I make a lot of different jams, I think over the last couple of years I made 20 different types and by now they have all disappeared except the sour plum jam, so I think they are pretty good. But the staple for my boys is Blackberry Jam. Blackberries are everywhere in abundance, and they are relatively easy to pick. Back when we lived in California, we would go down on the levees and pick buckets full of berries. Walkers and joggers would wander by and look at us like we were crazy or comment on the novelty of someone picking the berries. If we did not get to a patch of berries, they would dry on the vines, too many for even the birds to eat!
Now that we live in the Pacific Northwest, there is a lot more competition for natures bounty. I would go to the end of our driveway where the main road is lined with eight foot tall blackberry brambles on one side before work. At 5-6 AM in the morning, there would be several other people out in the pre-dawn light filling buckets and trying not to tangle themselves in the thorns.
With my fresh picked berries, I follow these steps to produce a consistently perfect jam:
Prepare jars, rings, and lids - each batch will make 4-5 pints of jam. I usually prepare 6 jars in case I miraculously have more than I thought.
Ingredients:
6 cups crushed blackberries
5 cups sugar
1 package pectin (usually SureJell)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Crush berries - I usually pour berries into a measuring cup then mash them until juicy.
In a large pot, a tall stockpot is best, bring the berries to a boil, stirring constantly
Add sugar and keep stirring until all is melted, bring back to a boil.
Add lemon juice.
Add pectin, keep stirring and bring to a rolling boil.
Boil for 2-4 minutes, this is where a long handled spoon can come in handy!
Done! Ladle into jars, cap, and put into a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
Foraging References
I added a new page with references to books on foraging that I have found helpful and informative.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Easy Essentials: Homemade Applesauce
Homemade applesauce is one of the easy things to make that can save you money and give you a healthier food for your family. I make the applesauce with skins and all by using a grinder after cooking the apples.
I have planted 10 apple trees on my property, but in the meantime, I have to make do with buying what we need each year. After a trip to Montana, the family stopped at the fruit stand in Thorpe, Washington and I bought a box of Honeycrisp Apples and a box of Granny Smith apples. The Honeycrisp's looked delicious, and the Granny Smiths were on sale!
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Unfortunately, my cheapness got the better of me on this occasion. The Honeycrisp's were an excellent apple and sweet, but the Granny Smith apples were too sour and resulted in me having to add sugar to the applesauce. Definitely I will use only sweet apples in the future for making applesauce.
My basic recipe:
Wash the apples.
Slice and core the apples.
Place in a large pot - I use my 30QT stockpot so that I can make a large batch. Add about 1.5 inches of water to the bottom of the pot.
Bring the pot to a boil and let the apples cook until soft - skins and all.
I then use my kitchenaid grinder attachment and put all the apples and sauce through this to grind up the skins.
Add sugar if needed.
Can in a pressure canner at 10 psi for 20 minutes.
I used 30 apples and made 7 quart jars of applesauce. A case of apples resulted in two batches.
What do do with the apples cores? Make apple jelly!
Something to write about another time.
I have planted 10 apple trees on my property, but in the meantime, I have to make do with buying what we need each year. After a trip to Montana, the family stopped at the fruit stand in Thorpe, Washington and I bought a box of Honeycrisp Apples and a box of Granny Smith apples. The Honeycrisp's looked delicious, and the Granny Smiths were on sale!
Unfortunately, my cheapness got the better of me on this occasion. The Honeycrisp's were an excellent apple and sweet, but the Granny Smith apples were too sour and resulted in me having to add sugar to the applesauce. Definitely I will use only sweet apples in the future for making applesauce.
My basic recipe:
Wash the apples.
Slice and core the apples.
Place in a large pot - I use my 30QT stockpot so that I can make a large batch. Add about 1.5 inches of water to the bottom of the pot.
Bring the pot to a boil and let the apples cook until soft - skins and all.
I then use my kitchenaid grinder attachment and put all the apples and sauce through this to grind up the skins.
Add sugar if needed.
Can in a pressure canner at 10 psi for 20 minutes.
I used 30 apples and made 7 quart jars of applesauce. A case of apples resulted in two batches.
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| starting to cook the apples |
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| Cooking apples until mushy. |
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| Kitchenaid grinder. |
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| Grinding the Applesauce through the kitchenaid grinder. |
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| Finished Applesauce! |
What do do with the apples cores? Make apple jelly!
