Rendering Lard

This weekend we received the half pig we ordered last summer. Along with the meat we were asked if we wanted suet for rendering, and the liver. Heck yeah! Rick also asked if I wanted the feet and head, that I declined because I had no idea how I would use it. He also offered suet for the birds..oh yeah...love to feed those birds in winter!

For the first time, Mike and I rendered our own fresh lard. First task was to cut the suet into chunks and grind it. It matched my pink "breast cancer awareness" kitchenaid! Then I put a small amount of water in the bottom of a roasting pan. This was then set into the oven at 290 degrees. Directions advised 300-325 but I think my oven runs a bit hot. In about an hour it was nicely simmering at 290 degrees. I stirred it often for several hours. When the temp reached 255 degrees the "cracklins" were sinking and there was a nice layer of clear lard on top. We took it out and let it cool a bit, then strained it through several layers of cheesecloth. At this point it was golden colored. I poured it into jars (a big one for my mother the pie queen) and into muffin tins and a loaf pan. This was then put into the freezer. When it was solid I wrapped the pucks and put them into a freezer bag for use throughout the year. I've never really used lard much, but my mother makes the best pie crust with lard so I will be trying that. Also, I will use it in any recipe that calls for shortening, and for our annual one time deep fried fresh veggie night. We don't really fry much at all, but once a year we treat ourselves to fried zucchini and green tomatoes. This was a fun "back country" style activity. The birds will benefit from the rough suet that I will hang in an onion bag in the big pine tree.

Contest

Click on the "Cookin' Cousins" button on the right side of my blog to enter a contest for some great items! I order freeze dried foods from Honeyville for long term food storage. Their foods are top notch, and nice to have in the pantry for soups and casseroles when I don't want to run to the store in the winter for fresh produce. Go for it!

My Life Has Taken a Beading!

I've been so busy with beads!
These are some of the pieces I've been working on:







I've made a half dozen of these crystal bangles (shown below.) It's a very easy pattern once you've made one. I’ve made this bracelet with several different color crystals. I love to wear two or three of these at a time. It is very comfortable and people always comment on how beautiful they are. The only drawback is that it is a bit pricey to make. It has over 144 bicone crystals in the bracelet and that means you’re spending about $20 just for the crystals. Add the beads and your time, 4-6 hours, and this bracelet is easily worth a couple hundred dollars. I must admit…it looks like it is worth a couple hundred dollars when you wear it!



It’s time to get back to blogging…sorry for the delay, for several reasons I just haven’t taken the time to update. I’ve been very busy with things around the house and things at work. The work stuff is technical, dry, and somewhat boring, but essential to our workplace. The home stuff is fun and time consuming.

It seems like I never have enough time for my beads, or enough money to spend. This can become a very expensive hobby. I like crystals, Swarovski crystals, and they are pricey! You can definitely tell the difference between them and the cheap knock offs. I made the mistake of buying some knock offs at a local bead store, I should probably just throw them away. They easily scratch and seem very dull when strung with other quality glass beads. A better option than throwing them away might be to make some Christmas ornaments from them. I just cannot get myself to throw them away! My dear daughter might enjoy stringing them with me for that purpose. Yikes, I just gave myself another project! Some of my bead magazines have patterns in them for just this type of bicone shaped bead used to make an ornament by stringing them over glass Christmas balls.

I currently subscribe to two bead magazines, Bead and Button and Beadwork magazine. I really like them both as there are similarities and differences in both. Beadwork has featured artists who create for each magazine. This is nice if you like a certain type of project, as these artists work somewhat in themes. Bead and Button is a little more “homey” in style and has a bit more variety in the type of project. I think that the projects in Beadwork have better directions and diagrams, and are a little more to my liking. It’s really a matter of personal preference, and I find that I enjoy both magazines when they show up in the mail. I mark the pages with a post it note when I find a project I want to try. I don’t bother with the ranking of expert to beginner, as I love a challenge! One thing I find challenging is finding the right beads for each project. Sometimes the sizes or colors are not available locally and are difficult to find online. I really don’t want to have 50 different sources for beads. I have found that I can substitute a size 14 for a size 13 seed bead. Going up or down one size seed bead doesn’t seem to affect a project, at least so far! I do find a difference when using larger beads. Going up or down a size in a bicone crystal will make some difference in certain patterns. Colors are not so difficult to substitute. In fact, I prefer changing up the colors from what the original pattern might have called for. It’s fun to see the final product, and know that I’ve put my own spin on it.

What to do with all these tomatoes!

We are experiencing a fabulous fall! Warm days and cool nights, very little frost yet and the end of harvest is near. The only thing left in the garden are the carrots. I’m so burned out from the frenzy of harvest that I’m just letting those carrots sit for awhile.



