Problems Preserving Peaches

 

Last week, I made my annual Palisade Peach Pilgrimage and this year, the family came too.

We had a blast tasting and picking peaches.

At the end of two days, we came home with several cases of ripe delicious peaches.

Once home, the race was on to get them all put up and preserved before they rotted in the boxes. If you don't know what that involves, check out this post: "Processing all those Peaches".

Maybe it was because I was rushing to get everything done. Maybe it was because my canning skills have suddenly failed me. Maybe it was because I didn't have a team of helpers canning with me this year. Or maybe it was just the curse of canning peaches, but literally, everything that COULD go wrong when canning peaches DID go wrong: jars failed to seal, jars broke in the canner, and several jars overflowed their juices all over the place leaving a huge void where there should be peaches.

After all of that trouble, I did a little research to address each possible peach preserving peril and pitfall, so you can be positively prepared if they ever happen to you.

PROBLEM #1: Jars fail to seal

Symptoms:
Button on jar lid doesn't "pop down" when it cools, and when you push on the top of the lid, it moves.

Possible causes:

• Bad or old lid
• Too little or too much head room in the jar
• Forgot to wipe rim
• Didn't process long enough 

What to do about it:

• If all of your lids seal but one, put the unsealed jar in the fridge. Sometimes, the rapid change in temperature will force the hot air out and create the vacuum necessary for the jar to seal. If it seals this way, leave the band off the jar for storing so that, if the seal fails, you know right away.
• If it doesn't seal, keep it refrigerated
• Never re-use canning lids, unless they are designed to be re-used (like Tattler lids)
• Follow recipe instructions precisely to avoid sealing problems in the future
• Make sure you take altitude into consideration and adjust canning times accordingly.

PROBLEM #2: Jar breaks inside the canner

Symptoms: 
This one's pretty easy to diagnose. You suddenly see the entire contents of a jar floating around in the canner, OUTSIDE the jar.

Possible causes:

• Old jar
• Cracked jar
• Jar created suction to bottom of the canner
• You drop jar in the canner (that's what I did)

What to do about it:

• Depends on what stage of the canning process you're in. For me, it happened with the first jar I put in the canner. So I turned off the heat on that canner and fired up another one to process all the other jars. Meanwhile, I fished out the broken bottom of the jar, dumped the now contaminated water, refilled it with clean water, and put it back on the stove.
• If it happens while you're processing all of your jars, just continue processing and deal with it later. After you've pulled out the remaining good jars, let them cool and then wipe them down with a soapy wet cloth. Clean out the canner and get back to it.
• It's a good idea to check your jars for imperfections before you start filling them with boiling hot contents. And make sure the jars haven't cooled before you add the boiling hot contents.
• Also, use a rack on the bottom of your water bath canner to prevent jars from forming a suction to the bottom.

PROBLEM #3: Liquid boils out leaving excessive headroom (AKA "siphoning")

Symptoms:
You pull the boiling hot jar out of the canner and liquid starts bubbling and spewing out of the jar through the lid, getting sticky stuff everywhere. When it cools, it looks like you forgot to fill half of the jar with peaches and syrup.
 
Possible causes:

• Too much fruit in the jar; jar is too full
• Didn't release all the air bubbles after adding syrup
• Didn't wipe the rim
• Too much or too little headroom
• Didn't let the jars "rest" after their time in the canner
• Temperature outside the canner is too cold
• Mysterious other reason

What to do about it:

• If you lose a significant amount of liquid to siphoning, but it still seals, it's fine. But, as a precaution, take the band off to store it so you know right away if the seal fails.
• If it doesn't seal, refrigerate the jar.
• Peaches are notoriously unforgiving. Follow instructions precisely. 
• Make sure your headroom is perfect. 
• Use a knife or spatula to release any air bubbles trapped between the fruit, and fill the jar back up to the proper head space. You may want to do this step two or three times, just to be sure.
• One website I read said you need to take the lid off the canner to vent it for 10 minutes before pulling the jars out. Also, I was canning outside at midnight, and the abrupt change to the cool nighttime outdoor temp could have made the siphoning worse.

