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.

The best Brussels sprouts ever

I have a confession to make. I love Brussels sprouts.

I know, it sounds crazy. Like most people, I have spent my life repulsed by their reputation, smell, and limp, gray texture. In fact, until a couple of months ago, I had only eaten them twice, and neither time motivated me to want more. But the Hubby's new diet has driven me to search the ends of the earth for vegetable, meat combinations devoid of starches, and it led me to give those tiny little cabbage like morsels another try.

Here's what you do to make the world's best Brussels sprouts.

Pick out some fresh sprouts from your farmers market or grocery store. They should be dense with intact leaves and they should not be brown or limp. Wash them thoroughly.

Trim the stem and slice each sprout in half longitudinally.

Blanche them in boiling water for about 5 minutes. Whatever you do, don't overcook them in this step!! The second they start smelling like Brussels sprouts, pull them out of the boiling water and drain them.

Meanwhile, cut a couple strips of raw bacon into chunks and slice a medium shallot. Plop a pat of butter (a tablespoon or two, don't be shy) into a large skillet over medium-high heat. As the butter melts, drop your shallots and bacon into the pan. Saute briefly before adding Brussels sprouts. Add the sprouts and stir to coat with butter.

Now, here's the key. Flip the little Brussels sprout halves so the flat (cut) side is down. Leave them there until they start to caramelize on the bottom, about 3 or more minutes. Mix again, relocate any stragglers, and let them sit until they also caramelize. Keep going until your whole pan has the nutty, earthy fragrance of caramelized Brussels sprouts and the bacon is slightly crisp.

This recipe is just as good with steak for dinner as it is reheated with eggs for breakfast. Quick and delicious, I make them at least once a week now and everyone who has shared them with us...even devout sprout haters...swear they will add Brussels sprouts back to their menus.

Here's the ingredient list in case you weren't paying attention:

• About 1 pound fresh Brussels sprouts
• 1-2 Tbsp butter
• 2 strips bacon
• 1 medium shallot

Enjoy!!

No Dairy Necessary Hot Cocoa

 A mom's group I attend issued us moms a Christmastime challenge: celebrate each of the 12 (or 10 or 5) days leading up to Christmas by doing something special and unique with the family. I like the idea of creating special seasonal memories for my kiddos so I decided I'd give it a whirl. They gave us a list of more than 40 ideas, some simple and some more elaborate and set us off to work.

The kids loved the idea of a special holiday celebration each day leading up to Christmas, so we put stars next to the ones we liked and have checked them off as we do them. Our top choices included:

• Set up a nativity set and talk about baby Jesus
• Make & decorate Christmas cookies
• Make red & green play dough
• Have hot chocolate and toast before bed
• Perform one random act of kindness
• Listen to Christmas music
• Dance to Christmas music
• Watch a Christmas movie
• Read a Christmas book
• Drive around at night to see Christmas lights in the neighborhood

We haven't been all that structured about doing one every day, but we have managed check a few off the list in the past several days. Today, we arrived at "Have hot chocolate..." and I had to pause. Making hot cocoa may not sound all that monumental, especially in comparison to whipping up a batch of colored play dough, but Little Sister has a major problem with dairy, so hot cocoa is not something we've ever enjoyed at our house before.

Little Sister's dairy issue is not what would be commonly referred to as "lactose intolerance". It's more like a pre-anaphalactic reaction to the protein structure resulting from the high-heat pasteurization process in most commercially sold milk products...see what I'm saying...nothing to be trifled with. When she was an infant, her entire face would inflate, her eyes swelling to the point that she couldn't see...and that was second hand dairy, if you catch my meaning (yes, I'm talking about breast feeding). The dairy effect is cumulative, in that if she has a tiny amount by accident, she's usually ok. Two tiny amounts, and she starts to get red around the eyes and mouth, three, and well, it's off to the ER. Strangely, she has no reaction to raw, unpasteurized dairy, but we lack the financial resources to spend $13 on a gallon of milk, not including cow shares and dues, so, we just avoid milk all together for Little Sister, and do rice milk or coconut milk instead wherever possible.

