The contest details are after the break…
October is the busiest time of year for me. Work is at it’s most hectic, our preserving projects are coming to a close, hunting is nearby and time to write is scarce. By the end of October things settle down in almost every element of our lives!
In order to make October a little easier, I was hoping I could get 30 seconds of help from you…
How can you help? I was hoping you’d participate in a little brainstorming with me. I was hoping you’d share an idea or two for articles.
To help motivate your inspiration, every idea you submit (silly or serious) between now and Sunday , October 7th, will count as a ballot to win one of our Periodic Table of Waterbath Preserving posters:
Here’s some possible questions to get your creative juices flowing -
- What is something you’d like to see us cover?
- What questions do you have that we might be able to answer?
- What are projects you’d like to start but want to know more about?
- What do you wish you knew about hunting, preserving or local/ seasonal eating that we might be able to help with?
Of course you can also just jump to anything that’s on the top of your mind and you can enter multiple times.
So, do you have 30 seconds to help us out?
I always like to see the creative ways people use their canned goods to make a variety of meals — sometimes it’s easy to do the canning part but not as easy to figure out what to do with that umpteenth jar of pickles.
How about your ideas for using all these wonderful condiments we have preserved…Are you willing to share even for a fee some of your label templets…what about this question – if i plan to gift from my preserving efforts – how do I/we know that these precious foods will be eaten and not just left on the shelf….if you gift your canned foods – how do you get your jars back?
I would love to read a piece about urban or suburban foraging in Ontario. Have you ever done this activity? If it’s not too weird…
I would be interested in learning more about making ghee.
What is the weirdest thing people have canned/preserved? That’s what I’d like to know.
I know you don’t have children. But could you research making and preserving home made baby food. Ask some of your preserving friends with kids what they did and how…there are the standards, but for people who shop at Farmers Markets there are even more fun possibilities.
How do you evaluate reusing jars? Do you use ones from grocery stores? Farmer’s market? Garage sales? Are you buying lots of jars every year?
Oh I would also be interested in kefir. How to make it etc. New recipes for different chutney’s would be great too. I love your blog. Keep it coming! Thanks.
I’m still fascinated with how you’re using your dehydrated powders as substitutes for store bought spices (if you are) to create a cuisine I could only have at chez Well Preserved : )
I met the two of your at your last honey themed Home Ec. Thanks for a fun evening!
Are you two big on using apps? Do you have any favourite apps on local food, sustainability or making food you use as a resource or for fun?
- pressure canning vs water bath canning – other than acid, why pick one over the other?
- classic recipes – like a seville orange marmalade that you have to soak entire oranges for days before. Old timey shit!
I know you’ve written a lot about hunting in the past so forgive me if you’ve already talked about this… I’m interested (as the niece/cousin of hunters) in how you see the way that people claim they want organic/sustainable meat but are disparaging towards hunting & hunters.
*that should have said “some people” not “people.”
I would like to see more on dry canning. I saw an article in Countryside magazine and have started doing it. I have done rice, flour,oatmeal, cereal, beans, stovetop stuffing, potato flakes, cornmeal. Things are to keep 20 to 30 years. I live in the country and love the idea of stocking up for bad weather . It is not like I can just run to the store. It is so easy. I can alot of other things also and have lots of recipes. I have 3 cookbooks published.
I’d love to hear how your garden fared this year. I don’t think you posted and end-of-season update (if you did, and I missed it… sorry).
I’d also like to hear about how you use your preserves, more ways that you layer flavours in your cooking with your preserves.
I close my eyes for the hunting posts lol.
ps. I did get a glimpse of your garden on flickr this summer. One of my contacts (Steve) posted an image of a garden that I recognized immediately! Was fun to spot. I guess he parks his car near your garden. As I said, it was fun to spot.
You guys seem like a font of knowledge – I really loved your troubleshooting posts, and jury-riging ideas!
Since you’re reading books for school anyhow, how ’bout some book reports/reviews?
p.s. already have a lovely poster which I ordered myself – whoever wins is one luck lad/lady!
I’d love to see how you preserve and cook your kills from hunting. I get tired of deer sticks and deer chili all the time. It would be nice to have some other recipe ideas. Also, have you ever tried smoking meats? I’d be interested is seeing a homemade smoker set up that actually works.
I’d like to see more stuff on pressure canning. How much do you pressure can? What do you pressure can the most? I’d like to try making cheese! Do you make cheese? How does a person with no hunting experience become a hunter? I’ve read to don’t buy tomatoes in the winter, but what about peppers and other summer produce?
I’d like to know more about hunting, including the onsite & post processing of the animals, and how you store/ preserve/ use the meat. We are just learning about our pressure canner, so love to know more about that too. Do you guys smoke/ cure anything, or make salami/ small goods?
Thank you!
I’d like to know more about life at the hunting camp. As well, do you do any snaring? If so, do you have any tips?
It would be really helpful if you would write about how to use/can the abundance of green tomatoes that we have left from our tomato crop!
I would like to know more about what you do with your dehydrated produce. Turning them inot powders and what you use everything you dehydrated for.
I second the pressure canning. I’m especially interested in flavor mixes with meat in a pressure canner. I’ve been trying to “pre-prep” my meat for certain meals with flavors included instead of just water. If you head in that direction that would be awesome.
