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Everyone’s working for the weekend…

It’s 10.30pm as I write this.  I’m weary from a 6 hour drive that normally takes about 2.5 hours.  It’s been a long day – but a great one.

I went north this weekend to our cabin.  It was time for the annual work weekend.  It’s a tradition that I’ve known my entire conscious life and one that marks the true start of fall for me.  I remember my father pulling me out of school for 1 or 2 day in September as the crew of men headed north to prepare for the fall hunt.  It was always a lot of fun and some fun work – a lot of playing with tools.

Our cabin has changed a fair bit over the years.  There are bunks for 14 of us and our membership sits at 13 people (plus a small waiting list).  The average age of our hunters is about 50 years old.  The 4 youngest members (which includes me at 36) hunt with our fathers.  My Dad has hunter out of this cabin for more than 40 years.

My Parents have spent a lot of time at the cabin in late fall – wood is piled high, bunks have been cleaned out, roads repaired and projects started and finished (including some camp-made beets and relish).  My Mother has also planted some garlic as an experiment for the winter.

This weekend was mostly the veterans of the cabin.  With a lot of the typical pre-work complete, we set off to replacing an old deck that was falling apart on the front of the cabin.  3 very long days later and the patio is done.  It is one-part decorative and another part functional – a day in the autumn bush can be a messy affair and having a place to wipe down before entering the cabin will save a lot of cleaning.  The guys worked like champions – and like they were 40 years younger than they are.  I am immensely proud.

I did get out for a quick tour of the bush, some early scouting a bit of bird hunting on Saturday afternoon.  Didn’t see sign or birds but it was great to be back in the woods.

There are two things that stood out to me this weekend and are part of the hunting experience that I want to share:

1.  The spirit of community and help

When I arrived on Friday night (most were up Thursday), we had a guest.  Irv (from the camp next door – 5 km away) stopped to pay a visit.  Irv is a dear friend and I always love to see him.  Irv stayed at the camp on Friday night and helped us for half of Saturday.  Paul (from a cabin about 15 kilometers away) popped bye after Irv left.  He picked up a hammer and helped until we were done and stayed through to Sunday morning.  Frank (one of our hunters) was at a wedding on Saturday night.  He got back to his Hotel at 4am and left for the cabin by 6am to come and help out.  Frank had also donated the wood he salvaged (legally) from a worksite – about 400 square feet of wood.  The spirit of helping your neighbors is unparalleled to what I’ve experienced in the woods.

2.  Bonding is more than burping.

There is an element of male bonding – it’s far beyond high fives and swearing.  I have known each of the members that were there for 30+ years.  I have learned a lot from these men and they have prepared me for a lot of life’s challenges.  This is the 4th time in 40 years that we’ve built a deck (the original deck was simply a set of wooden skids laid on the ground).  The guys took great pride in the work and were very open that this was the last time they would ever build the front deck.  They would either be “gone” or have to watch the young guys next time.  Mortality was a theme this weekend – they are preparing themselves – and me – for the autumn of their lives.

We will post more in the coming month as we prepare further for the hunt and share the entire picture of this part of our life that is a mystery to many.  Though this post does not directly mention food, it is part of the bigger picture that is hunting and our fall harvest.

There are weeks of work to prepare for just 5 days of Moose Hunting.  In that time we’ll learn a lot – and have a lot of fun.

That’s Hot

What if Peter Pecked Picked a Pickled Pepper?  Darned if I know…

What I do know is the $7 of jalapenos and $6 of Ontario banana peppers combined with Ontario organic vinegar, some water and a few spices make a pile of hot peppers.  There are 19 cups of banana peppers and 13 cups of Jalapenos.  The total cost of ingredients come in around $1.50 per cup for local, preservative-free pickled hot peppers.

We’ve experimented with cider vinegar in these peppers (typical treatment is white vinegar).  Hoping that there will be a touch of sweet under the heat of the peppers.

I wore gloves for the entire cutting process (I used a knife instead of a mandolin).  My heavy duty gloves saved my hands – in part.  2 hours of slicing peppers eventually creeped into my gloves and onto my hands.  I could still feel the tingle this morning and through noon – I can’t imagine the pain I’d be in if I had skipped the gloves altogether.