In addition to the dairy problem, I'm not all that nuts about hot cocoa, but my darling Boy reminded me that this time of year is not all about me. He was strongly in favor of the "Have hot chocolate and toast" suggestion, so I finally agreed to look in to it.

I started my search in the grocery store where I read the ingredients on several boxes of commercially sold hot chocolate mix. Yuck. In addition to containing milk or milk products, most of them are also loaded with a long list of ingredients that we generally try to stay away from. So I hit the internet. After finding many recipes that made batches for a dozen or more people (do people have hot cocoa parties, or own chalets in the Alps where cocoa is required by law, or what?), I finally came across a recipe for creamy vegan hot cocoa, which appealed both because it used ingredients I readily had on hand, and it made just one cup. By making it in one-cup batches, I could make Little Sister her dairy-free version, and the rest of us could enjoy our creamy dairy filled recipe. I altered it as follows:

No Dairy Necessary Hot Cocoa

3 Tbsp sugar
3 Tbsp rice milk, coconut milk, almond milk, or cow's milk (Why shouldn't I use soy milk?)
4 1/2 tsp unsweetened cocoa
Splash of vanilla extract (I used about 1/4 tsp)
Tiny pinch of salt
1 cup boiling water

Combine sugar, milk, cocoa, vanilla, and salt in a large mug. Pour in boiling water into mug and stir until dry ingredients dissolve. Top with mini marshmallows, and/or whipped cream (for dairy friendly consumers). Ok, I know marshmallows aren't exactly health food, but really, sometimes sacrifices must be made in favor of fun.

To me, hot chocolate is painfully sweet and this recipe is no exception, however, the flavor of this cocoa was wonderful and it was indeed creamy, as advertised. The kids got their fix of chocolate and sugar, and felt like mini-grown ups with their coffee mugs and toast. Overall, the chocolate coated smiles made it worth every minute of the resulting sugar high.

Many facets of being a Well-Armed Housewife

This post is simply to illustrate that there is more to being a Well-Armed Housewife than just packing a sidearm. Being truly "well-armed" means knowing how to respond in a crisis, whatever form that crisis may come in.

Case in point: Little Sister's 4th birthday. This year I decided to make her birthday cake and cupcakes from scratch. Usually, I scurry down to the local grocery store, flip through the book of theme cakes, wait for the kid to arrive on a selection and place my order. But this year, in a tiny effort to free ourselves from grocery store dependence, and with the belief that I may possibly be able to produce something more food worthy than high fructose corn syrup laden confections, I elected to take on the challenge.

Years ago, I made carrot cake cupcakes from scratch, without correctly adapting the recipe for high-altitude baking. The resulting hole in the center of each cupcake required me to apply the frosting like Spackle to conceal the crater. Determined not to make the same error, I spent several weeks researching recipes and the related adaptations for high-altitude preparation. It's important to note that Joy of Cooking alone has 4 pages of warnings and recommendations related to baking cakes and cupcakes. I swallowed hard and persevered.

Once I decided on two cupcake recipes, one for chocolate and one for vanilla, I started researching how to decorate them. Little Sister wanted roses, you see. I searched out recipes for homemade butter cream frosting and I checked out books at the library and craft stores, purchased the decorating tips, parchment icing bags, and the other doodads for the job.  For a week, I attempted the technique using cheap store-bought frosting and failed desperately. Roses are something that people must spend years perfecting because mine just looked like piles of goo. Back to the drawing board.

Next stop, YouTube (which, incidentally, is going to make how-to books entirely obsolete, as you can learn so much more about anything by watching someone do it, rather than by following some cheesy hand-drawn illustrations in a how-to book) I came across a hilarious series of videos on decorating that re-inspired me. With new resolve, I set out to ice the cupcakes with zinnias. Practicing on the back of a bowl with dollar store frosting for a full week, I triumphantly mastered the zinnia. Hooray.

