Cooking – Page 16 – Cabin Crafted

Work on the Mountain

When we built our house, we ran our power line 2/10 mile underground from the road to the transformer to the meter. We didn’t want to look at the line coming down our driveway or have poles in our view. But that is not the norm here in rural, rocky, mountainous land. For the past two years, the power company has hired a contractor to cut down trees anywhere near the power lines. They come in, cut a wide path, leaving branches, limbs, and tree trunks where they fell. It may help to reduce power outages, but it has increased wildfire risk. It has been unseasonably wet this year, so hopefully we are not threatened. Since we have lived here, the power goes out periodically, but usually only for a few hours at a time. After a Derocho wind in 2012, it stayed out for 42 hours, and a winter or two after that, it was out for 7 days after an ice storm. We hauled water from the catchment system. Once we could get off the mountain, we hauled ice when we could get it to try to keep the freezer cold enough to not spoil, we grilled, cooked on the top of the wood stove, kept fires burning in the wood stove and the fireplace, wore lots of clothes, and coped. After a week, we booked a hotel room for a day, took all our laundry down, got hot showers, and while hubby tried to watch a Sunday football game on a very poor TV connection, I went to the laundromat. We got a hot meal not cooked on the grill, camp stove, or wood stove, and started home as it was getting dark. To our amazement, as we cleared the gap and could see our mountain, we saw lights scattered up the mountainside, the homes had electricity again.

When our house was being built, before the power line was laid by son and DIL for the power company to hook up, we had a small gas generator they used for power tools. After the week without power, I tried to start it, but it wouldn’t start, so we took it to the repair place and were told it wasn’t repairable, at least not for what a new one would cost us, but we didn’t purchase one then. We should have.

The hurricane that is about to slam Louisiana and Texas tonight will make it’s way here still with wind and rain, certainly not anything like what they will endure. My thoughts are with those folks who have lost or had their homes damaged before as they face this again. I hope it isn’t another Katrina for them. But, we will have wind and rain and possible outages. Maybe the destruction around the power lines will reduce the likelihood.

At any rate, we drove to town yesterday and the grocer did not have canning lids alone, but I was able to purchase a flat of a dozen 4 ounce jars with new lids. I came home, thawed the pints of pasta sauce and reboiled it while the big canner heated up and canned it in quart jars to save lids, so my pasta sauce is safe from an outage. Then I went outside to the garden and picked almost a dozen more tomatoes that are sitting in the kitchen window waiting to see if enough will ripen to make another batch before they have to be frozen. I won’t can green beans or peas as I don’t like the texture of overcooked vegetables, so I will just make sure that the freezer is packed densely toward the bottom, not in the hanging baskets and toss a couple of big bags of ice in there too and hope that if we lose power, it isn’t for long enough to spoil the meats and frozen vegetables in there. The brined and fermented pickles and peppers in the refrigerator will be fine. Hopefully the wind won’t be strong enough to knock down the tomatoes. We had a brief, maybe 90 minutes worth of strong wind and some rain with thunderstorms that dropped south last night. It tipped over a large jade plant on the porch, blew a cushion off a chair, but no other damage.

Today’s walk was a throw back walk. Fifteen years ago, we stayed at Mountain Lake Lodge about 4.5 miles farther up the road off which we live, with Son 1, DIL, and 9 week old Grandson 1. The lake was full, Son 1 and DIL dove off the pier after a canoe ride across the lake and around the huge rocks at the end of the lake. The lake is only a pond now with no swimming, fishing, or boating allowed. We started up in the woods and walked down the mountain to the Lodge parking, down to the pier that is now on dry land with young trees growing up, then down a path through what used to be the lake bottom to a temporary floating dock they installed when the lake started losing water. It too is on dry land now. From there, we did a steep uphill back to the trail that lead to where we parked our car. The walk was about the same length as the walk we do in town, but it was cooler, less foot traffic, and more intense in elevation changes. A very pleasant time.

The temporary no longer floating pier. Above hubby’s head and slightly left across what remains of the lake are the rocks we canoed around on that trip.

And the shelves fill

Yesterday’s tomatoes, became today’s pizza sauce. I still don’t have the lids I ordered, still can’t purchase anything but wide mouth ones locally, but I grabbed the 8 regular mouth ones I found on new jars in the basement and made pizza sauce. I tripled the recipe which says it makes 2 half pint jars, but from experience, I know it makes more than that, so I put 8 half pint jars in the biggest stockpot with the strainer basket, that is all that will fit and all the lids I had. It was set to boil to sterilize the jars and later can them and I poured boiling water over the scored and cored tomatoes in two batches. Once one batch was peeled, cored, and diced, the seasoning was added and it started cooking down as I added the second batch of diced tomatoes. When it is a rough sauce, thick enough for pizza, it is ladled into the jars, sealed, and put in the water bath to can.

The sauce filled the 8 jars and there was a pint left, so it was put in a wide mouth pint with a new lid and it will go in the freezer with the pasta sauce, peas, and beans.

I will make pasta sauce from the remaining tomatoes that are harvested this season, there were several more turning pink that I saw when I went out to let the hens out this morning.

As I write this, I hear the satisfying pop of sealing lids on the counter in the kitchen. There will be 15 half pint jars on the shelves and the pint in the freezer. With the quarter pint that went into the freezer with the last batch, that is more than enough for a pizza a week for the next year.

The Tomatillos from yesterday, though enough for a batch of sauce, were frozen until I get more lids. Son 1 likes the Tomatillo/Jalapeno sauce as green salsa, so I will probably can it for him to use, the first batch will provide enough for my cooking needs. As the Tomatillos are producing prolifically now and will until a frost, I will probably make a batch of Tomatillo Pepper jam which is a good substitute for a barbeque glaze or as a condiment on a Charcuterie plate. Then any more after that will just be frozen for soup or canned halves in quart jars for the same purpose. They can be added to chili or pozole.

