10/2: Warm breezes and clear skies herald in the month.. and I kind of wandered aimless and cleaning puttering around the house today with the windows open to bring in the last warmth of the season. I said a goodby to family yesterday and today that is too painful to relate.
But the show must go on, right? Even aimless and lost, gotta get stuff done.
Consolidated the two deep freezes into the one standing one and turned off the chest for defrosting and cleaning up, pulled the tomatoes for salsa to the fridge to defrost. There were several packets of squash and pumpkin pulps in the chest freezer too. Those are now draining to dehydrate. I'm almost out of squash flour and can use some more.
Got the chicken stock reduced- cooked it with a gallon, got 3 quarts, reduced it to a bit less than a quart, which I poured off into 2 9-cube trays for the freezer. Had leftover Italian for dinner.
10/3: Ran a load of dishes early, and more into the dishwasher. Catching up on cleanup can suck up a lot of space, lol. Got another Urfa Beiber out of the solarium- got quite a bag of those piling up now, gonna need to run the smoker this week.
Got the garlic bed planted in- 72 of the Bardens softneck, and 20 of the softneck I grew out this year. A couple of red hot pokers in each back corner, and the blue eye grass made for 3 nice divisions for the front strip. Up yet is planting in bulbs. I had 15 healthy garlic starts I had put into pots earlier this summer out of the very last of the mixed garlic I was given last year- those got planted into the first bed to mature out for next year. I hope there's at least a couple different types in the mix.
Sat down and went through coupons, and the local sale ads for a bit of shopping. It's time to stock up on some canned and dry goods, especially since we are losing all the good freezer space, lol.
10/4: Glad I set in the garlic yesterday, we had some nice tamping in rain this morning.
Shopping day. And it takes hours to do a good round. The downside of living 20ish minutes away from the big stores. Aldi was pretty quick, but Meijer took a while. Picked up about a winters worth of winter squash today- half dozen butterkins, 2 delicatas, and 2 sweet dumplings that can serve 2 per squash, and 4 lovely single serve gold nuggets, about 28 pounds in all. I was tempted by the hubbards, but they were still too big for even a generous 2 person squash. I'll still probably pick up a few more before the season is done if the price is right and there's other varieties to pick up. But these were on sale for 69 cents a pound with a lot of right sized squash to choose from, and I had an additional buck off coupon to apply to my total produce purchase. Meijer also had those seafood entree packets that I've been looking at but too expensive- 6 bucks for a serving, ouch- and made with alcohol to boot. But today they were on clearance for 1.78, so I picked up a few for us to try out. Hardings had good sale action too- picked up 3 bags of taters for the price of 1. And since I found out my favorite snap lock lid containers for flour were discontinued, I was happy to find a pair of them on clearance- I wanted a pair for my bread and wheat flours. I also picked up a set of sealing lid containers on clearance from Aldi today for 7 bucks- three sizes. Used the medium one right away to store quinoa in, not sure what the small and large ones will hold yet, lol.
Tonights dinner is going to be some meatball stroganoff, I haven't made that in a million years, and we got frozen meatballs that need using up- and Hardings had a couple nice tubs of large caps on clearance for 99 cents each.
Got the last batch of ham stock started up- had a whole smoked ungleaned bone, a gleaned smoked bone, and 5 small smoked hocks in the freezer. Got the Nesco set up with about 2 1/2 gallons of water to burple up into stock, then I get to reduce the result down to just a few cube trays of what will essentially be smoked pork demi-glace for the freezer. I typically package the stuff in it's original gelatin stage in quart bags, but this time I gotta shrink that by a lot.
The tomatoes are still defrosting in the fridge- those will start getting skinned in the morning and all the peppers pulled out of the freezer... salsa tomorrow to burple up. Tomorrow I get to uncap and taste the hot pepper sauce too, and adjust it's vinegar if needed during it's final burple up- tomorrow is supposed to be fine and clear, so I'm going to be canning it up. It's as matured as it's going to get in the fridge, and now it's time to make space in the fridge and get the hot sauce shelf stable.
Got the tub of chestnuts drained off and into the dehydrator at 105- not sure how this experiment will turn out, but the soaking in vinegar water then drying is supposed to cure them really well for eating storage. Either that, or they will turn out in-edible, lol. Either way, it was time for them to get dried. Squash is coming up tomorrow for the dehydrator. The packages have defrosted in their tubs, and are getting pressed to drain in the sink now today- the mass will get repacked into the fridge overnight, then repressed tomorrow while the chestnuts finish up before I set up the dehydrator with the pulp.
Still need to figure out what to do with those bags of frozen whole peaches- letting them sit whole till Thanksgiving and they get used up in desserts is now out. Think I might need to can up a couple jars of peach pie filling- I also have a couple bags of cherries that can be thawed and cooked up into canning, and a bag or two of strawberries.
Over the moving time, I cataloged up the seeds- deep freeze and keeping on- 91 deep freeze, 173 keeping on. 83 packets went into the toss pile. Roughly 60ish packets of flower seeds I haven't fully catalogued yet.
And a small wish list- geez, I just weeded out beans, squash, tomatoes and peppers. A heap of other stuff too. But the Dwarf Wild Fred and a couple of seasoning peppers are making list- and an array of nasturtiums.