Now we arrive on the actual birthday, and the day before the big party. I wake up early to start baking.  I baked 48 chocolate and vanilla cupcakes (for the party) and had just enough chocolate batter left over to make a special, coordinating 8" round cake to put the candles on for little sister to blow out at the party. Everything went as planned. Cupcakes were baked, cake was cooling on the counter.

Enter Fern, the chocolate Labrador  

I only share all of the aforementioned background on the intensive planning and execution of the cupcake process so you can fully appreciate what happens next. Here's how it goes down.

I hear crying in the kids' rooms and scurry out of the kitchen to assess the situation. I'm in Boy's room for maybe 90 seconds, and when I return to the kitchen, I see the cake on the counter with a huge bite missing, and Fern below it, swiftly attempting to wolf down the evidence. Little Sister comes around the corner behind me, and, seeing the half-eaten cake and the dog eating it, bursts into tears and runs to her room shrieking, "my birthday is ruined".

Admittedly, at this point, if I had been armed, I might have simply shot the dog. In fact, I had quite a lovely 2-second fantasy about doing just that, but then, I couldn't help imagining the looks on my children's faces as they witness me executing the family pet. I also couldn't figure out how I would explain the blood stain and bullet hole in the floor to perspective home buyers...so I regained composure (sort of) and dragged the dog outside by her skin (or it may have been some other body part, I was really too angry to care) and came back in to assess the damage and console the birthday girl.

Here's where the well-armed bit comes in. As I survey the damage to the cake, I recognize that while I couldn't, in good conscience, serve a salvaged dog-eaten cake to my guests, I could surely cut off the contaminated portion, and we could eat what was rest as a family. When I sliced off the chunk, I noticed the cake's new shape lent itself to that of a slice of watermelon. Lightbulbs went on.

I ran into sobbing Little Sister's room and suggested that not only could I save her birthday cake, but SHE and her brother could help me decorate it. She brightened and I set about icing the odd-shaped cake. I then turned the decorating over to Boy and Little Sister, as they dumped half a jar of red and green sprinkles over it. We strategically placed a few chocolate chips to emulate watermelon seeds, and by golly, the watermelon birthday cake was a resurrected success.

When we all sat down to birthday cake that night, each one of us agreed it was perfectly decorated and delicious, and all in all, no worse for the wear.  So the moral of this story is: when the dog eats the birthday cake, it takes a well-armed housewife to make watermelon. Adapt and overcome, my friends.

PS. The cupcakes and party were a total success too.

Turtle nuggets

Until recently, when someone told me we'd be eating turtle, I instantly imagined a lovely dessert with chocolate, caramel and pecans. Then the Hubby found a snapping turtle on the road and decided he wanted to eat it. "T.E.O.T.W.A.W.K.I. Turtle" is what he calls it. (For those of you not up on "prepper" jargon, that long acronym stands for The End Of The World As We Know It.) Ok, ok, redneck jokes aside, I rolled my eyes and tried to get in to the idea of consuming reptile.

My only reptilian culinary experience was with alligator fritters, which I found tender and delicious. They were lightly battered, had consistency like fish, but were decidedly more chicken-like in flavor. I was cautiously optimistic that snapping turtle might lend itself to the same mild flavor.

As we got closer to the day when we would actually prepare the turtle, while the kids were huddled around the stock tank admiring it resting benignly beneath the water, I began to lose my nerve about dispatching the thing. It seemed harmless enough, after all. But then the Hubby enlightened me to the well publicized fact that snapping turtles are responsible for maiming cattle every year, as they bite off the teats of wading cows. Well, that did it. With new resolve, I gave the nod and the Hubby began his quest to find a decent way to prepare our new game meat.

Hubby scoured the internet for info on killing, cleaning, and cooking snapping turtle. Thankfully, the southern part of the U.S. is loaded with the things (imagine herds of udderless cows with hungry, frustrated calves) and there are no shortage of hillbillies with video cameras ready to impart their wisdom on YouTube.

First you need a good "whomping stick". You don't actually kill the turtle with the stick, you just "whomp" it in the nose like you're driving a golf ball down the fairway, and then run up to its head while the turtle is seeing stars and decapitate it before it wakes up and takes off your hand.

