Preserving Tomatoes

Granddaddy Jerry had an abundance of late tomatoes this year so I decided to do some preserving.  I canned about 4 quarts of tomatoes, froze another 4, and made 3 pints of green and red tomato relish, and another 3 pints of salsa.  For those of you who have never canned, it's not difficult, but can be a little time consuming.  It helps to have an extra set of hands and I had my mother-in-law to help me with my first batch.  I didn't have any fancy canning equipment and ended up water bathing the jars in my large stock pot with a steamer basket on the bottom to keep them from touching the bottom of the pot.  It helps to have something to remove the jars from the boiling hot water and I improvised with some salad tongs. 
Canning Tomatoes
1.  get water boiling in a large pot
2.  fill your sink with ice water
3.  dunk a few tomatoes at a time in the boiling water for a few seconds
4.  transfer the hot tomatoes to the ice water
5.  peel off the skin and core and quarter tomatoes
6.  place them in another pot to cook
7.  wash and boil jars
8.  heat new lids in a small sauce pan
9.  put boiling hot tomatoes in clean jars
10.  quickly place on lid and ring
11.  some may seal on their own as you will hear a "pop" and not be able to press down the top of the lid, but it's safest to put the jars of tomatoes in a hot water bath (boiling water) for 15 min. to insure a good seal

For the salsa and relish I did the same thing except followed a recipe that included other ingredients. 
Green and Red Tomato Relish
1/2 dish pan peeled tomatoes (I only peeled the red ones and used about half red, half green)
2 onions
2 cayenne peppers
2 jalapeno peppers

3 cloves garlic

bunch of cliantro

2 bell peppers

1/8 cup salt

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cup vinegar

ball of pickling spices (I tied up some in a bag made of cheese cloth)

cook until thick

Salsa
1/2 dish pan peeled red tomatoes

2 onions

2 cayenne peppers
2 jalapeno peppers
3 cloves garlic
bunch of cilantro
2 bell peppers
1/8 cup salt
1/2 cup vinegar

 cook until thick

Freezing tomatoes is much simpler as you simply peel the tomatoes using the flash boil method above and then core, quarter, and place in freezer quart bags.  I let them cool, label them, and place in freezer.  Both frozen and canned tomatoes are excellent for spaghetti sauce, chili, and soup but there's nothing quite like popping open a jar of canned tomatoes. 

The Chocolate Muffin Tree: Tie Dye Coffee Filter Fall Leaves

The Chocolate Muffin Tree: Tie Dye Coffee Filter Fall Leaves: I'm so ready for the Fall colors.... so we decided to bring some beauty to our window a little bit earlier!!! We created Tie Dye Coffee Fil...

Fun craft for me and the girls! Will post pics once I get them on the window.

Composting success!

I've wanted a compost bin for years and finally have one that works!  It was fairly simple to build and is stackable and movable.  Here are the easy to follow instructions I used. 

 I followed the layering guidelines for composting outlined in "Four-Season Harvest" by Eliot Coleman and "How to Grow More Vegetables" by John Jeavons.  I placed the bin under a deciduous tree close to my garden spot and away from our dog.  I loosened the soil underneath using a spading fork and then placed a layer of sticks on the bottom for aeration.  Then came about a 3" layer of straw (recommended over hay because the hollow stems allow for better air circulation), a 1"-6" layer of moist "green material"(I used vegetable scraps and freshly cut grass), about a 1" layer of soil to keep flies down and provide bacteria and organisms to begin the breakdown process, and then a layer of "brown" material (I used day lily stalks that had been cut off and discarded by my mother-in-law).  You water each layer after adding.  The idea is to alternate "green" material (vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, bread, pasta, egg shells, etc.), soil, and straw.  So far I've gotten 2 good layers going and have only used part of a rectangle straw bale.  Instead of adding soil and straw everytime I need to empty the compost bucket, I use the spading fork to lift up the straw and soil and place the vegetable scraps underneath then recover.  One bucketful does about a 1/4 of the bin at a time, so I just alternate where I add the new scraps.  I found the perfect 2 gallon bucket with a lid containing a little bit of my husband's protein powder in it, so the protein powder was relocated and the bucket became my compost bucket.  I keep it on top of the fridge and empty when it gets full. 

I started the compost bin about a month ago and was surprised the other day when I looked at the side where I started adding scraps and realized that the only recognizable food scrap was egg shells.  Everything else had broken down into rich black compost!  It's not totally ready to use because the straw hasn't broken down, but I was really excited to find that it was already working!  I can't wait to add it to my garden beds!

Lifting the layers with a spading fork.

Compost!

Free Downloadable Paper Dolls!

Thanks to http://www.moneysavingmom.com/ I found some awesome free paper dolls to download and print.  They're the old fashioned ones printed in 1976.  I can't wait to get some card stock and print them for my 4 yr. old.  She's going to love them!
Here's a link to the dowload http://tpettit.best.vwh.net/dolls/pd_scans/ginghams/index.html. 
Happy playing!