I also second the idea on “how to use” in cooking/baking etc. This is a hard one for people who don’t naturally know how to flavor combine. Example: my sweet onion pickles are most awesome on burgers. They suck on cheese with garlic crackers.
So maybe even some basics on flavor combinations. How to figure out sweet versus savory versus acid needed for a certain dish.
Also, more on flavoring dried items and how to use them – substitutions in quantities, best uses etc. I use my dryer more and more but… sometimes just don’t remember I need to use up the dried goods because I don’t know how much is a substitution in soup for fresh celery… I know it’s in one of these books somewhere, here, somehow… but reminders and refreshers as you come across in my RSS feed, those things help us learn.
Which is the last point, those of us who follow you by RSS or otherwise sometimes we gloss over a post at the time because it is too advanced, we don’t find it when we search for something… So even if you feel you are re-hashing something it may be new to your readers so reminder links to older relevant/tangents are ALWAYS used by people like me!
Ok, that wasn’t my last point. My last point is that you guys are awesome, we love reading you and I hope you have a successful hunting season.
I’d love some tips on how to do small batch canning. Also i’d love more on how to use up the end of the garden….what in the world am I going to do with all these green tomatoes!
I’ve seen multiple recipes for slow cooker dulce de leche, but none seem to know if the jars are shelf-stable after their water bath cooking is finished.
I’d like to see more of the technical/nerdy side of canning.
As I get more comfortable canning from recipes, I’d like to know more of the why we do what. Some recipes I’d like to tweak either flavors or steps.
For example, can I change spices to alter a sauces flavor? Or, prepping tomatoes and peppers for sauces, salsas, etc: must I blanch, peel, and seed or roast, peel and seed? Could I skip that part and just blend everything and push it through a chinois or something? I’d like ways to streamline the processes to fit more canning into a busy schedule.
have Dana write about the joys of living and working alonside you !!
Interested to read more about your hunting, do you hunt anything other than deer? ducks, geese other bird or small game?
I’ve been working through being a little more nose-to-tail with my veg, the biggest thing being saving scraps in the freezer that would’ve gone to compost for future stock making. Some things I was wondering about over the weekend basically amounts to “What should go to the compost?” I felt like I was triaging at points – this tomato is pretty enough to go in the whole tomatoes for WBC; this one needs has cosmetic blemishes, so the good parts go in the crushed tomatoes and the ugly part goes in the stock bucket; this one has internal mold, so it goes to compost. (Ironically I think some garlic skins that also showed signs of mold/mildew made it into the stock bucket because I wasn’t thinking as much when I did that.) How do you sort/triage?
Also, what are your feelings on using root vegetable peelings for stock making? I put some potato and carrot peels in there, then realized that I was told at one point that you should skin potatoes before preserving because the skin is most likely to harbor botulism from being in contact with the soil.
Which food poisoning bacteria produces spores (botulism of course, but I can’t remember if there’s another that produces spores).
Which food poisoning bacteria cause toxins that can’t be cooked out of food?
What produce absorbs food poisoning agents/chemicals into the actual edible parts (meaning it can’t be washed off)?
Basically, my concerns are what non-processed foods could still harm us, despite proper food handling, because of infectious agents, or absorbing harmful agents/chemicals?
I remember a discussion at another blog about cantaloupes with salmonella on their outer skins. Even though the insides supposedly didn’t have salmonella, cutting into them with a knife would carry the salmonella into the edible part. We discussed whether produce-wash, vinegar, lemon juice might kill the salmonella if soaked long enough, but would require so much just to cover a cantaloupe. Perhaps wrapping it with dish towels soaked with the wash/acids. I ended up skipping eating any cantaloupe that season!
I don’t buy my meat from a farmer’s market or private butcher. I’m fairly thorough with food safety though (not professionally trained). What kind of infected meat would still be risky despite proper food handling (not including home-processing, just home cooking fresh from the stores).
I cut my to-be-eaten raw foods first, then veggies, wash knife/cutting board in hot soapy water, then meat last. I consider the sink contaminated after any utensil touching raw meat was placed in the sink, and clean utensils/sink accordingly, But what newer food safety things should older cooks be made aware of, with food becoming more and more dangerous thanks to sloppy factory handling?
As a somewhat novice canner, I’d love a list of some of your favourite “gateway” canning/preserving projects. I’ve done some of the basics – jams, peaches, tomatoes, pickled beets – and am looking for fun new level 2 things to tackle! What preserves really inspired you or tickled your fancy as you were first getting into canning? What were some of the magic moments for you?
Another idea: what are some fun late fall/winter canning projects for us southern Ontarians? I’ve spent this summer interning on a farm and just not having the time to preserve everything I’ve wanted to. Soon my schedule will start winding down, but the peppers and tomatoes and beans are long gone around here. I’m planning to do some pickled beets and carrots in November, but what are some other ideas for November/December preserving for those of us who didn’t plan ahead and chuck a bunch of summer produce in the freezer?
I always love your geeky little tips like surprising uses for an immersion blender, or which cherry pitter actually works best. I’d love advice about bigger machines like cider presses and (especially) tomato seeder/peelers. Foraging is also a huge topic that I’d love to see you explore more.
And, a bit more counter-intuitive, I’d love to know more about your readers. Profiles of dedicated Well Preserved fans and what they’re up to?