Once head and turtle are separated, you need a cutting board with a nail protruding from it, sharp side up. That's for sticking the turtle parts on so they don't crawl away while you're slicing the meat off of them. Oh, yeah. Reptile muscles require no connection with a nervous system to continue to operate. That's why snake heads can still bite you after they've been removed from the body. I didn't quite anticipate the impact this uniquely reptilian adaptation would have on me. I usually have a pretty strong stomach for butchering and processing game, but something about limbs recoiling as they're being severed turned even my stomach. I couldn't watch, so there are not many pictures of the processing part.

Big biting muscles mean there is lots of good meat on the head.

Once the meat was in the bowl, it could have been mistaken for pork, if it weren't for the fact that the pieces were still twitching. All the pieces went into a soup pot filled with water and were boiled for about 2 hours.

We drained the meat, and Hubby created a batter. As usual, he used every spice in the cabinet so I have no idea how to tell you to reproduce it. Sorry. I did observe him dipping the pieces in egg batter, then rolling them in his seasoned flour, breadcrumb mixture.

Then, we pan fried the nuggets.

Amazingly, the nuggets were delicious. They were decidedly more dense than alligator, with more of a pork-like consistency, and no fishiness. The kids loved it so much they wanted more turtle nuggets for dessert, begging in sing song "we want turtle, we want turtle". And to think we have friends whose kids will only eat peanut butter and jelly.

While I'm fairly certain a chain of Turtle-Fil-A restaurants will not spring up across the U.S., I can confidently state that snapping turtle is indelibly inked onto a growing list of T.E.O.T.W.A.W.K.I. menu items. Who knows, I may even eat it again in a non-starvation survival scenario.

Snake day

Yesterday's weather was warm and overcast. Perfect snake weather, as it turns out. While next to the cow pasture, we spotted a small, quick olive green snake, that I think was either a Yellow Bellied Racer or a Smooth Green Snake. Then, over at the horse barn, no fewer than 3 bull snakes were spotted, two of which had to be removed from the barn so they wouldn't be a nuisance to the barn's inhabitants.

When we got home from visiting our cows, Boy hopped out of our car and immediately shrieked in fear as he nearly stepped on a snake sunning itself on the driveway. Excited, but admittedly very scared, he described the snake as "small and black with a yellow stripe." A garter snake, I deduced.

I used to see little garter snakes all the time when I was growing up, and found them beautiful and non-threatening. Relieved the snake now reportedly hiding in my patio garden wasn't something big and bitey, I suggested Boy guard the spot where it entered the garden until his daddy came home. He thought that was a good idea and set about watching the flower bed intently for the next several minutes.

A few minutes later, I heard the Hubby pull up in his diesel truck. He was as excited about the snake sighting as the Boy was, and grabbed a stick to gently move apart the leaves of the perennials to search for the hiding serpent. A few more moments passed, and I poked my head out the front door to check progress of the two serpent hunters, and came face to face with the largest garter snake I had ever seen, mouth agape and body coiled around my husbands arm.

I don't love snakes. I appreciate their role in the ecosystem, but they do make me a bit uncomfortable. My brother LOVES snakes, and every other creepy crawly reptile and amphibian. As a kid, he caught and kept all varieties of snake, frog and lizard in numerous terrariums in his room. As an adult, he actively searches out encounters with reptiles, hoping to capture and photograph them. Even with the amateur herpetologist in my family, I felt a mild sensation of nausea sweep over me, as I considered that the beast my husband was now wrangling was easily within striking range of my children without me even knowing it.

I asked my wide-eyed boy if that was the "little" snake he saw, and he shook his head, so I couldn't help wondering what happened to that little garter he claimed to have seen...was it still in there? Or was it consumed by this hissing behemoth that my husband was now handling? I may never know.

We gave each child a chance to pet the huge garter, and then we released it back into the garden to keep up its duty of eating the critters that eat our plants.

Though I may not love the idea of snakes all around me, they are a simple fact of life in the country. They bring far more benefits than detriments to our farm, as they control pests of all types. And in the 10 years we've lived here, I've seen fewer than a dozen snakes. So all in all, they make better neighbors than many of the human nuisances we have about.

