Friday, June 1, 2012

MUSTARD GREENS AND THE CANNING SEASON BEGINS

Happy Friday everyone!  Well this week at the little farm kicked of the beginning of food preserving and I am excited!  I love the whole science of canning, pickling and fermenting, the colors and the smells in my kitchen bring me a lot of joy.  This week I had to rush to cut all the large outer leaves from the mustard greens.  They were getting so large that they were starting to droop and I was not willing to share them with the bugs.The above picture is just half of what I cut.  I wanted to take a picture of the big bunch covering my counter top but alas it wasn't to be.  I went out to clean up the garden and when I returned my good hearted hubster had already started chopping
Arrrrg...I say...I wanted to take a picture of the whole bunch.  So he calmly looked at me as he has learned to do over the years when I throw a hissy and says take a picture of the chopped up too.  So I did.  In the 33 years we have been married he has grown very adept at handling this hyper woman.  But I digress....after washing and chopping the greens they go blanched for a few seconds,


Vivid green spicy smelling greens blanched

 cooled, dried, and thrown into zip locks and thrown into the freezer.  4 gallons bags of greens for later frozen so far.  If you just cut off the outer leaves they will keep growing...so more to come.  Turns out when you blanch the greens the water turns bright red...sooo...I had some undyed yarn and threw it in the pot...and guess what color it turned out???


Green.  It is so much fun to experiment with natural dyes..you never know what you will get.


PICKLING FUN

This week I got the pickling bug.  So I made a list and off to the farmer's market I went.  My first project was to start a mother of vinegar starter.  It's pretty simple..dump a pint of organic strawberries in a crock and pour a bottle of wine in or if you don't have wine you can use pure apple cider.  Then cover top with cheese cloth and let sit for two months in a cool dark place...in our case..a ice chest in the garage.  I also made bread and butter pickles and will be making spicy pickled green beans today.
My fav book to use for pickling is D.I.Y. Delicious by Vanessa Barrington.  I have used many recipes for her book and all have been wonderful.  She also includes recipes to go with your pickled and fermented goodies.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST ...YOGURT

I made apricot yogurt this time.  Making yogurt is pretty easy.  Bring 4 cups of milk to a boil until it climbs the sides of the pan then let the milk cool until luck warm to around 95F.  Stir in 1 cup plain yogurt.  The yogurt cannot have any additives.  Then if you want stir in some chopped fruit or jam.  Then pit in jars and place in yogurt maker for around 8-10 hours.  If you don't have a yogurt maker you can use your crock pot to do this.  Just heat your milk as above in the crock pot and add your starter. Afterwards, unplug and put the lid on the crock pot and wrap it in a towel. Let it sit for 8-10 hours.  You can put it in your oven (turned off) so that it retains its heat longer.

Well that's it for now.  I pretty sure you are not interested in this weeks chores. Some new art work is coming up in the near future.  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend shared with family and friends with lots of laughter.

2 comments:

  1. I have never had mustard greens! Nice blog! I'm like you I do not enjoy any canned or boxed soup! Enjoy your weekend.

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    1. Thank you Walking on Sunshine! Mustard greens are my favorite greens.

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