At the end of the day, sometimes sh*t just happens, even when you do everything right. Accept that you get to eat a jar or two now, and move on with life. I recommend eating them over vanilla ice cream.

Canning applesauce

 I was at the local farmers market grocery store and ran across a great deal on apples. Every one of their varieties of apples were just 88 cents per pound. I ran over and asked the produce man to round me up a bushel. APPLESAUCE!!

Last year I canned a few pints of applesauce using our tart apples, and it was really good once I sweetened it sufficiently. This year, our trees failed to produce a single apple so we went without the usual canned apple treats, until I ran across this screaming deal. After reading up on the best apples for sauce, I ended up purchasing about 30 pounds of MacIntosh and 30 pounds of Golden Delicious apples...which I got for around $35.00. The Golden Delicious are sweet enough that you won't have to add sugar at the end, and the MacIntosh adds just a hint of tartness without puckering you up.

Applesauce is the easiest thing in the world to make...if you have the right tools. One of the tools no home should be without is the Victorio food strainer. My aunt bought me mine a few years ago when she found out I was canning (she has an apple orchard in California) and I have used it for so many canning projects since then that I'm not sure how I ever lived without it. With the special screens, you can make perfect, pain-free applesauce, tomato sauce, grape juice, pumpkin puree, and that's just what I've used it for. Countless other options are available.

So here's what I did.

Wash and sort the apples. Little Sister peeled the stickers off for me. We are learning patterns in math so I had her hand me apples in order...yellow, red, yellow, red. . Not exactly scientific, but this way, each pot I put on the stove had the same general apple distribution in it, and it was a great way to reinforce our homeschool lesson!

Cut the apples into quarters, removing the stems.

Put the apples into a large stock pot until full. Add water (or apple juice).

Boil apples for about 10 minutes, or until they are soft.

 Spoon them into the Victorio and turn the handle. Presto! Applesauce emerges. Little Sister also helped turn the crank on a few batches, but it's a lot of work for a 5-year-old so she pooped out pretty quickly.

Because I had so many apples, I just kept rotating stockpots full of apples onto the stove. As one was boiling, I ran the previous pot through the Victorio and filled it back up with cut apples, reusing the hot water from the previous batch so it wouldn't take as long to bring the new batch to a boil. I always say that for canning you can't have too many large plastic bowls or large heavy stock pots. I was glad I had several pots for this project, or this simple process could have taken all day!

Once the boiled apples have been turned into hot applesauce, pour the applesauce into a heavy stockpot and keep it warm. Meanwhile, prep and sterilize your jars, and fire up your waterbath canner.

Check consistency of your applesauce. You do NOT need to cook down your applesauce if you make it with the Victorio, as it will come out really thick already. You may, however, need to add some liquid to thin your sauce. I canned my first 6 quarts and they overflowed badly when I pulled them out of the canner, and had all kinds of air bubbles in the jars. Apparently, this is because the sauce is too thick once they lose all of their moisture in processing. So in the other batches, I added a little of the strained cooking water and a bit of all-natural, unsweetened apple juice. To test moisture, look for a thin line of liquid to appear around a spoonful of your sauce, and it should be a soft mound on the spoon. After I made this quick adjustment, my subsequent jars also had a little spillage, but not enough to worry about, and every jar had a nice tight seal.

Taste and season the sauce to your liking. My first batch was au naturel, with no added sweetener or spices. I use this to cook with, or for baby food, or for kids with tummy aches. To the next batch, I added 4 tablespoons of cinnamon,  plus a shake of nutmeg and a sprinkle of ground clove. That's it! No added sugar necessary! Delicious!!

Spoon the warm sauce into your hot, sterilized quart jars and process about 25 minutes (at sea level, 30 minutes at altitude). If you get any spillage like I did, make sure you remove the rings after the lid seals and clean the jars with soapy warm water. You don't want mold growing on the top! My ~60 pounds of apples yielded 18 quarts of applesauce, with enough left over to feed the family each a big bowl as an after dinner treat.

Little Sister announced that this was the best cooking project EVER, and the end result was definitely worth the effort. Eighteen jars of the best applesauce you have ever eaten worked out to be about $1.95 per jar. Happy canning!