I do have to admit, this particular snake sighting does make me a little more wary about poking an un-gloved hand into any dense undergrowth here on the property.

Dove hunting and its delicious result

September first is a bona fide holiday in our family. For generations, my hubby's family members have taken the day off of work and freed their kids from school to celebrate the opening day of mourning dove season.

When I first met the hubby (then boyfriend) I began joining him on this sacred holiday, and I have since learned to love dove openers. Unlike the wintertime water foul seasons, it's typically warm enough on September 1st to wear shorts. You pack a lunch, some water, and many, many boxes of shotgun shells and, if you're lucky, you come home with fewer than a dozen doves. If you're me, you come home with one bird...ok, so shotgunning fast-moving airborne game birds is not my strong suit. But my lack of success dove hunting doesn't keep me from going.

This year, we packed both of the kids, who were eager to participate in this family tradition. Though Little Sister is still too young and excitable to handle even a toy gun, Boy has demonstrated extremely disciplined gun handling skills with his toy guns and, as a result, was given his first shotgun for his 5th birthday.

This isn't any shotgun either. This JC Higgins 410 single-shot was his daddy's first shotgun, and his granddaddy's first shotgun as well. While Boy is still a bit too small to handle it by himself, he did get a chance to fire a round in the direction of a dove...with no success, but at least he was in good company. It was a fun morning, and the kids both came home dirty and tired, and we had a collective count of about 10 birds to show for our efforts.

The Hubby went out for the afternoon shoot, sans wife and kids, and came home with about 20 more. Out here, while there is a 15 bird limit on our native mourning dove, the larger, non-native Eurasian collared dove has begun to dominate the habitat and resources of the mourning dove, and is therefore considered a nuisance species. There is no limit on collared dove.

So what do you do with 30 or so dove?  I typically make a fun little appetizer called Dove Poppers which is a half dove breast marinated in Chipotle Tobasco sauce atop a cream cheese stuffed half jalapeno, wrapped with bacon and then baked, but this year, due to the volume of little dove breasts in the fridge, the Hubby suggested a dove jambalaya...ooooh, I love it when he talks food.

So we began looking into recipes and managed to adapt a few to meet our needs. I was extremely disappointed with the store-bought Cajun seasoning options, so the Hubby found a great recipe for it as well and I included it here too, but feel free to use a store-bought one you like if you'd rather. The jambalaya was a huge success, and we both agreed it was our new favorite recipe for dove! It made a huge pot, and was perfect for a group, and the dove meat was fork tender, moist and delicious. Even people who turn their noses up at game meat would be hard pressed to find flaw with this recipe, so without further ado, here it is.

Dove Jambalaya

• 
  6 slices thick cut bacon, cut into1-inch pieces
• 1 pound cooked ham, diced
• 2 pounds boneless dove breasts
• 1 package cooked andouille sausage
• 3 T butter
• 2 cups chopped celery
• 2 cups bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 (14.5 ounce) cans diced tomatoes, with liquid
• 4 cups beef broth
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 6 T. Cajun seasoning (recipe below) divided
• 3 cups uncooked white rice

1. Sprinkle 3-4 T of Cajun seasoning over dove breasts and toss to coat.
2. In a large stockpot, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside.
3. Add dove breasts to pot and brown in batches in bacon grease. Return browned meat and bacon to pan and add diced ham and sliced sausage. Set aside.
4. In a separate pan, heat butter over medium heat. Add celery, pepper, onion and garlic and saute until soft.
5. Add veggies to meat in stock pot, along with tomatoes, broth and 2 T. Cajun seasoning. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer approximately 2 hours.
6. Stir in rice and cover, setting timer for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally to keep rice from sticking to bottom of pot.
7. Remove pot from heat and let set 10 minutes before serving.

Cajun Seasoning

• 5 T. paprika
• 2 T. fresh ground black pepper
• 1 T. onion powder
• 1 T. garlic powder
• 1 T. dried oregano
• 1 T. dried basil
• 1 T dried thyme
• 1 T. salt
• 1 tsp. white pepper
• 1 tsp. cayenne pepper (or to taste)
• 1 tsp. ground coriander

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!

