cookin

Now that summer is in full swing my wife and I are canning up what the yard is providing. Last month we canned 8 jars of apricot jam, this month it's going to be pickles and blackberry jam. Also dabbling in sourdough french bread. After letting my started get up to speed, I think I am finally getting the swing of it. Tonight we had a loaf with roasted garlic, jack cheese and chunks of prosciutto in it. Mmmmh! It came out great! Anyway after reading about all that good maple syrup some members were making, I figured I'd throw this out there to see what any of you might be up to.

sounds like good eating to me.:)

You forgot to put an address in your post for us taste testers to stop by....:LOL: :LOL:

MM64 :cool:

darn only fruit tree we got is a cherry tree.

Cherry pie is one of my favorites!

Well, there goes my diet! Thanks for making me hungry Steve. :D :D

My Mom and Grandmom used to can stuff my Grandpa would grow in his garden, they had a big old metal tub with a lid on it and a rack in the bottom to keep the Mason jars up a little out of the water. My Grandfather would build a wood fire in a fireplace we had in the backyard, and they would steam the jars on that. I remember lots of jars getting put on some shelves in the basement and we would have them clear through the winter until the next year. It was a lot of work, but sure saved some money and tasted great.

My Grandpa also had a cold cellar that he dug in the yard, with a hip roof over it. He would wrap tomatoes and other stuff in newspaper and store it down there and even in December you would go down and unwrap a now ripened tomato that would taste like it was just picked.

I'm glad to see some of you are still canning. Certainly has to taste better than the stuff we get in cans at the local grocery store.:)


Don

Steve, Damn good thing you live in California, and not someplace east of the Missipp. If you did I'd be stopping by quite regularly.:LOL: :LOL:

My mom used to do canning every fall. My two favorites were Crab Apple Jelly and Sweet Pepper Relish. One of these days I think I will have to hit my sister up for my mom's recipes. Unfortunately, there aren't many real old time crab apple trees left.:( Most today are of the ornamental variety which ain't good for anything but little white flowers in the Spring.:(

Steve, it is nice to pick things from your own property, we have the black raspberries first then the big black berries, and several other kinds I don’t know how many varieties. We did a lot of sweating, and fighting the mosquitos but it will be worth it when we go to the freezer and get a bag of berries.

We bought 40 pounds of blue berries and I want to get another 40 or 50 pounds to put in the freezer. I have perfected the blue berry pancakes, I told Pat I should get a cart with a hot plate and sell blue berry pancakes with a scoop of ice cream on top. My pan cakes our light not the big doughy type.

A couple of years ago we found out a guy right down the street from us has the best peaches, I would not have thought they could grow here but they are just as good as any Georgia peach you could get. I cut them up and have peaches all winter for my cereal.

We tried growing blue berries but the deer, turkey plus whatever other animal that was hungry got them. I saw a raccoon dragging a big yellow squash one year.

We have bought zucchini, and squash to cut up and in the freezer for soup this winter. I could start a soup kitchen also, not putting them women down but I think the reason we have so many men as top Chiefs is because they enjoy making food taste good, where some women cook just to feed the kids (not all of course) we all had mom's that were good cooks. That’s just the way it is in my house anyway, my wife hates to cook. I like trying different things the grandkids love my quasidias, and fedichini alfredo. :toocool:

Richard

Maple Syrup? where? I want some now!
I picked a couple gallons of chokecherrys today, they make awesome syprup or jelly, picked about a gallon of green beans from the garden, a yellow squash, some cucumbers, onions and potaoes. I got my first tomatoes this wee, and the corn is almost ready to pick. Right now I am boiling new potaotes with small onions and with have them with butter and I am frying a rib steak from our own ranch beef. Life is good. Tomorrow my older sis and I are going berry picking, choke cherrys, buffalo berrys, wild plums and wild grapes.

All of the above sounds great. Richard I like to cook too, though my wife also cooks. It's fun doing the canning together.
Choke cherry syrup sounds great. My grandma used to make plum syrup that had just the right tang, with butter on pancakes. Blue berry pancakes also sound good right now!

nothing would beat moms homemade rhubarb pie not strawberry rhubarb just plain rhubarb man you wanna talk delicious.

If all the rain we're getting around here doesn't rot everything, I'll be canning some of my Grandmothers recipe for piccalilli (green tomatos and onions).

We did the pickles with cukes from the yard today, and we also canned blackberry jam. Then I left for work and my wife canned up 6 quarts of string beans, which is more time consumming as they need to be done in a pressure cooker.It's agood feeling to make our own food!