Ball Blue Book for Canning, Freezing and Dehydration

I have another book recommendation! "The Ball Blue Book for Canning, Freezing, and Dehydration"...I also have a funny/sad story behind how I got mine!
When I first started looking into canning last year I wanted to "get prepared" with some recipes and the basics of canning. A friend from church let me borrow this amazing book that she said was her "go to book for canning". I had it a week or so and was going to take it back to her but forgot to put it in the car before we left for church. I didn't think much of it because she said to borrow it as long as I needed so I was going to just shoot for bringing it to her next week. Well, we get home from church only to find said book in the clutches of our precious Sarge (who at the time was cowering in terror because as I gasped he knew he had done something SO notty!).
In my panic I got online to try and quickly find a replacement for this book and the only copies for sale were over $100....AHHHHH!! I had no idea I was borrowing an antique irreplaceable recipe book (Due to the publish date and book volume!) !! I had no idea what to do! So I searched and searched desperately hoping I could find one cheaper AND that Doris (the extremely kind lady who let me borrow this antique!) wouldn't ask for her book back before I could find a new one!! Well after a couple weeks of searching I found an online book store in a small town in Texas that had the exact book, publish date and volume for sale for $4.98 (shipping included!). I was speechless and immediately bought it...slightly wondering if I was in a scam and would never really receive the book! Well a few days later the book arrived safe and sound and sure enough it was the exact book!
I took both books with me next time I was going to see Doris and handed her the new copy and said "Thank you" then I showed her the old copy and what Sarge had done to the book and she got a really good laugh out of it! And we all still get a really good laugh out of it to this day! NOW whenever Doris wants to loan me a book I always check the replacement value of it First!! Doris let me keep the old copy which is still mostly usable...some recipes are missing, but Doris said she could photo copy those ones for me :)

See, upon first sight it really doesn't look that bad! ... but then you flip it over and see the true damage!! Ya, there is no index so I really cant look things up! This really isn't something I could have given back to Doris ;)

So I totally recommend the "Ball Blue Book for Canning"...but try and find a cheaper volume and edition , I hear that they are just as good! :) Oh and Also the moral of the story: Check the replacement value of something before you borrow it because you just might be having to buy a new one!!

Garden Update! Beans, Tobacco, Tomatoes, Celery, Garlic...Oh My!

I am super excitted about the garden!! It has been ALOT of work, but its looking good :)

The Tobacco is coming up beautifully! This has been one plant that we really thought wasnt going to make it. It was a SLOW starter and then once we finally got it in the ground it just didnt take off like we had hoped...then after the few weeks of rain we got a while back it just exploded! We planted 6 plants - 2 each of 3 different varieties.

The Green Beans are in harvest and SO much fun to pick. Addie absolutely loves getting in there and "exploring for beans"...at first she was picking the "tiny ones", but then she learned to leave those alone because "they are the babies and still need to grow"...so she just goes after the "daddy beans" now.

Oh and the tomatoes!!! Could they be any more excitting!!! We are eagerly anticipating their redness!

Their are green tomatoes EVERYWHERE! I am afraid it is going to be a race to beat all the birds and squirrels to the ripening tomatoes, but hopefully they dont present too big of a problem...

Alot to cook and can here soon!!

Celery :)

Garlic!

Green Beans!! Canning

A couple days ago I tried my first round of canning green beans! It did take a lot of time and work, but sure was alot of fun! Addie and I went out to the garden and picked and picked green beans. We ended up with about 10 lbs, came inside, cleaned and destemed them (by this point Addie had lost interest), then got the canning recipe ready!!

I went with the "Hot Pack" method.

Step 1: Wash and Drain beans, Remove strings, trim ends and break or cut freshly gathered beans into 2 inch pices.

Step 2: Boil 5 minutes. (Get your jars and lids sterilized and get your pressure canner ready)

Step 3: Pack Hot Beans into Hot Jars leaving 1 inch headspace. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to each Pint and 1 teaspoon of Salt to each quart.

Step 4: Ladel boiling water over beans leaving 1 inch headspace, remove air bubbles.