These two batches have me as excited as I’ve been in a long, long time for a batch of preserves.  I adore hot things and thinking that we can add these local peppers to lunches, salads and meals for a long time to come is a real thrill.  I was excited to find red banana peppers – they tend to be a rare find most times of year (I have a guess why this is the case but need to do some research before ranting a little :) )  The sight of red peppers instantly inspired me to jump to the call of duty and through this 2-time shot of heat together in a single night.

A batch of hot peppers gets me excited beyond belief – what are your favourite batches of preserves to create/ consume?

The batch that nearly pickled me (Pickled Garlic)

This is the closest I’ve come this year to quitting in the middle of making a batch of preserves:

The photo above is 6.5 pounds of Ontario garlic.  It is one of my favorite things in the world and it makes for so many wonderful things – especially pickled garlic.  Peeling 6.5 pounds requires absolute love of the process or a special kind of inner madness.  I believe I may possess both attributes.

To peel a mass quantity of garlic like this, start by blanching.  Blanch them for a minute – but be careful how you time the process.  Your clock should only start after the garlic has been added to a pot and the water returns to a hard boil.

Pickled garlic often changes colors – batches I have made in the past have turned vibrant green or blue.  The color change is harmless and there are many rumours on how one can avoid the changing color – from using young garlic, small garlic, jarring on a full moon (ok, I made that one up) and more.  Blanching garlic is also rumoured to stop the color change as well – and this batch didn’t go neon!  Thrilling as there’s a pile of it in jars.

For those new to pickled garlic, you can eat it in salads, by itself, with cold cuts, on sandwiches and more.  My favourite is on a cracker with old cheddar or pork hocks.  Patrick (who shared some great pickled garlic with us recently and inspired some of the spicing of this batch) and Sherwin will have jars put aside for them and we’ll see how this recipe worked out!

Smallest batch of preserves this year… Cocktail Onions

Pickled onions – I’ve been meaning to do a batch for two years.  I have this vision of having a sophisticated cocktail party and, whilst wearing a cardigan, I offer my guests some form of dirty martini with a homemade pickled onion on the side.  The more likely reality is that I will end up eating an entire jar of pickled onions by myself on the couch while watching a few games of football in the winter.

Peeling is made far easier by briefly blanching the onions in boiling water.  They need to stay submerged in hard boiling water for about a minute before they easily peel.

The jars were finished with cider vinegar, mustard seed, water, sugar, horseradish, hot peppers and bay leaves.  We’ll post the recipe if happy with the taste in a few months.

The photo above is the complete batch – 3 cups of final product.  We did these at the same time as another batch of pickles which made it easy to do at the same time.  It was a good use of extra brine and energy as we already had the water boiling and equipment going full tilt.  It is by far the smallest batch of preserves we’ve made this year.

I am heading to the north to start prepping the camp for the hunting season.  There are 7 or 8 guys meeting there and working for 3-5 days.  It’s also the start of partridge season which means there will be limited opportunities to harvest some wild game.  If successful we will be sensitive on how we post about the process of harvesting local, wild food such as birds.  The main focus this weekend is building, trail maintenance and initial tracking.  Moose hunting is next month for us.

There will be posts through the weekend – hope you come by and check them out.  In the meantime, does any one share my cocktail party preserving vision or have you ever made something for a special occasion that may never happen?  I’m hoping I’m not the only one – after all, I look horrible in a cardigan.

A new hunter joins the family

I introduced the topic of hunting to this forum in February (the article was called Confessions of a One-Time Vegetarian which attempts to give a balanced introduction on my own moral journey related to hunting).  The onset of fall means that we are in full-on preparation mode for the coming season.

Dana and I have added to our family this week – he is too young to hunt this year and will eventually join me in the bush.  Our main hope for Shaeffer is to be a good pal – I would far rather a great friend and poor hunter than the other way around.  He is a Vizsla (Hungarian bird-hunting dog).  He is named after the pond on our property near Huntsville (Shaeffers Pond).

We will update our journeys with Shaeffer as it relates to food.  For now he is stalking his toys and living a life between crazy energy and absolute sleep.

Oh Man Oh – Romano!

There were no plans to preserve yesterday – but sometimes I see something that melts a little piece of my heart and calls me to the jarring process (Im really not all that dramatic – but its the closest I can come to describing what happens).

