Tag: recipes

Old Skills

Last Wednesday evening, I trekked over to the museum to teach an old skill. No costume required for this event. We set up 4 stations for 4 ladies + 1 second grader accompanying her Mom and they learned to make basic lard and lye soap. We used a mix of old school and modern skills and equipment so we weren’t there all night stirring the mix. Of course they were given some history of soap and soap making and why we now use a lye calculator and a superfatted recipe to be sure we end up with a body friendly product. I put together kits of a small heat safe plastic bucket, two rigid plastic stadium cups, a spatula, and a silicone loaf pan for each participant that they keep at the end of the session, along with the a three page history, instructions, and two recipes; one for the lard and lye and one for a vegan soap with Shea butter, Coconut Oil, and Olive Oil, and of course, their mold of soap. We “cheat” by stirring with an immersion blender to speed the process up to keep our session within a 90 minute window. As I dug out some of my equipment and essential oils to scent their individual batches of soap, it seemed a good time to go ahead and make soap for 3 friends and our household.

The batches at home were made Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. On Tuesday, a double batch of one scent was made and I won’t do that again as it took forever to get to the consistency to pour it in the molds and is still not as firm as I would like to slice it into bars. The
Wednesday batches will be unmolded and cut tomorrow to cure for a month before going to the folks for whom it was made.

Today as I sat waiting for hubby to have a consultation visit and then I waited for my annual mammogram, I spun. In public, I spin on either a top whorl drop spindle or a Turkish spindle. When doing it, there are surreptitious glances, to out and out staring and occasionally someone will ask what I am doing. Followed by the question of what I then do with the yarn I spin.

The other old skill that really hasn’t been done so far this year is canning and preserving. There have been pickles fermented and stored, but the tomatoes haven’t produced in sufficient quantity to bother canning them. I have frozen a couple of gallon bags, made one big pot of sauce to use one night for pasta and the rest frozen in wide mouth pint jars. There is a basket of Asian pears from the orchard sitting on the dining table with a couple of oranges to make pear/orange marmalade, but I haven’t gotten around to dragging down the canning pot to do it. As there are still many jars of applesauce from last year unopened, I doubt that any will be canned this year. The only other produce that has come in quantity are greenbeans and I freeze some of them, but don’t like canned one at all and barely tolerate them from frozen. I like to buy local, but come midwinter when green vegetables are at a premium if at all available, I do buy from the grocer.

All of these skills have been learned since retirement. You can teach an old dog new tricks. And I truly believe in the each one teach one. I am grateful to the friends who taught me to make soap, spin, and improve my knitting skills. The canning and fermentation, I have learned from books and the internet.

September 3, 2025
Printed Goodness

Several years ago I joined the eBook populous and either rent ebooks (did you know you don’t actually buy them! And they can be withdrawn from your library on the whim of the publisher!); or check real books out of the library and rarely buy a print book, but yesterday an exception was made.
A few weeks ago, a fellow blogger sent me a link to another blog for a recipe. The recipe author has penned two cookbooks.

Before I bought either, I wanted to preview them and couldn’t find them in the library so I looked for them in our local Barnes and Noble retailer but they didn’t have either in stock. They special ordered them for me to preview and they arrived just prior to my leaving for the retreat so I couldn’t go look at them. Tonight, after dinner we traveled the two towns over so I could preview them before they were returned or put in their stock.

I couldn’t decide between them, both containing many interesting recipes for putting by garden and Farmers’ Market goodies and I left with both books. I don’t know whether to thank my blogging friend or not, but I have added to my library and have many, many new ideas for preserving garden goodness, so thank you Yanic for the linky.

October 1, 2014
Salvage

Each evening as I harvested the day’s produce and eggs, bringing in a half to a full cup of raspberries, I got more frustrated with the results of my batch of jam. The new berries were put in a wide mouthed pint jar and frozen, new ones added each night. The original batch so sweet and so gummy that it didn’t even work well in a smoothie without melting it first. Today’s harvest of berries filled the jar plus a half a cup or so. After some research from various cookbooks, homesteading books, and the internet, I decided to see if I could salvage the batch. Again, down came the pots, the jars and lids. The original 6 jars were warmed slightly to thin the sickly sweet goo. The new fresh and frozen berries crushed in the bottom of the jam making pot with the potato masher. Once they were beginning to cook, the first batch was added back to the pot with a quarter cup of water and a good splash of lemon juice and cooked til a gel test on a spoon showed a product that jelled but didn’t clump. The re-canning in clean jars with new lids has been done. The now 7 jars have all given the satisfying pop as they cool, so they are all sealed. The new process was less frothy looking and the foam easier to skim, so the jars are a pretty ruby color throughout. After they cool and I can do a tip test, I will see if I have 7 jars of jam or 7 cups of raspberry syrup. Hopefully, when I open one, I will have a jam that is spreadable. It tasted better when I checked it. When my peach jam didn’t jell (my fault for using old pectin), I bought liquid pectin and it seems to give a thicker consistency jam which I don’t like.