Eden Garden Update-Year 2

Lettuce and spinach reseeded itself among the broccoli

 It's been two full seasons since we completely converted our garden plot in the fashion described by a movie called Back to Eden. (See blog post Experimenting with Eden.) We have learned a lot since we started (See blog posts First Eden Experiment Update and Eden Garden Update-Year 1 Lessons), and we can now count the project as mostly a success.

As soon as the snow melted this spring, we began seeing signs that the lettuce and spinach seeds that we sowed in Fall and believed to be long gone were not only still viable, but had indeed germinated! This was our first positive sign from our previously unimpressive mulch bed.

I got a slow start on planting the rest of the garden due to a death in the family and a catastrophic knee injury that resulted in a 3 month lay up and surgery. It was all I could do to crutch through Home Depot to pick out vegetable starts in late May, and if Home Depot didn't have it, well, it didn't get planted this year.

I coerced the Hubby into putting my store-bought starts in the ground, and I laid, with icepack on my elevated knee, staring out my bedroom window at the rising tide of bindweed spilling into the garden from the pasture. I emailed friends and acquaintances my desperate pleas for help pulling weeds in exchange for harvest rights, at least until I could sit in a chair and pull them myself.

Summer came, temperatures rose, and I finally ditched the crutches. Other than the spring greens, which had by this time bolted and gone to seed, the only thing that was doing really well was the bindweed. "Physical therapy" became a euphemism for weeding the garden, and was actually pretty effective from a mobility and muscle development standpoint, and my surgeon was rightly impressed with my muscle tone by my 3-month post-operative visit.

By July, I'd removed at least 1000 pounds of bindweed from in and around my vegetables. I was ready to burn the entire garden to the ground because my paltry vegetable plantings were failing to provide food in proportion to the amount of work I was putting into keeping them happy and weed-free. I decided I'd pull out the remaining bindweed and then rake the mulch down to the dirt to rip any tiny shoots that may be running undetected beneath the ground cover. Then we got a good rain.

About a week later, I went out to evaluate the effectiveness of my bindweed destruction plot and discovered something very interesting. Volunteers. Dozens of baby tomato plants were thriving in the part of the garden I'd abandoned because of last year's vole infestation. And the lettuces and spinach that I let go to seed after they bolted, had re-seeded themselves everywhere. I even found them in my pasture where I'd pitched the dead plants when I replanted the row. Of course, some mulch made its way to the other side of the fence as well, along with the dead piles of bindweed.

Tomato volunteers

I now believe that all of those viable seeds were trapped somewhere in the mulch beneath the bindweed, and that by vigorously raking the mulch, I reunited the seed with the soil, and aerated the entire environment at the same time. This caused a flurry of growth in a way I hadn't seen to date in the garden.

Lettuce in the pasture

I discovered that last year's less-than-impressive mulch bed is now practically a living, breathing organism all on its own. Colonies of pill bugs are evident, along with all of the beneficial companion bugs that help compost and break down soil. Worms are abundant and healthy and the soil just an inch down is moist and dark black with organic matter. What a marvel!

Pill bug colony (I think)

Later research revealed that my nemesis bindweed is actually renowned for restoring fertility to an area. The website Home Remedies For You claims:

"Bindweed finds other uses in restoring the fertility of agricultural land that has been subject to the extensive use of chemicals and pesticides. It is researched and believed to eradicate chromium, copper, and cadmium from the soil.Bindweed also exhibits properties similar to that of nitrogen fixing plants. The presence of calystegins in the roots of bindweed act as a source of carbon and nitrogen to the rhizobacteria that is responsible for nitrogen fixation. Thus, the fertility of the soil is enhanced for agricultural use."

So to recap, the Eden Experiment does not work as advertised. It is not a solution to the problem of weeding, at least not in parts of the country where bindweed grows. It is, however, an excellent way to return fertility to your soil, create an optimal environment for plants to grow, and minimize water usage throughout the season.

Eden Garden Update-Year 1 Lessons

In our first year of implementing the Eden Garden program, (See blog post Experimenting with Eden) we experienced some ups and downs.

