cup cut corn
1 t. sugar
1 t. salt
1 stick butter (I use less)
1 c water
boil for 3 min., cool then package and freeze

So great! I have 3 cases done and 3 more to go. Guess what I'll be doing tonight!

My next project is going and doing some raspberry and strawberry picking and making some of my Grandma's jam. Yum!