If any of my readers out there have jam recipes for low sugar (not artificial sweetener, I can’t use that stuff), or have found a good source of recipes for low sugar jams, I would love to have it. It is counter intuitive to me that most jam recipes call for sugar equal to or more than the amount of fruit. That takes a healthy product and makes it unhealthy.

June 26, 2014
A Week on and off the Farm – June 14, 2014

This week, two of our grandchildren celebrated birthdays. Our eldest, son of our eldest turned 9, our first granddaughter, daughter of our youngest, turned 3. Though we didn’t actually get to spend their birthday with either of them, they are special.

The garden is growing. The garlic looks like it is ready to harvest and cure. Agree?

I never did make garlic scape pesto. Oh well, there is always next year as it is a crop we plant annually in quantity to share with our kids. The peas are or so close to being ready for the first batch of lightly steamed or sauteed fresh peas. My mouth is watering at the thought. The raspberry patch is starting to ripen. It is really going to be a challenge to bring enough in to make jam or smoothies with as I graze as I am in the garden, they are so delicious fresh.

A few weeks ago, while in Lowes, I purchased two new garden implements, a hoe with a two tine rake on the other end and a loop hoe. The loop hoe is an okay tool in bare soil. The other implement bent the very first time I used it and it will be returned to Lowes along with a wire brush they sold us for our new grill that has coated cast iron grates and specifically says DO NOT USE A WIRE BRUSH ON THE GRILL PLATES. A few days after I purchased them, I received a copy of one of the only two magazines to which I subscribe and they had an article on must have garden tools, one of which is a new Rogue Tool Hoe that has a tapered, sharpened end, flat at the end and a 3 tine rake on the other end. It is American made, forged and solid. I ordered one and was notified that they were backordered and it would be several weeks. I okayed that and two days later, was notified that it shipped. It is a great tool, well worth the money and the wait. Used on its side, it cuts right through the weeds. The end cuts deeper for heavier rooted weeds and the rake grabs even young tap rooted plants and pulls them right up. The wooden handle is thick and well balanced. They aren’t paying me or giving me anything, but I highly endorse their products.

This is the first week of the summer that we have had house guests. Jim’s cousin and his wife spend Thursday night with us on the way to Pennsylvania to pick up his youngest son from college and will spend tonight with us on their way home to Georgia. They brought us two bags of Georgia peaches to enjoy along with pecans and a lovely loaf of bread. Some of the peaches were very ripe and after they left yesterday morning to finish their trip north, I prepared about half of them for peach jam.

In 25 or more years of making jam and jelly, this was my first experience with peaches and it didn’t set up properly. Last evening, we went to town to purchase more fresh pectic, new lids and while there, I bought another case of 1 cup jelly jars and reprocessed it last night with a bit more lemon juice and a new package of pectin. It turned out perfectly and they will get to take a jar home with them tomorrow along with a couple of jars of berry jams from last season, some of the cured garlic still left from last year and a dozen of my fresh eggs to enjoy once they are home.

I subscribe to a delightful magazine called taproot. It comes out 4 times a year, contains no advertisements, often contains a gift, such as a small notebook or some notecards with artwork from one of their many artist contributors. It always has wonderful recipes, craft ideas and generally a knit, crochet or sewing pattern in it. This issue has infused vinegars and three fermented mustard recipes that I want to try. Today while making a vinaigrette from it for our salad tonight, since I already had the small blender out, I made the Horseradish mustard to sit and ferment for three days before adding in the last two ingredients. Once it is completed, I will divide it into 4 oz jars and share the finished product with our kids that want to try it. (It tasted delicious even without the fermentation and last two ingredients, so I bet it is going to be great.)

There are two more recipes for other mustards in the magazine, but I bet it will be hard to beat this one.

I must have been born in the wrong century. I love preserving, growing a garden, spinning yarn, knitting, and cooking from fresh ingredients. As we await their return for the night, I am preparing a meal of roasted radishes, turnips, yellow squash, garlic, spring onions, rosemary from our garden and the Farmers’ Market. Local grass finished beef kabobs with Monterey seasoning that I make. Shrimp with mustard basil marinade. Salad with local vegetables added and the vinaigrette from taproot magazine with fresh from my garden thyme.

Life is good here on our mountain farm.

June 14, 2014