Simple Stock

 This recipe details exactly what I have done the last few years with freezing carcasses and decent compost to make stock that I then pressure can. It's even written by a food critic from New York City. 

Simplified Brown Stock

https://merrymeetingmenu.blogspot.com/2021/05/simplified-brown-stock.html

Home made Mayonnaise

 Nothing better than a home made recipe, even if it is archaic and a bit abstract. 

MerryMeetingMenuMayonnaise

https://merrymeetingmenu.blogspot.com/2021/04/mayonnaise.html

General Stock

 Another family recipe from the farm that looks like a great pressure canning addition. 

General Stock

https://merrymeetingmenu.blogspot.com/2021/04/general-stock.html

Green Tomato Relish

 It's so exciting to find a family recipe for something I can can and give away for Christmas!

Green Tomato Relish

https://merrymeetingmenu.blogspot.com/2021/04/green-tomato-relish.html

Hand Lotion from Emil FIscher's in NYC in 1940

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh My Goodness I was so excited to stumble upon this recipe card in my box. It's not a food but rather a body product which fits right in with this blog. My only questions is, what is Carbolic Acid?

This recipe is credited to "Emil Fischer's Altruistic Prescription Pharmacy" in NYC. 

Ingredients

1 pint bay Rum

1 pint Rose Water

1 pint glycerine

a few drops carbolic acid also called phenol

Emil Fischer's

Altruistic Prescription Pharmacy

1652 First Ave., Cor. 86th Street

N.Y.C.

123897

2-24-40

Well that dates this!

Concord Grape Jam!

 Fall is here and so is the canning season!

Concord Grape Jam is in the books!

https://merrymeetingmenu.blogspot.com/2020/09/concord-grape-jam.html

Sourdough Starter Day 1

Making a sourdough starter is certainly the quickest thing I have done in my kitchen. I am hoping it takes off as planned!

Sourdough Starter for the Food In Jars Challenge

I am venturing into the world of sour dough starter for the first time as part of this months Food in Jars challenge. I will be following the King Arthur Flour recipe below. 

King Arthur Flour Sourdough Starter

I will be giving away some of my "discard" for friends to make their own starter. On the other days I will try my hand at making things from it. Here is a link to some of the things I will try. I hope you can join my in this challenge!

Sourdough Starter Discard Recipes

Lime Curd

After discovering how amazing Meyer Lemon Curd was, I decided that I would do a third challenge for January. I made lime curd and it did not disappoint! It is just like a key lime pie in a jar. I used the recipe in Marisa's book (shown in the picture above) but there is not a link to it on her blog. This recipe seems very similar but does not include the canning information. The curd can be canned in a hot water bath by processing it for at least 25 minutes and is shelf stable for 2 months. That said, at 2 months it begins to separate but is still fine to eat. Freezing your jars is the best method for long term preservation.

Clementine Marmalade

There is nothing better to warm the kitchen in the winter than the cleansing smell of a simmering marmalade. I found this recipe in the Hannaford booklet that is found at the check out. The second I saw it I knew that this would be my first accomplishment for this years addition of the Food In Jars Challenge, hosted by non other than Marisa McClellan, the author of Food in Jars. The Hannaford recipe can be found here, and though it is not listed, it is safe to can. Process in a hot water bath for ten minutes.

Any left overs that don't fit in the canner, can go straight into the fridge. There's my left overs tucked in between a lemon curd and a Nana Tito's marmalade. Enjoy!

Meyer Lemon Curd

This curd is a lemon meringue pie in a jar. I chose the recipe from Marisa McClellan's book Food In Jars but a similar recipe can be found on her blog. Here is her blog post is for Meyer Lemon Curd. 

I highly recommend trying your hand at making a curd, it is not as scary as it seems, and the only special equipment you need is a thermometer (preferably a candy thermometer) and a double boiler which can be easily made with a stock pot and a large bowl. Here is how I made mine:

I processed mine in hot jars for 25 minutes in a hot water bath. It is shelf stable once canned for two months, so for long term storage it is best to keep it in the freezer.  Any left overs that don't fit in the hot water bath can go in a jar for the fridge. Here is my left overs placed next to my clementine marmalade (recipe coming next) and our neighbor Anne's marmalade (in the fancy jar!) Enjoy!

Seeing the finish line on Baby's Room

I can see the finish line right around the corner.

The walls are painted and the flooring is in. 

Now it just needs the trim and a closet door attached.

We shall return to normal soon.

Blisters and Sweat Equity

I have a goal for this summer: don't let the heat keep me out of the garden. I have a plan to make this years garden the best Resistance garden ever. I am going to can, preserve, pressure can, and dehydrate the living guts out of everything it produces. I am a woman on a mission.

This past weekend I met my goal for the first time. Despite sizzling heat and sun, I refused to start my inside tasks before I had crops reseeded and my second rotation of onions (both red and white) in the ground. It was touch and go for a while there, but through grit and water, I persisted. This only problem? A sunburn? Hell yes but in my haste to get the heck out of there and into shade as fast as possible, I worked my trowel a bit too hard without gloves on.
Ouch!

Chive Vinegar

This was the simplest act of sustainability I have ever done, and it is SO pretty!

and a day later... voila!

I can't wait to see what it looks like in a week!

Lilac Jam

As I searched for recipes for violets, I learned that lilacs are another edible flower and was immediately entranced by the task of finding a recipe to make jam with the last two remaining flowers on my lilac tree. There was lilac jelly (oh so beautiful you must wait until next year) but the Jun Food in Jars Challenge is jam, so I had to settle on the only recipe I could get my hands on that worked with my available time (as in right then and there) and my available resources (two flowers only makes about one cup of usable flower). 