I ran into a bin full of Ontario Romano Beans.  They looked super cool.  I bought a pile of them and took them home.

The cleaning process was relatively straightforward – split them with fingers and dump the contents in a strainer:

This is the first time I have ever bought fresh Romano beans and adored the colors.  I found it intriguing that the individual beans vary so largely from one to another.  Most reminded me of the speckled bowling balls I grew up with in the 1970s.

I was somewhat disappointed that they lost all of their color when cooked (although that was very logical based on the fact that none of the canned romano beans I’ve ever eaten looked like a bowling ball) but excited with the results:

The jars  (about a cup) cost about $1 each – jarring them with a pressure cooker (these would not be safe to do without one) costs a lot of energy compared to drying.  The local element certainly saves on transport compared to many commercial products.  The winter will be the ultimate judge!

Instructions

  1. Shell and clean beans.
  2. Pack beans (raw) in clean, sterile jars (I generally recommend pint jars), leaving 1 inch of headspace.
  3. Add 1 teaspoon of salt (optional)
  4. Place lid and pressure cook at 10 pounds of pressure for 40 minutes (start timing after the cooker reaches full pressure per instructions of your unit).
  5. Remove from heat and allow to cool slowly without removing the lid (this will help prevent siphoning) for at least 30 minutes.

Awesome local food packaging…

The domain of design on this blog belongs to Dana – a 15 year Graphic Designer with her own business makes her our resident expert.  I have learned a lot about design from Dana and many of our friends who make careers from design.  Discussions around our house frequently discuss the value of form over function (and the inverse), the role of design in food (and other things) and the general presence of visual stimuli all around us.

I was at the large grocery store on Sunday (there are far fewer markets opened on Sundays – though I am told a good one exists in Unionville).  We do buy from the large chains as well as the markets – where possible we try to be local.  We had company coming and I was in a pinch so off to the market.  Found some pork, carrots, parsnips and needed another veg.  I went to the squash section and noticed a lot of imported gourds when closer inspection revealed this beast (it is about 3 pounds):

I wasnt sure what to do with this monster Buttercup Squash.  I knew I could mash it or roast it and I could probably make something up.  I furled my brow, picked it up and examined it to find this:

The sticker removed all obstacles from buying local.  It made it easier to select than the imports and made it an easy decision.

A few pics of the insides (I know it is shocking that it simply looks like a squash):

Buttercup squash, local food packaging that makes sense

When I removed it from the oven I thought it looked overly dry.  I took comfort in the sticker that i had cooked it correctly.  I added some butter and brown sugar (was out of maple syrup and the irony of adding something from so far is not lost on me) and a touch of water and mashed it.  The dish was a hit.

There is a stereotype that eating local in Ontario (and most of Canada) will relegate us to a steady diet of squash and other root-like veggies.  We are going to do our best to examine other alternatives as well as exploring these items like we never have before.  I hope to try different squash and tuber dishes every week through the winter and hope to share them with you here.  I really have a hankering to try to make some sort of squash gnocchi type thing but have no idea (yet) where to start.  I do hope that youèll come along for the ride though!

How to stop pickles and fruit from floating when preserving

It has been an exceptional week of preserving – so many posts to get caught up on.  We have pickled onions, garlic and cucumbers.  We had made sauce, stewed tomatoes and pears with Kahlua.  Our newly minted preserving shelf is overfilling and it is definitely time to do some eating!

We recently had a question in our comments in regards to peaches and how to stop them from floating (you can see the thread and Anus question here).  We use the same trick for peaches as we do for pickles so I thought I might be able to share a bit about floating fruit and veggies in preserving.

Here is a few thoughts:

  1. Floating happens to the best of us.  As long as your seal is tight and your headspace the right amount, you should not have to worry about it other than a possible loss of color in the fruit at the top of the float.  Exposed parts can become tougher and less tasty.  Rotate jars from time to time and shake things up in the jar to rotate in the fruit (just not in the first 24 hours).
  2. Take care to pack them tightly and eliminate air bubbles before processing.  Large air pockets will work their way to the top of the jar during boiling – this can loosen your fruit.
  3. Susan (a friend from work) tells me her mother placed a piece of rye bread at the top of her pickles to keep them submerged.  I have never seen this and suspect it would not be seen as a safe practice today though it worked for her family for years.  I have never seen this done.