Hard to believe that three years ago...

Yesterday, we celebrated the birth of my baby girl, and I couldn't help reflecting on that day, three years ago.

Her due date was June 1st, but I thought she'd make her appearance on May 22nd. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks, but on May 22nd, a category 4 tornado blew through our town, destroying half the town in its wake. As happens when a low pressure system like a tornado hits, my body responded by going into labor. For weeks I had been praying for an early birth, but now, as I reviewed the damage to property and the loss of power, I realized how inconvenient it would be to bring my baby into the world with no power and no hot water. I crossed my legs and stayed busy. The labor stopped.

Then, June 1st came and went. Now, I was grumpy. I walked for hours to motivate my baby into action, and it would work for a bit...contractions would start, but when I stopped, the contractions stopped too. My midwife was sharing all the wonderful tips she could to naturally induce labor, but that little girl was just not going to budge. Another week went by.

We went to church on the evening of Saturday, June 7th, and at communion, as I walked past the pastor, he apparently spotted my overgrown condition and pulled me aside to pray over me. Eight hours later, I was in labor. By the time I woke up and realized I was in labor, the contractions were already 2 minutes apart. The Hubby, convinced we were in no big hurry, refused to call the midwife right away, despite confirming the contraction timing twice. Finally I convinced him to call my sister-in-law to come babysit, so that we could start the migration to my mother-in-law's house where we planned to deliver our baby.

An hour later, my sis-in-law appeared, but I was useless to give her instructions through the frequent contractions. After I deliriously delegated the instruction giving to my Hubby, we motored slowly down the gravel path to my mother-in-law's house and settled into her bedroom to go through the labor.

My midwife arrived about 45 minutes later and confirmed labor was right on track. Good to hear after my frustrating hospital delivery with Boy. The Hubby was a brilliant coach, although the cologne left on his shirt from the night before made me uncomfortably nauseous as I labored on. After a little more than an hour of peaceful uncomplicated labor, it was time to push. True to form, my little girl was late to the party, but once she decided to make her entrance, there was no stopping her. She arrived with her right arm up, as though she was a superhero flying through the air.

We estimated she was somewhere around 8.5 pounds when she made her appearance, because we didn't weigh her until she'd pooped twice, and even then she was 8 pounds 2 ounces. She slept immediately, and I gorged on breakfast, high from the most wonderful, blessed home birthing experience ever. The peace wasn't to last as she awoke at about 8:00 that night, just as I was settling in for some rest, and bawled for 12 straight hours, clearly irritated that colostrum was all that was on the menu.

For the next 12 months, Little Sister gained weight. She developed the nickname "Squishy" during this time. And what a sense of humor she had. Even before she could crawl, she would giggle and squeal incessantly to a good game of peekaboo. After she could crawl it was tag on all fours. With all that activity, she didn't gain a pound for another 9 months, but continued to shoot straight up in height.

She's crazy about her big brother, and Boy, in turn, is a fully appointed protector of his baby sister. No one can make her cry (except him). Recently, Little Sister came running in and kicked me in the shin with one of her little bare feet. In shock, I began to protest but before I could catch her, she ran top speed into her brothers room, where he was sitting in time out. I heard her tell him, "I got her for you...I kicked her in the leg...she was really mad." And then they both laughed, delighting in the fact that they'd teamed up against mom and won. I was chuckling too much to follow the assault up with any further discipline.

Since her birth three years ago, my perfect little girl has been a delight and a blessing. Never have I known a more joyful, intense, complicated, independent creature than my little girl. Simultaneously all girl, and all boy, she dons her prettiest princess dress to go hunt worms in the garden. She giggles and teases, shrieks and whispers. It's impossible not to love Little Sister. Happy Birthday, my little lady bug wrangler.