This recipe I found was from Music, Life, Love blog that appears long out of service. Do I trust the recipe? It seems an awful lot like the violet recipe and it will be going in the freezer, so... what the heck, I can always dump it later if it is awful.

Ingredients
2 cups, loosely packed lilac blossoms (no green parts or stems)
Juice of 1 fresh lemon or 4 Tablespoons of bottled lemon juice
3/4 cup water
2 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup water (a second time)
1 pkg. Sure-Jel pectin

Process
1.  Put 3/4 cup water and the lilac blossoms in a blender and blend well.
2.  Add the lemon juice and notice how the lilac paste turns a richer purple as soon as the lemon juice hits the dull purple paste.
3. Add the sugar and blend again to dissolve.
4. In a saucepan over medium heat, heat  the second 3/4 cup water in a sauce pan. Slowly stir the package of pectin into and bring it to a boil, continuing to boil hard for 1 minute.
5. Pour the hot pectin into the blender with the lilac paste.
6. Blend again and pour into jars or small storage containers.
7. Let cool, then cover with lids and store in the freezer. The jam will turn a deeper purple as it sets up. You can dip out the jam whenever you want some.


I'm really quite excited about them but once again worry about the pectin texture. I really need to get better at doing pectin the natural way.

They took on a surprisingly browner hue as time went on. It still has a shade of purple, but not as much as it was.

Store in freezer for up to a month. 

Violet Jam

A boy in the grass picking flowers

June is a jam month for the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge and I need to be honest, I really wanted to challenge myself and jam was a hard one to find. Jam is my THING.... how could I take it up a notch?

Then I remembered that we had violets growing at the edge of the woods.  FLOWERS .... I could challenge myself by using flowers. It was a wonderful Sunday morning activity. With the help of Baby, we went foraging in the field for violets.
 
























It was an ideal Sunday morning, drinking my tea, sitting in the shady grass with my youngest picking flowers.

I need to be honest here though one cup of packed violets is a hard earned venture, even Baby bagged out before I got them all. They almost camouflage themselves among the grass - you can only see them when you look at them from the right direction.

I love the swirl in the leaves. 

All in all, it took over an hour to procure one cup of violets but luckily that is all I needed because I picked every last one of them.

I used a recipe from  Soule Mama found HERE.  

I don't know if I did it right or used the right amount of pectin because my jam isn't as purple as hers. It also seems to have a grainy consistency. I would definitely make this again, but I might use natural pectin from apples. This was a nice experiment in foraging and I will tinker with it again. How many rounds of blooms do violets have in a season?

I Tweezed out any impurities

Ingredients

1 (packed) cup violet blossoms
1 cup water
juice of one lemon
1/2 cup honey
pectin (I used 1/3 of a box of Pomona pectin - turns out that 1/3 is 1 Tablespoon and 1 Teaspoon.)

Process

1. Spend a lovely late spring morning with your youngest child foraging for violets. 

2.  Blend violets, 1/2 of the water and lemon juice.

3.  Heat remaining water and honey in a saucepan. 

4. When warm, add pectin and stir until mixed well. 

5. Add pectin/honey mix to blender. Blend again until smooth. 

6. Place in hot jars immediately to set. This is a freezer jam for preserving.

Sustainable plant watering

Look at that rich color left from Fiddleheads!

I don't know why I didn't think of it before learning it from Marisa at FoodinJars.com , but one should ALWAYS save their blanching water. It provides a nutritious drink for your plants.

From blanching my fiddle heads for 3 pints of pickled asparagus, I yielded two quarts of healthy nutritious water for my plants.

I know my Hibiscus and Orchid are thanking me!

Dandelion Jelly

Finally, I am a believer! Round one of dandelion jelly ended like this:

What did I do, make a scoby?

After a morbidly awful first round failure, I rolled my shoulders back, put my chin up, and demanded that the kids help me forage a SECOND round of dandelion blossoms. "But, MOM!" Can you hear them? Geez Louise its as if I am forcing them into child labor. This time I was smarter and employed them to each bring a pair of scissors because this time once we picked the blossom, we would cut the bottom off right then and there, cutting our prep time down to nil! Winning!
This is the prep we had to endure the first round:

I wish I had a picture of them out in the field with their baskets. It was a very nice holiday weekend activity. We were also under the gun because SP had just left to go pick up a mower to knock down the field. As he returned he alerted us to another field, well an old logging job nearby, that was chock full of dandelions so we relinquished our hold on the home field and moved along to find new ground. We were very successful in our foraging.

This round I also used a new recipe that I found on SimplyCanning.com (thanks to a member of the Food In Jars community on Facebook). The recipe found Here shows detailed pictures of how to cut the dandelions. It is far easier to use a pair of scissors that to do it with your fingers alone.

Ingredients
4 cups dandelion flower petals
4 cups boiling water
4 cups dandelion tea (made from the steeped petals - see below)
7 cups sugar
4 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 pouches liquid pectin

Process

1. Place your dandelion petals in a heat safe container (with cover).  Cover petals with boiling water. Stir to combine. Cover (once it cools a bit) and steep overnight.

2. Drain the petals, reserving the tea.
3. Prepare your jars in a hot water canner. 
4. In a large pot (the pectin will make the jelly foam so you want room), combine the tea, sugar and lemon juice.
5. Bring mixture to a full boil.
6. Add the liquid pectin and stir constantly as it comes back to a boil.
7. Keep stirring and let it boil for one minute.
8. Remove from heat. Ladle the jelly into hot jars.
9. Affix lids and rings to the jars and place in hot water canner.
10. Process in canner for 10 minutes.

I was desperate to see if it jelled and fortunately had a bit left over that I didn't can that cooled first. By 10:00 last night, I declared the mission a success!

 
It really does taste just like honey!