Yesterday morning, I took stock of the dry goods in the house, consolidated jars, washed a dishwasher full of dusty jars, and made a list of pastas, soups, rice, and cereals that can be bought in larger quantities and stored so that we will have to make fewer trips to town if Covid increases here or if we have a bad winter. We will make a large grocery run this week and then keep a close eye on the daily reports on both the virus and the weather. I worry a bit that so much has been frozen with the hurricane that is about to slam Texas or Louisiana with current tracking showing it may turn east after landfall and hit us with some wind and rain next week. We don’t have a generator to keep the freezer going. If I were to plan this house again, the water catchment system that was to be used to water livestock we never got, would be exchanged for a whole house generator that would at least keep the freezer, refrigerator, and well pump going during power outages. Though I don’t like canned vegetables, if I could get lids, the pasta sauce in the freezer could be thawed, boiled, and canned. First we couldn’t get toilet paper, flour, and yeast. Now you can’t get canning lids. I have never canned pasta sauce in wide mouth jars, and usually use pints, but I might can it in wide mouth pints, and if I can get my hands on a dozen regular mouth lids, I could do quarts, I have plenty of jars.

The garden continues to provide. Last night I opened a jar of last year’s applesauce and noted it was canned on 9/19/2019, so it is only a few short weeks until the fruit on the trees is ready to harvest and make into fruit sauces and jams.

Minor roadblock

Day before yesterday, after dinner, the tomatillos were finely chopped, onion, garlic, jalapenos, lime juice, salt, chili flakes added to a pot to make the simmer sauce. The recipe says it makes 2 half pint jars and I was doubling it, but it looked to me like it was going to make at least 5 or 6 half pint jars after it cooked down. Because it was a small quantity canning, instead of the big canner, I just pulled out the largest stockpot that had one of the deep strainer inserts and started heating up the jars and water. Grabbed the box of lids and a hand full of rings and started setting up. When I opened the box of lids, there were only 4 left, scrabbling through the basket, there were wide mouth ones still boxed, but no more regular mouthed ones. We turned everything off and drove down to the village store, they always have canning supplies. Well, they didn’t and said they can’t get them. Generally when I can, I write in marker on the lid, the contents and date made after they have cooled, and I save a few used lids to use on jars of leftovers or ones going in the freezer as they don’t have to seal. The drawer of used lids had three that weren’t written on, maybe I hadn’t canned with them. I marked those three lids and used them, the recipe had made 6 half pints and 1 quarter pint jar. I figured if for some reason they didn’t seal, I would know which three jars they were and just stick them in the freezer.

All 7 jars firmly sealed, but I was left with the issue of not being able to get lids. The grocer in town doesn’t have any, the village store doesn’t have any, I won’t go to a big box store in these times. About a decade ago, I bought reusable canning lids and wasn’t very happy with them so I sold them, but hoping they have improved, a went online and purchased a few dozen to have on hand. I still have wide mouth lids, but don’t can much with them.

Late yesterday afternoon as I was making dinner plans, I realized that the window sill full of tomatoes either needed to be frozen or used, so I scored the blossom ends and poured boiling water over them and set about to make pasta sauce. There was an eggplant in the refrigerator and an 8 oz container of fresh mozzarella, so eggplant Parmesan seemed like a good dinner option. The tomatoes were peeled and chopped, the oregano I picked a couple of days ago, a handful of drying basil leaves, a bit of fresh Thyme and Rosemary, some onion and garlic and all set to simmer while I prepared the eggplant for the oven. A slightly drained ladle of the chunky sauce was put in the bottom of the baking pan and while the sauce continued to simmer down, the eggplant baked and a pot of water boiled for Cappelini, a salad made, vinaigrette mixed and dinner was ready. The extra sauce was put in widemouth pint jars with plenty of headroom to expand, lidded and put in the refrigerator overnight to cool down. This morning, they were added to the supply of pasta sauce already in the freezer. I would prefer to make enough to can at one time, but the tomatoes aren’t coming in fast enough for that and there are no lids. With the chest freezer in the basement and the refrigerator freezer, I will just freeze jars this year.

When the reuseable lids arrive in the mail, I will can more pizza sauce with the next batch of tomatoes and have lids for Asian pear marmalade later in the fall, more tomatillo sauce, and applesauce if the deer don’t get all the apples. They have eaten the lower branch tips and all of the apples they can reach. They don’t mess with the Asian pears though.

The garden is providing fresh beans again, a bag shared with daughter who couldn’t find seed for a second planting. I will pick them again today or tomorrow and blanch another batch for the freezer. I am always thankful for whatever the garden gives. The more I freeze and can, the fewer groceries I need to buy shipped in from parts unknown during the off season. I started a dozen spinach plants indoors since it is slow to germinate and the weeds are quick to germinate in the heat and rain, I want to be able to find it when it is planted outside. If we don’t have an early frost, we should have beans, peas, carrots, spinach, maybe a few kale plants to carry us into the cooler weather. There are a few more ears of corn forming, I hope they are more developed than the 4 that were from the first two surviving plants. I don’t think planting sweet corn is worth my time when we don’t care for it frozen and I can purchase it 2 for $1 or $1.50 during the season. Maybe I will return to planting popcorn next year. We will have to purchase our pumpkin for pies this year, every time I planted seed this spring, something ate the small plants before they were more than 4 or 5 leaves in size. Last year, the 3 plants nearly overtook the garden.