Step 5: Adjust 2 piece caps and place in pressure cooker.

Step 6: Process Pints 20 minutes, Quarts 25 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure in a steam pressure canner.

Step 7: Once your canning time has expired, turn off the heat source and wait for pressure to leave the pressure canner...this could take a few hours...NEVER take the lid off or try to speed up the process or you could destroy your contents, or injur yourself. Just let the pressure canner slowly dismiss the pressure and once it is resting take off the pressure weight first to make sure there isnt any pressure remaingin and then take off the lid. Jars will be hot! Remove the jars to a towel and let them set 24 hours until all the seals pop. If seals do not pop eat them asap or put it in the refrigerator to eat soon. One of my seals didnt seal properly, so we had those beans for dinner that night...they tasted fantastic!

Wine Home Brew Step by Step with Pics - Pinot Noir Phase 2

We have waiting for the fermentation to stop and are ready to proceed forward with our Pinot Noir!

We got a chance to taste our wine at this point and I have to say it is definately sweeter than we expected...the wine isnt done so the flavor will still change, but not too much. The chart told us that 8 cups of sugar would give us a semi-dry wine...I personally wouldnt classify this in the "semi-dry" category. It taste a lot sweeter than we expected. We are still happy with it because it is nice to have some sweet wine around but if you dont like sweet wine, be sure to go with less than 8 cups of sugar!

We already completed Steps 1-10 and are ready to start steps 11-12.
(alot of my pictures for this phase didnt turn out very good so we have limited pictures for the steps)
Step 11: After Fermentation is complete (approx 2 months). Dissolve acid package in 1/2 cup warm water and add to clean pail.

Step 12: Siphon wine out of carboy into pail containing acid solution. Take care not to transfer sediment off the bottom of carboy. (Our first batch of wine we did we did not follow this caution too well....it is really sad to work hard for several months on a batch of wine and then have a small layer of sediment at the bottom of every bottle :( SO we racked ours with a funnel and cloth that served as a filter just in case we picked up some sediment)


Step 13: Add potatssium sorbate to 1/2 cup warm water. Add to pail of wine.

Step 14: Clean out Carboy, siphon wine from pail into clean carboy making sure not to aerate. Wine should take about 3 more weeks to clear on its own. If you want your wine sooner than natural clearing process use SuperKleer fining agent at this time. (We did not use super kleer on our last batch of wine and thought it would be fun to give it a try just to see what all the hype is about...it was actually really impressive!)
For 25-30% greater flavor and some sweetness, add one pint extra concentrate at this time. Dissolve into wine. If wine is to dry oyu could use sugar to sweeten at this time. (We did purchase the extra pint of concentrate but we actually considered not adding it because our wine was pretty sweet...but we figured we already had the concentrate so we might as well add it instead of waste it!)

Step 15: When wine is totally clean (2-3 days with Super Kleer or 2-3 weeks without), siphon off any remaining sediment into clean pail.

Step 16: Degas wine by stirring vigorously.

Step 17: Prepare bottles by cleaning with One Step. Soak corks in sulphited solution, 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of water for 2 hours.

Step 18: Fill bottles using bottle filler.

Step 19: Cork them using cork driver. (We also apply colored wine bottle sealers so we can tell our various wines apart. We wanted to make labels, but after cleaning the labels off of so many different bottles we opted out of dealing with labels!!)

Step 20: Allow bottles to age 2 months if possible before consuming.

From this set we got 23 bottles of wine. We tasted it and it is pretty sweet...alot sweeter than what we thought. However, it still tastes fantastic! We used 8 lbs of sugar to get a semi-dry wine but as sweet as it is we decided to go with 6 lbs of sugar from now on to get a dryer wine. It really was a lot of fun being able to customize this wine!! Im excitted to wait a couple months and try it again...it gets better and better with age.
Since we had all the wine equipment out and sterilized we decided to start right in on the second set of wine we got from Home Winery Supply. The second set we got was the Sangiovese....more details to come :) Sangiovese is one of my favorite wines so I am really excited about this one!!