Successes
Year one's garden produced a humongous harvest. My cucumber yield alone was nearly commercial in scale as I was harvesting 10 pounds of pickling cukes per day. I was able to give hundreds of pounds away in addition to canning 3 cases of dill relish, 6 cases of garlic dill pickles, 2 cases of spicy dill pickles and a case or two of my new invention, "burger stackers". I also had great watermelons, peppers, and tomatillos, and a satisfactory harvest of potatoes and slicing tomatoes. I made several cases of different salsas and tried a great peach, pepper jelly recipe that I'm determined to repeat.

Failures
The corn was a total bust as we got corn smut (didn't know it was a delicacy until after we threw away the infected ears), and we wound up trapping 5 pillaging raccoons, but by then, they had consumed every ear of good corn left. The zucchinis never survived the squash beetle infestation and the monstrous cherry tomato plants turned into habitat for voles, which threatened to take over the rest of the garden. It's hard to tell at this point in the experiment how much of our failure was due to the 80 degree temperatures starting in March and the historic drought conditions, and how much was related to growing pains in the new system. We do know that we definitely made a few mistakes that affected our success rate. This is what we learned.

Mistake #1: Installing the new mulching system in the spring.
While it kept the weeds at bay, the new mulch began composting at the soil surface and robbed the soil of the nitrogen it needed to feed our seeds, thus, most of the seeds we sowed directly did not germinate. In hindsight, we should have plowed our old garden under in the fall and installed the irrigation and mulch then. That way it would have had the entire winter to compost under the snow and perform its necessary nitrogen exchange, leaving the ground fertile by springtime.

Mistake #2: Mulching over the seed.
After sowing our seed, we covered the newly planted seed with the mulch, not even considering that the same mulch layer that inhibits growth of weeds would surely be a barrier to our new vegetable shoots as well. To combat this problem in later plantings, we left rows open until the shoots were above the mulch line, then pushed the mulch around the new greens.

Mistake #3: Over and under-watering.
With the mulch present, it's difficult to tell when the plants need water, because you can't just observe the dry soil. When we planted our starts, many of them shocked right away so we gave them plenty of water. They snapped out of it, but then looked droopy the next day so we watered again. We just kept watering any time one of the plants looked limp and droopy, and ultimately, many died. When we dug the poor plants up, we discovered they were sitting in a pool of water. We finally bought a moisture meter and used it each time we thought we should water. Mostly, we were completely wrong about when the garden needed irrigation and when it didn't. The majority of the plants snapped back when we used science, rather than passive observation to determine if the poor buggers needed water.

End of year one
At the end of the year, we put the garden to bed by pulling the large dead plants, and letting anything that fell off join the mulch to compost naturally over time. That means that frost damaged tomatillos, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, etc, were left on the surface of the soil to decompose throughout the winter, and the plants got pitched over the pasture fence.

Exhausted from an epic year of planting, harvesting, canning and freezing, we sowed just one row of lettuce and spinach in the fall, and built a row cover for the top, but one blasting windstorm ended our row cover, so we just left the poor seeds on their own until spring. Hopefully year two will reveal more success from the Eden Experiment.

Processing all those peaches

So the day after returning from my journey to the Western Slope for peaches, I had to start processing my fruit or risk losing it. I started by blanching peaches, a few at a time, then dropping them into my bowl of ice water.

Then I slipped the skins off into a separate bowl and sliced the peaches into wedges.

I first tried to simply half and pit them, but the flesh was so tender it practically disintegrated as I twisted the halves apart, so I resorted to slicing each peach into about 8-10 sections.

I dropped the sliced fruit into a bowl of 1 cup lemon juice to 2 cups water, and saved the peels to boil down for jelly later.

Then I sterilized jars and prepared the syrup. I prefer a really light syrup to a very heavy sugary one so I used a 1 to 3 ratio of sugar to water. As with pickling brine, I always prepare more than I think I will need so I don't have to stop midway through canning to boil more.