We had a wonderful tomato season this year. Normally we are seeing tomatoes beginning to ripen a couple of weeks before Labor Day. This year we were canning and freezing ripe tomatoes in early August! I think it paid off to start the seeds on St. Patrick’s Day and move the plants into the greenhouse in late April. We had very healthy large plants by our mid-May planting date. Combine that with a very warm wet summer and we were overwhelmed. I do regret that I didn’t start canning tomatoes earlier. Most of the first tomatoes were pureed and frozen. We will be eating a lot of spaghetti, chili, and tomato soup this winter! We started canning tomatoes when the freezer started to get somewhat full of bags of puree. I’d forgotten that canning tomatoes is not all that bad. It’s the peeling and coring that gets a bit tedious. Once you’ve done that, it’s just a matter of heating the tomatoes, packing in the jar, adding salt, sugar, and lemon juice, and processing.



I was forced to find a way to use hard green tomatoes when the slugs attacked. Any tomatoes that were not tied up and close to the ground were being eaten by slugs. I had so many tomato plants and not enough cages that I just let some of my plants go wild. Those plants produced far more tomatoes than the caged ones! But they also had a lot of fruit lying on the ground. What to do? What to do? We ate quite a few sliced, topped with brown sugar, butter, and cracker crumbs, baked until soft…oooh so good!
The Recipe is from http://southernfood.about.com/od/greentomatoes/r/bl30202g.htm

Baked Green Tomatoes

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 35 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:

* 4 large firm green tomatoes
* salt and pepper
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 3/4 cup coarse buttery cracker crumbs
* 4 tablespoons butter

Preparation:
Cut green tomatoes in 1/2 inch slices; arrange green tomato slices in a greased baking dish. Season sliced green tomatoes with salt and pepper and spread each with about 1/2 tablespoon brown sugar. Cover sliced green tomatoes with crumbs and dot with butter. Bake at 350° until green tomatoes are tender but still firm, or about 25 to 35 minutes.
Recipe for baked green tomatoes serves 6.

We also tried hot and sweet green tomato pickles this year. Heaven! These are fantastic right out of the jar, tangy, sweet and hot, with a hint of tomato flavor. I love them on sandwiches, brats, and burgers. I’ve even eaten them on pizza, fabulous!

From Cooks.com:

HOT FISH-HOUSE STYLE GREEN TOMATO
PICKLES

2 qts. quartered green tomato
2 c. chopped onion
3/4 c. chopped hot peppers
2 c. sugar
3 tbsp. salt
2 c. vinegar
1 tsp. celery seed

Put tomatoes, onions and hot peppers in large pan. Mix remaining ingredients together. Pour over tomatoes. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat immediately, put in hot, sterile jars and seal.

NOTE: For spicy but not hot pickles, reduce hot pepper to half or less the amount called for and fill. Measure with chopped sweet peppers.


It’s nice to see the harvest wind down, and I’m happy that I have some time for other pursuits. The summer was hard work, but the pantry and freezers are full. This makes for a wonderful feeling of security and satisfaction. Winter for us, is a time for being indoors, reading, sewing, doing beadwork, and planning for next summers garden.

What to Do With All This Produce?

I am an avid vegetable gardener. My family spends much of the early spring through fall in the gardens planting, picking, and tending the crops. We have about 2600 square feet of vegetable and berry gardens. This time of year we are picking a LOT of food! And once you pick you must find a way to use all of those veggies as soon as possible. If you find yourself with too much fresh produce these are some ways to preserve summers bounty.

Blanching and freezing You can blanch most veggies like peas, green beans, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, corn, cauliflower, and beets. Blanching is basically quick boiling the veggies before freezing in order to stop the action of enzymes which make the plants grow. The University of Minnesota has extensive information on blanching, gardening, and preserving at the website http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/00053.html
I blanch my veggies, cool them quickly in a cold water bath, and drain them. I use vacuum pack my vegetables, but you can also put the veggies in a freezer bag, pressing out as much air as possible. I freeze berries for winter use by just cleaning them, coring if necessary and placing them on cookie sheets in the freezer. Once they are frozen I package them and freeze them for later. You can even freeze tomatoes whole! Just clean them and take off the stems, put them in freezer bags (even better, use a vacuum sealer) and freeze whole. When you need tomatoes for soup, chili or spaghetti sauce, just thaw your tomatoes and add. They will have the texture of a stewed tomato, how easy is that!