Sweet Potato Butter

I had a few too many sweet potatoes from the farmer's market to eat before going bad, so I decided I'd try something new and make some sweet potato butter.  I've had it before and it's really yummy and similar to apple butter.  I figured it would be one less thing to buy later and could potentially make some nice inexpensive homemade Christmas gifts. 
I found my recipe at http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sweet-potato-butter/detail.aspx.  I ended up with over 8 cups of cubed sweet potato and apple with the 5 sweet potatoes and 3 apples I used.  I followed Jeannie's review and cooked it all in my slowcooker for 6 hrs.  It made the house smell wonderful!  Like fall!  This made six 8 oz. jelly jars of butter.  You can refridgerate or even freeze these, but I decided to can them since they were already hot from the sweet potato butter anyway.  I washed my jars and then placed them in some simmering water in a big pot on the stove while I blended up the cooked sweet potato mixture.  I removed the jars and filled them with 1/4 in. headspace.  To keep the jars from the bottom of the pot like a canning rack would, I used a metal steamer that sat on the bottom of the pot.  You couldn't keep the jars perfectly upright, but they mostly stayed that way.   I had just a little bit of water covering the jars, not the 1 in. that I read you should have.  I placed the lid on the pot and let them boil for a good 5 min.  I removed them from the pot carefully with salad tongs and all of them sealed!  It took a few min. but I heard them all pop.  It's best not to touch the lids too much until you are sure they have sealed. 

Can't wait to try it!

Learning to coupon and save money while eating healthy

Hunter had to go to a bus inservice today in Jackson (about an hour from us) so I decided to make the most of it and plan a day trip of grocery shopping since they have a big farmers market, Kroger, and Target (things that are not found in Union City).  I'm just starting the whole couponing adventure and trying to save more money and have found the website http://www.couponmom.com/ very useful.  You can look up your state and various large grocery and drugstore retailers and see all the sales for the week along with coupons and where to get them so that you save the most money.  It even shows you the percentage you save.  And for people like me who are beginners at this the website has a couponing tutorial!  How helpful!  So glad I found this site.
I ended up spending a couple hours last night planning my trip today including a grocery list  for each store printed from http://www.couponmom.com/ and printing and organizing coupons that I would need at each location.  Oh, and http://www.kroger.com/ lets you add coupons directly to your Kroger Plus card and print a list of them so you don't foget which ones you have.
I was pretty proud to say that I saved almost $70 at Kroger and was able to get lots of good Stonyfield organic yogurt for the girls and us along with chicken and ribs on sale, as well as healthy hormone and antibiotic free beef.  I bought more meat today than I have in a long time, but still got out of there spending around $150.  Maybe I will make a monthly trip to Kroger from now on. 
Target had lots of great Kashi products on sale as well as snack foods like organic tortilla chips. 
The girls and I enjoyed the West Tennessee Farmers Market where we got lots of yummy fresh fruits and veggies for less than at the grocery store and tried figs for the first time!  We also met some nice people and found out that there's a farmer who brings goat milk on Wed.  I left my name and number and am anxious to hear back to see if I could get in on a goat milk share. 
Successful day!

Today it begins...road to self-sufficiency

Self-sufficiency and sustainability are not new ideas to me.  As a high schooler I loved to roam my great grandparent's farm in rural VA and pick berries, cherries, persimmons for making homemade treats.  I would also pick poke berries and use them to paint with.  I thought their natural fuchsia color was beautiful.  I loved reading about pioneer days and Native American culture and their use of medicinal plants.  I wanted to be a wildcrafter like in the book "Where the Lilys Bloom". 
In college I worked on an organic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm in Floyd, VA living off the land all summer and loving it.  We planted, weeded, harvested, and preserved or cooked the food that we ate.  It was amazing being so closely connected with the food I ate.  I also took a couple Sustainable Agriculture classes along with several other plant courses in my Biology major. 
After college I lived with a family from my church in a little old farm house on their land.  I grew a beautiful garden of heirloom beans, mesclun lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, and squash.  I even sold some of the beans and herbs to a local bed and breakfast.  That same summer I also worked alongside a full-time gardener at another bed and breakfast that grew much of the food that they cooked in their restaurant. 
Then I got married, finished my teaching degree, got a job, moved to a new state, fixed up a house, had babies, and the whole idea of self-sufficiency was put on the back burner.
Until today.  We're in the middle of trying to sell our house so that we can move somewhere out in the country with a few acres of land.  Our house is small and if we have any more children we will have outgrown it completely.  But it's completely remodeled and has a pretty good sized fenced in yard.  So, although we are in town I'm going to make the most of my time here in moving in the direction of my dream.  I'm tired of waiting.  I'm tired of buying food laden with pesticides.  And it looks like it might be some time before our house sells.  So, I'm studying up on permaculture gardening, reading John Jeavons "How To Grow More Vegetables", and researching movable chicken coops for layers.  Today I realized that my garden has been sorely neglected and decided that something had to be done.  I was also frustrated about other things.  So I grabbed my hoe and took it out on the rock hard dirt and weeds that had become my garden spot.  I hacked at the ground, sweat pourng down my face, talking to myself....if someone saw me they probably would have thought I was crazy.  And maybe I am.  But, I have a desire inside me to live simply, grow as much of my own food as possible, and teach my children the value of hard work, consistency, and knowing where your food comes from.  As I work with my hands I want the God who created me and the Earth I live on to mold me into a more useful vessel.
(The pictures are of my garden the spring of 2010, I tried to do the same thing this year but didn't even have that good of results.  My carrots this year did end up being a pretty good size even though I didn't find them until I was destroying the remains of the garden in order to start over.)