Once the jars were ready and syrup hot, I packed the jars with fresh peaches and ladled the syrup over, being extremely precise not to over-fill with either peaches or syrup. Half inch headroom MEANS half inch headroom with peaches because the syrup tends to boil over after the long processing time and if you fill it too full, it will boil out too much, leaving you with dry peaches at the top of your jar. I swept my plastic spatula around the inside to release any air bubbles, wiped the rims, and set the tops and plopped each jar into the waterbath canner to process for 35 minutes.

Because there are so many things to boil for canning peaches, I had to do my processing in phases. I would stop prepping peaches when my bowl got full of fruit and then I would take the blanching water off the stove to put the syrup back on to boil. All the fussing and relocating of pots and bowls made the entire event extremely time consuming for just one person to accomplish, but the assurance of peaches through winter will be well worth the energy.

I canned 3 boxes of peaches the first day, but had 2 boxes left to process so I had to keep going. I froze a bunch of fruit by blanching, peeling, pitting and slicing the peaches, as with the canning, but then placing the slices on a non-stick cookie sheet and popping them in the freezer overnight. (The non-stick pan is vital as the peaches really want to adhere until the pan warms up and it's a bit of a trick getting them off...I used a spatula and a little elbow grease to pry them off and didn't damage the fruit at all) Then, once frozen, you can bag them up or vacuum seal them for use in smoothies or pies.

Speaking of pies, I also made the most delicious peach crisp ever.
Here's the recipe:
Grease an 8 x 8 pan.
Peel and slice about 6 cups of peaches.
Add 1/2 tsp almond extract, 1/4 cup of sugar and 1-2 tbsp quick cooking tapioca (depending on how juicy your peaches are) to fruit and let sit while you prepare topping.

In the Cuisinart, combine until the consistency of cornmeal:
1 cup all-purpose flour, 3/4 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/2 cup butter.

Pour peaches into pan, pour topping over. Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes. As I said, this is the best peach crisp recipe I've ever made, but I doubled this recipe and wouldn't recommend doing that unless you are cooking for an army...it's so sweet and rich that you'll only be able to consume one serving per sitting. Better to make it twice than to make too much the first time.

Finally, with all the peach skins I had accumulated from days of blanching and peeling, I decided to make jelly. I poured the reserved juice from peeling, the lemony juice the peach slices soaked in before being packed in the jars, the peels and all the peach bits and bruised spots I'd pared out of the fruit I'd canned and frozen into a large stockpot and added about 2 quarts of water. I turned the burner on low and simmered it all for 2 to 3 hours until the skins were almost falling apart. Then I pressed everything through a seive. I considered using the jelly bag, but my counter was so messy from all the canning and processing, I just couldn't find the space to set the contraption up, so the sieve it was. I ended up with about 7 cups of very thick, nectar-like juice.

To turn it into jelly, I combined the juice with 2 packets of Sure-Jell fruit pectin, and brought it to a rolling boil on the stove. Once boiling, I added 5 cups of sugar all at once and stirred until the sugar was dissolved. I also added a dash of almond extract to enhance the flavor. Again, I brought it to a rolling boil, stirring constantly and set the timer for 5 minutes, then checked for set. It wasn't quite set so I boiled about 3 minutes more, and then ladled it into hot sterilized jars and processed in the waterbath for 15 minutes. The jelly turned out very sweet, so it was not my favorite, but my kids loved it. Fortunately, as you'll read soon enough, there's no shortage of jelly being made in my house.

Well, that just about covered my 5 boxes of peaches for this year. Just in time too, because the 2 boxes of pears I bought are now ready to process, and the 2 boxes of plums I harvested on Friday are beginning to smell overripe. Oh, and never mind the tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, raspberries, apples and grapes that are all waiting in earnest for their turn for harvest and preservation. More on all of them later!

Pickles coming out of my ears!

So I've been slacking a bit in the blogging department because, well, the garden has taken over my life. I love this crazy time of year when the weeding has all been done and the garden no longer takes, it gives. And this year, mine is giving back to me ten fold.

Picture taken 7.2.11

Every year, I long to make pickles. I plant a few pickling cucumber plants and harvest a paltry few cukes, and usually end up running down to the farmers market to supplement my yield enough to can 3 or 4 quarts of pickles. So this year, I vowed to plant more cucumbers than I thought I needed in the hopes that I would end up with just enough.