Something's wrong with the emergency back up dog

After Baxter's passing, I became acutely aware of a growing problem in my house: an inordinate amount of food had begun accumulating beneath my daughter's booster chair. I never realized that Baxter had been managing the mess for all of these years, but the lack of a canine vacuum cleaner made clear the vacancy he had left.

Enter Fern.

Fern is our 10 year old chocolate Labrador who lived indoors along side Baxter until 5 years ago when her incessant counter surfing got her banished to the outside kennel. It's not that we don't have patience for some food-driven behavior, its just that I had a colicky newborn baby, was suffering from postpardum depression and was struggling with breast feeding at the time that Fern was at her worst. Needless to say, my patience for having to re-sterilize things the dog had drug off the counter was at an all time low.

In her incarceration, Fern had become fat, smelly, and her nervous twitch of compulsively licking people grew to an irritating new level. But now, with my kids both past the point of requiring their food implements sterilized, and the recent loss of our indoor canine companion, it seemed an appropriate time to let Fern back into the house.

I spent a whole day brushing the 14 pounds of extra winter coat and dandruff off of her, and followed it up with a bath. Next, I went to the feed store and bought her some "light" dog food to help take off some of the weight she'd gained in her kennel years. Finally, I sewed her a brand new, fluffy, fleecy dog bed and placed it at the foot of our bed.

The first night was lovely. I think the dog believed her presence in the house was due to some oversight on our part, which, once discovered would result in her being thrown back in the kennel. She was very, very quiet, minded every command, and went to great lengths to blend in and be inconspicuous. When I introduced her to her new dog bed at bedtime, she hastily flopped down and didn't move a muscle until the Hubby's alarm rang the next morning.

The next morning the kids and I took her on a walk to the park. Her rotund, waddling, brown body was huffing and puffing after 5 minutes of aerobic exercise, but I felt satisfied that we were on track with our new house dog.

That evening before bed, I noticed Fern needing to make a few extra potty breaks. Then, starting at 2 AM and then each hour after throughout the night, Fern waddled over to my side of the bed, nosed my arm and whined for me to let her out. Finally, at 6 in the morning, I was exhausted. When she came in to ask to be let out, I rolled over and saw that the alarm would ring in 15 minutes, so I ignored her request..."she can wait 15 minutes," I thought to myself.

She couldn't.

6:15 AM, the hubby shuffled into the kitchen where a very antsy Fern was waiting, tail between her legs and ears back. There on the mudroom floor was an epic puddle of diarrhea. Further investigation throughout the house revealed several more pools, along with some vomit. Oh, the aroma of early morning sick...not much to compare it with...

Hearing the cussing, I got up, cleaned the spots throughout the house, and rallied the troops for another day at the park. Fern joined us and everything seemed fine...until that night. The same routine: 5 trips outside and her discomfort was clear. The next morning, we loaded her in the car and did some garage sale shopping. About 1 hour in, the faucet in Fern's rear end let loose, all over my back seat. Back to the kennel she went...at least for the rest of the day.

The Hubby wanted to let Fern in at night, and I relented, but told him that he was on dog duty that night. As with the last several days, Fern whined, I woke up, only this time, I rolled over and woke the Hubby up to let her out. I'm not sure how that saved me any more sleep than just getting up and handling it myself, but at least I didn't need to stand at the door whisper-yelling at her to come in at ungodly hours of the night and morning.

So here we are, day 6, and the dog's bowels have still not acclimated to the indoor lifestyle. It's clear that the new food needs to go, but it's hard to believe that we're having to force feed the most food-obsessed dog in the universe rice to get her basic nutrition.

Maybe we should have just gotten a new puppy.

Saying goodbye to an old friend

Baxter was my first child. Damaged and dysfunctional, Baxter was an unforgettable part of our family for 17 years. This is his story:

After dropping out of college, I was hired on as head instructor for an equestrian center where, in lieu of much salary, I was given a house to live in with its own fenced-in deck. Lonely and determined to be independent, I marched down to the local Humane Society and found Baxter. Sitting alone in his cell behind a sign that read "Not for adoption by families with children under 16" and another with his euthanisia scheduled for the next day, I was immediately drawn to this damaged soul. We chatted briefly before I sidled up to the adoption counter to make the commitment that I had no way of knowing would last for the next 16 years.