Now for the ultimate tip – something I call seatbelting:

We use bottle neck jars (i.e. not widemouth) for anything that can float.  We pack fruit or veggies tightly and start by placing them vertically until we get near the top.  As we near the top, we rotate the contents so they are perpendicular to their lower counterparts and ensure they are too wide to float.  We essentially use a layer of sideways produce as seatbelt to hold the lower layers in.  This has worked great with beans, pickles and pears this year.  For peaches I would place an entire half peach at the top of a jar (but lower than the bottleneck) to stop the rest from rising.

Look at the top of the jar of pickles below and note the horizontal pickle wedged in the neck of the jar to hold the others down – there are several sideways pickles in the entire jar:

Note this jar of beans – only one of the beans can be seen as a seatbelt from the front of the jar:

Note here that all of the beans not touching the bottom are seatbelting the others in:

Anyone have any other tricks out there?

Canning tomato sauce – time to jar, Tomato

We are coming to the end of our sauce adventure.  The jarring process is involved – we need clean bottles that have been heated and will need to work fast to fill them before placing them in a boiling water bath.  We process our 1 liter jars for about 35 minutes – the goal is to raise all of the contents of your jar up to 212 degrees (fairly easy for sauce itself, more time is needed if you are adding solids such as pieces of garlic).

We follow a tested recipe that we trust a great deal.  We add fresh herbs, garlic and a touch of salt to each hot jar before filling them with hot sauce.  Note that these are not required – I add them as it can be difficult to get local garlic and herbs in late winter and spring which is why we take this extra step.

Before putting the lids on, there are some things to consider carefully.  The jars need to stay hot before you place them in the boiling water.  Some people put the seals on right away – this can cause a premature seal as the jars cool.  This seal can become a larger problem as you process the jars in boiling water – the air may not escape.  We use older seals and place them upside down on the bottles to keep the heat in as we wait for room to process them (keep in mind that cleanliness is key):

Warm seals and lids are placed on the jars right before entering the water bath.  There is more info on the general preserving process in the preserving section that is linked at the top of this page.

Jars are covered in boiling water for 35 minutes.

We place the jars on the crushed boxes that came with the tomatoes – this saves our porch from water staining and protects the bottle from bottleshock (which shatters bottles as hot glass touches cold surfaces).

They cool overnight in the garage before we check the seals on the following day.

We have found that a typical bushel of tomatoes will yield 4-18 jars of sauce.  Using the tricks shared in our previous posts we had an unbelievable yield of 126 jars on 6 bushels this year – we have never come close to this amount in the past (21 jars per bushel).  The contents of each jar is about $1 and will deliver the most amazing tomato flavor year round!

Cooking tomato sauce for canning… overview and tips

It starts off pink, begins to foam like mad and ends a delightful shade of red.  The secret to cooking a tomato sauce for canning/preserving is patience.

Boiling tomatoes at a full roll is to be avoided at all costs.  The goal of cooking your sauce down is to bring it to a simmer and slowly cook it down.  We raise the heat to the point that small bubbles appear on the surface of the liquid without turning to a rolling boil.  This is tricky at the beginning since a full boil can hide under the the layer of foam.  Push it aside to see what is happening under the surface of the sauce.

A few tricks:

  1. Be vigilant.  Do not leave them unattended.
  2. It is normal for a layer of tomato water to appear on the top of the liquid.  We recently learned a fantastic secret – skim off the layer of water and boil it down separately.  This reduces the overall cooking time and maintains the body of your sauce (as the pulp isn’t cooked to mush).

A final word on a very contentious debate: acid and lemon juice.  Tomatoes are borderline acidic.  Be very careful when experimenting with varieties (including making sauce out of heirlooms).  Although it is recognized that a pH level of 4.6 or lower is considered to be a high-acid food, a pH of 4.0 or lower is safest according to many recognized experts on the subject. You can buy pH meters from finer wine stores if you are in doubt.

Use tested recipes or guidance from sources such as the National Center for Home Preservation.  What works for us might not for you.  In my experience, most people do not test – they simply decide if they will add acid or not.  I have my own method of testing that has yet to fail us – itŝ highly unscientific and not something that I can blindly recommend.  A spoiled batch is dangerous and a horrible waste – be careful and when in doubt, throw it out.