10/5: Another nice day weather wise. Got the door in front of our buddys car cleaned up- he called us Tuesday to tell us he was having it hauled off, and today was pick up day. That and some laundry was early chores. Wandering around sorting and cleaning stuff kind all day too.. weird.
10/8: Another right fine fall day. Friday I dinked around with setting up a lot of village stuff. That whole mess needs to be finished, but here it is a week into October already, and still pretty meh. The rally Friday just wasn't up to snuff. I'm starting to think I should just set up the mantle in autumn seasonal at this point. Maybe the back of the couch too. I do want to keep working on Scarry's Haunted Farm though- I think I kind of just want to get to dinking with building stuff more than setting it all up, ya know? Honestly, Fortunes Turning hasn't been right since April. Yesterday was cleaning up stuff again, and more sorting. Lots of crying over this and that. Being kind of aimlessly productive.
Today got the Ham demi-glace in the freezer, and the squash flour done and jarred up. 8 quarts of heavy ham stock reduced to about a quart, now in 32 squares in the freezer. It takes up about the same space as 1 quart bag usually does. Used up 5 smoked ham hocks, 1 stripped bone, and 1 unstripped bone, used about 5 gallons of water through the whole process. Kind of almost screwed that one up. Set up the nesco with 3 gal water in the laundry room, and cranked up the heat too high to bring stuff up to a boil for turning down to a slow simmer. Hours later hubby was telling me it was stinky, and I was like yeah, it's stock, and nope.. it had gotten too far, and had to add another 2 gallons of water to let burple overnight on low. Oops. But the resulting stock was extra rich and heavy to start with, and I normally would have bagged that up into 8 quart bags for the freezer. This time I reduced those 8 quarts to 1 and poured the stuff into a pair of 6" square aluminum pans and off to chill in the fridge-and made it all into 1 little quart space, lol. They were the consistency of very hard jello.
The 6 quarts of various squash and sweet potato pulps from the freezer and now dried down into 12 ounces of squash flour. After defrosting and draining, pressing and draining down to a 2 quart brick, that got pressed into 7 dehydrator jelly roll trays and dried at 135 overnight- this morning I flipped them and let them dry some more while the peppers were smoking. All the extra work with the pressing was worth it- the brick was easy like clay to smooth out, and already really dry since 4 quarts of water had been removed first.
Got the 2 quart bag of Urfa Beibers out of the fridge and onto the smoker, and now they are on the dehydrator. Been using disposable pie plates I got 10/10 per 3 pack, and man those have been nice. I can use them 2-3 times before they get kind of icky. Next up is the couple bags of sweet and hot fresh peppers to do up. Everything that comes out of the Tobago Seasoning and Aji Limon peppers in the solarium at this point will be used in straight dehydrating, no more smoking this year for that. Got all the smoked ones I want now, and since I will have a "surplus" of the Tobagos, I'm gonna keep off the pint or so I will want to use whole, and grind up the rest into a nice batch of pepper flake.
Then on to the whole frozen peaches. They just can't stay in the freezer, and I'm pretty much shut down on big canning for the season, and ain't making pie filling or jams this year. So I'm going to dehydrate those down too for later use. We shall see how much shrinkage I get, haven't dried peaches before. I'm hoping for a much pair smaller vacuum sealed freezer bags at the end of this.
Unfortunately, no salsa this year. I had pulled the big bags of frozen tomatoes and peppers out of the freezer to thaw, then totally forgot about them- and by the time I remembered today, they were bags of totally deflated tomatoes floating in their water, and the peppers weren't any better, so I had to scrap the whole lot of them ;(
So right now, I only have one more batch of canning to do, and it's a small kettle doable batch- the hot sauce that's curing in the fridge. Since it's a half gallon, and I want to do up 4 oz jars.. I think I might do a couple of different flavors depending on what the whole batch tastes like. I'm pretty sure I will need to add some vinegar/acid again during the reheat. It was a bit shy when I jarred it up, and I wanted it that way- better to undervinegar than over right off the bat. Found out the salt measurement I used was a bit overboard too- ah well. I want to sweeten a batch with some of those urfas, and maybe do a batch with extra garlic. Depending on the heat level of the batch, I might round that out with some smoked Aji Limon and lemon juice adjustment. That way I can break the canning into 2 days worth of batches, and not capsaicin the eff out of myself all at once, lol. I figure with the liquid additions to each batch, each flavor will probably make 6-4oz jars. Plenty enough of smalls to have a couple, and give a few away.
On a bit of a seeds note.. We do have a few new seeds to add to the list already. The Canterbury Bells were full dry and ready to clean the seed from. It was pretty easy- but since they are prickly pods, gloves were needed. And a glass seed tray to knock the seed into- not plastic. And a cotton ball.
Tip them stem up and gently roll between your fingers, and tons of seeds roll out. You get some plant crumbles too. After all your seed is knocked out... shred up that cotton ball and gently run bits of it over the seeds to lift out those prickly bits that want to stick to the cotton ball, leaving the smooth small seeds behind. Using glass instead of plastic is important here because the glass lets you slide smoother than plastic does, and you want to smoothly lift the pickles out of the seed.
Up on the needs cleaning list are some morning glories and beans :) .
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