I also tried another trick and I stuck all 5 plants in the same bed with 2 rows of corn. I thought the cornstalks might give the vines something to trellis on, and the cukes might in turn shade the corn's roots.

Well, it worked.

Picture of same bed taken 7.29.11

Since the 4th of July, I've harvested about 30 pounds of pickling cucumbers from my bountiful vines, and I bet if I go out there now, I've got about 3 more pounds waiting for me, despite having harvested 7 pounds this morning. Let's just say that I finally have enough to experiment with all of the pickle recipes I've ever wanted to try.

My favorite pickle is a crisp, sour, garlicky, dill pickle. Next best are the snappy, spicy pickles, and then there are the sweet slices of pickles that perfectly complement a deli sandwich on rye bread. All have their place at the table, and I plan to make a batch each of them before my vines quit for the year.

Here's the recipe I used to make my first batch of crisp garlic dills:

Brine: 1 cup distilled vinegar, 1 cup water, 1 Tbsp pickling salt, brought to a boil. Maintaining the proportions, make as much brine as you need. I think it's better to dump some extra down the drain than to run out mid jar.

To each hot sterilized quart jar I added:

• 1 tsp dill seed
• 1 sprig fresh dill weed
• 2 cloves fresh garlic, coarsely chopped (don't worry if your garlic turns blue or green after canning...it's just the acid reacting with the oils)
• 1/2 tsp either mustard seed or whole pepper corns...we'll see which tastes best
• Pickling cukes (which I first soaked in ice water for 2-3 hours) 

This year, I also learned that adding a grape leaf to the bottom of your jar before packing it with cukes helps keep them crisp (something about the tannin in the leaf helping to preserve the cuke's texture), so I incorporated that tip into a few jars. To the others I added the commercial pickle crisper, which my hubby informed me is the same chemical the snow plow distributes on the road in winter to melt the ice...hmmm...I hope the grape leaf works best.

Then I processed them for 20 minutes in my waterbath canner. I think at sea level, you'd be fine to process them for 15 minutes, higher altitudes need longer in the canner.

One more quick note: A shrewd canning friend taught me to keep my waterbath canner boiling on my barbecue burner outside to help keep the kitchen cool for canning. Mine now gets set on the barbecue burner in late June and doesn't come in until all the produce has been put up at the end of September.

So now the pickle jars are supposed to sit for a few (6-8) weeks for best flavor, but my friend Cathy couldn't wait and already popped the seal on the first batch. She said they were delish! I'm gonna wait for mine.

Getting in touch with my roots

Harvesting root vegetables holds the same breathless anticipation for me as unwrapping presents on Christmas morning. When I approach the veggie bed filled with sleek beet greens or frilly carrot tops, I have no idea what bounty is concealed below the surface. It's with trembling fingers that I coax the earth away from the bases of the greens in the hopes of catching a glimpse of just enough exposed vegetable to determine its readiness for harvest. And then, as I take hold of the tops and pull, I can revel in the satisfying sound of a bright, bulbous vegetable releasing itself from the earth! Oh the satisfaction of this experience is one that remains virtually unmatched throughout the rest of the harvest.

I love beets. My hubby introduced me to them recently, as he was reminiscing about some of his favorite dishes his grandmother used to make. We often prepare them as a side dish by removing all but about 2 inches of the green tops and boiling them for 30 minutes. When they are soft, we drain the water and slip the skins off. Then a quick slice and we toss them back in the pan with the greens, some butter and garlic salt and saute. When the greens are wilted, the beets are done! Even the kids love them this way.

This year, I thought I'd try pickling them as well. I've never really eaten pickled beets, except one surprising time when I selected them at a salad bar thinking they were slices of gelled cranberry sauce. Imagine my shock at learning they were beets! So, with very little experience with what they should taste like, I pressed the hubby for details. Are they spicy? sweet? syrupy? vinegar-y? He was no help. So off I went to research it online and I found this good old fashioned recipe and pickled up 3 jars.

 They smelled divine when I added the brine, and the color is truly gorgeous. I'll let you know about their flavor in a few weeks when I crack the seal!