Canning If you have never canned vegetables before, I highly suggest either taking a class or finding someone who knows how and learning from them. Canning is a science and it requires proper equipment and meticulous habits. You must use a pressure canner for most vegetables which are low acid. The acidity in the food determines if fruits or vegetables are processed in a pressure canner or a boiling water bath canner to control botulism bacteria. Low-acid vegetables and meats contain too little acidity to prevent the growth of these bacteria and must be pressure canned. Acid foods such as fruits, jams and jellies, pickles, sauerkraut can be safely processed in a water bath canner. You can pickle vegetables using a water bath method, as adding vinegar brine creates the acidity needed for preservation. I always follow recipes carefully, and never add items or vary amounts in the recipe. I use the “Ball Blue Book of Canning” almost exclusively as there are TONS of great tried and true recipes in this book. For more information see http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/DJ0516.html

Drying Another way of preserving veggies is drying. You can dry veggies in many ways. I inherited a dehydrator from my parents. Back in the 70’s it seems like everyone was making their own jerky and dried fruit. Dehydrators were all the rage. You can pick these up at rummage sales for a great price and they do work! I dry carrots, zucchini, peppers, herbs, onions, garlic, tomatoes (mine are even better than the expensive sun dried ones from the store) beans, potatoes, and apples. This is pretty simple. You slice or cube the veggies or fruit, set it on the trays, turn on the drier to the appropriate temperature and just check every so often. I then bag or place the food in glass jars and use in soups or eat out of the jar. You’d be surprised at how good dried carrots and zucchini are! My daughter loves snacking on dried carrots and apples. There is basic information on drying at http://www.pickyourown.org/dryingfoods.htm

Fermenting Do you like sauerkraut? Or old fashioned deli style garlic dill pickles? Ever tried Korean Kimchi? These are all fermented vegetables. Crock fermenting is becoming popular again as people are looking for ways to preserve foods without cooking. All you really need is a ceramic crock or a food grade plastic bucket. My first batch of sauerkraut was made in the crock from a crock pot, it worked just fine. This year I have stepped up to a polish pickling crock, and am currently fermenting 10 lbs of garlic dill pickles. Oh man, they are so good and were so easy to make! For more information on fermenting go to: http://www.wildfermentation.com/

A Creative Weekend

I've had a little time to do some artsy things now that I don't work on Fridays. Tonight I finished a very complicated bracelet made of seed beads and crystal rivolis. This was a very challenging pattern, and it took me weeks to finish. I really love the punkish, glamorous, glittery character of the piece. It's a pattern from one of my favorite bead designers, Laura McCabe. I suspect this piece would be ranked as an "expert beader" level design, "Bead and Button" magazine does not rank skill levels on their patterns. Probably a good thing, as I might have been intimidated by a ranking. One thing I really appreciate about doing a project like this, is that it reminds me that I have never assumed that I could not make something that I wanted to make. I'm not being boastful, it's just that I have always been able to decide what I want to make and then go about doing it. I haven't acknowledged my ability in a very long time. It feels really good to be producing something again!


Last Friday I took apart a glass decoration that had rotting feathers and fringes all around it. I just took some old beads that were a bit bigger than I like using, strung them onto the bottom and came up with a nice garden decoration.



Next I decided to dig out some junk from the basement and put together this:




It's an old bowling ball. I glued on glass pieces left over from a stained glass project and flat marbles. I had grout that was salvaged from the garbage at Home Depot (my brother in law used to work there...I don't dumpster dive!) I've never done a grout project and this was a bit tricky! I should have glued glass way under the ball, because grouting was harder over that large area on the bottom of the ball. If the grout starts to fall off..I'll know why! But, it was fun anyway and used up stuff that was collecting dust in the basement.

I've decided that I'll continue to try to take something out of the basement on Friday's and make something out of it. Should be fun!

Garlic Scape Pesto

We are eating from the garden just about every day now. Being a zone 3 gardener, the harvest comes late. Last night we had a stir fry with baby bok choy, zucchini, early onions, garlic scapes, and pea pods. Oh..that first meal from the garden is just so wonderful! It is also a reminder that the race is on. We work very hard to plant, maintain, nurture, harvest, eat, and preserve the produce from our garden. I won't be buying any more limp lettuce at the grocery store for a few months and I'm anxious to bite into the first tomato. Tonight we tried two things with the garlic scapes. Scapes are like the flower of the garlic. It's a curly stalk that grows up from the center of the plant. You have to remove the scapes in order for the garlic to form a nice bulb. Scapes have a very mild green garlic flavor. We tried grilling some, but unfortunately Mike left them on the grill too long and they were charcoal scapes! I didn't like them! The rest of the scapes were chopped and put into the food processor. I added olive oil, grated parmigiano cheese, kosher salt and pine nuts.









I simply processed it for a few minutes and it made a wonderful pesto!



I think this will be great on a roasted veggie sandwich, in a pasta sauce, on pasta, on fish, on a cracker, etc! I had some on my corn on the cob, and tried it on a burger...very good. It has a very fresh green flavor to it, with a good garlic finish. Yum! I used about 24 scapes, 1 cup of good olive oil, most of a small jar of pine nuts, two teaspoons of salt and about half a wedge of parmigiano reggiano cheese. Very very easy. I will freeze most of this in small containers for future use.