One of the conditions of adopting Baxter was that I enroll him in dog training classes, and this turned out to be our salvation, especially in the later years when Baxter was too deaf to respond to verbal commands. He excelled at obedience and we marched up the levels until he tried to bite our instructor for attempting to demonstrate commands on him. Despite this setback, Baxter and I went on to do well in agility training also.

Bax & Hubby on the raft

To say that Baxter and I bonded deeply is, well, an understatement. In the early months, I took him to the park every day to play "fetch." When I would throw the ball, he would bound after it for about 20 feet and then skid to a stop and come scampering back to me, forsaking the ball altogether. When I left the house, he would eat furniture and bark non-stop until the neighbors sent death threats. When we were together, he was cocky and arrogant, vigilantly defending my safety at all costs. He would tell me when the phone rang and when someone was at the door. He could open gates and jump 5 foot fences. He could tell if you were a good guy or a bad guy from a mile away, and if you were the latter, that was as far as you would get. For 14 years, he growled every night when my hubby climbed into bed next to me.

When Baxter was 2 years old, he broke his leg. By this time, I had been fired from the equestrian center, in no small  part for the vicious barking dog I owned, so we lived here and there, and partly out of my car. Baxter's accident sealed the deal. I could not leave him unattended because he would attempt to chew his leg out of the cast, and it began to look gangrenous. So, on my measly horse trainer salary I would have to take Bax to the after-hours vet clinic to have his bandage changed every night after work. As a result, Baxter rarely left the car, except for potty breaks vet stops and bedtime. The car was his home. He went everywhere with me. This didn't change until we finally settled on our acreage in Colorado.

One day, after a party for the hubby (then boyfriend) one of his friend's friends (you never can trust one of those) stuck his head in my car window to pet Baxter in the backseat. When the guy pulled his head back out, he was missing half of his nose. The attack resulted in Baxter being quarantined for 7 days, but thankfully no lawsuit ensued because, well, I was poor and underinsured...You just can't get blood from a stone, as my dad used to say.

The next several years went by without much incident. Baxter was the ring bearer at our wedding. We moved to Colorado and he settled right in. We added new dogs, but they were always just dogs. Baxter was different. Too smart for his own good, too difficult for anyone else to manage; an odd combination of needy and independent, clingy and aloof, fierce and loving.

7 years ago, Baxter went deaf. With this handicap came a strange sort of peace for the old man. Baxter was less edgy and more relaxed. I think silence allowed him to truly rest for the first time in his life. When I got pregnant with my first child, Baxter moved in with the neighbors. He would leave our house in the morning and return home at bedtime, having spent the entire day at the neighbor's house. Eventually, after we had the baby, he moved back in with us, but our relationship was never quite the same. I think he believed that he had been replaced by children. Little did he know that while my children will always have the largest spot in my heart, Bax's place as my first baby was secure.

In his latter years, Baxter established a routine which he kept until the day he died. Twice daily, he would do his "rounds," trotting down the lane to the neighbors property, marking the fence line as he went. Then back up to the street behind us, around to the other 2 neighbors along the street and back to the front door where he would bark until we opened it for him. As a result of his daily exercise, his body was lean and fit, (albeit covered in tumors and lumps in the end) for 17 years...until last Sunday.

We returned home from a weekend away celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary and Baxter suddenly looked as though he'd lost half his body weight overnight. After I'd unpacked and had a chance to sit down, he came over, laid his head in my lap and groaned. The next morning, he had a seizure, and the day after that, he threw up every few hours, then laid in the middle of the carpet groaning. The message was clear. He was done.

Baxter 1994-2011

So last Tuesday, we said goodbye to crazy old Baxter. We laid his body to rest under the big cottonwood in the pasture, next to old Red Mule, my husband's hunting buddy. This fall, we will plant irises on his grave. He was an ornery old guy, but I do believe he had found peace for the last 5 years. Old Baxter will be missed by some, not soon forgotten by many.