Something to write about another time.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Growing Dry Beans - Heirloom Rockwell Beans
I tried something new in my garden this year, growing dry beans to save for the year. In my area, there is a nice heirloom bean that has been growing here for the last 100 plus years. The Rockwell bean is a small bush bean, similar in size to a pinto bean, that makes excellent baked beans.
I harvested the beans in the first week of October. Simply pulled up the plants and laid them out in my garage to dry for a week.
Ames True American Wood Handle Bow Rake 1849400 (Google Affiliate Ad)After a week, I shelled the beans. They are a cool white and maroon/red color and look perfect for planting next year.
I read some of the stories of the bean:
So after reading about this cool old bean, I bought a package at the farmers market from Willowwood Farms,
I of course tested these out! The recipe was on the back of the label, and made a great baked bean that even my little boys liked!
I kept a handfull of beans and planted them in late may as recommended on several blogs about this bean. Despite several run ins with cut worms and birds eating the sprouts, I ended up getting 12 bushes of beans out the the handfull of beans. They grew very well and produced 3-5 pods with 3-6 beans per pod.
Not the largest harvest in the world, but I am going to save these and plant next year and see what I can do with better planting and plant protection knowledge!
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Nettle Quiche
I am in love with Nettles lately. Maybe because they make themselves very hard not to notice when they are intertwined through our berry bushes all around our property!
In the spirit of using what is available, I decided to utilize the nettles with my abundance of eggs and make nettle quiche for a family breakfast.
I carefully - ie. wearing gloves - collected the tips of some young nettles. I had mowed down a section of nettles on a trail earlier in the year. It is a bit late for young nettle tips where I am at, but where I had knocked them down there were fresh shoots coming back up that I was able to collect.
Still carefully, I put the nettles into a small sauce pan and steamed them for 10 minutes -
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| Stinging nettle near my house |
I carefully - ie. wearing gloves - collected the tips of some young nettles. I had mowed down a section of nettles on a trail earlier in the year. It is a bit late for young nettle tips where I am at, but where I had knocked them down there were fresh shoots coming back up that I was able to collect.
Still carefully, I put the nettles into a small sauce pan and steamed them for 10 minutes -
I followed a spinach quiche recipe I found online.
And enjoyed!
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Mussel Soup
After an errand that took me to the north end of Whidbey Island, I could not resist the temptation of stopping at Penn Cove to grab a few mussels for dinner.
Easy hike across the sand dune from the north access point to the mussel beds:
Grab a dozen or more mussels off of the rocks and on my way!
Always check to ensure you can safely harvest before collecting shellfish: DOH Website for Penn Cove
I love cioppino but never have time to make this delicacy at home, instead I have developed this quick and easy mussel soup. Tracy does not eat mussels, and usually the boys have refused Dad's strange foods, but today Carter ate some of the mussels through he would not try the soup. The soup was excellent - roasted garlic, rosemary, tomato, and mussels make an excellent taste combination that I need to try in other dishes.
Recipe: Mussel Soup - two servings
1 Tablespoon of Butter
3 Cloves of Baked Garlic - Baked a head of Russian Red Garlic the night before
1 Can Tomato Soup (10.75 oz)
2 Cans Water
2 Sprigs Rosemary
15 Fresh Mussels
In a small pot, melt butter. Add baked garlic. Maybe chopped garlic would work? But baked garlic is soft and melt into the sauce so that it disappears, only to resurface on the taste buds. Brown garlic and butter.
Add can of tomato soup and two cans full of water, bring to boil.
Add two sprigs of rosemary - fresh or dried both seem to work well.
Add mussels to boiling soup, cover for 3-5 minutes until all shells are open and cooked. If any shells do not open, they are bad and should not be eaten.
Fish out rosemary, serve in bowls with a fork and spoon and a secondary location for the shells.
Enjoy!
Easy hike across the sand dune from the north access point to the mussel beds:
Grab a dozen or more mussels off of the rocks and on my way!
Always check to ensure you can safely harvest before collecting shellfish: DOH Website for Penn Cove
I love cioppino but never have time to make this delicacy at home, instead I have developed this quick and easy mussel soup. Tracy does not eat mussels, and usually the boys have refused Dad's strange foods, but today Carter ate some of the mussels through he would not try the soup. The soup was excellent - roasted garlic, rosemary, tomato, and mussels make an excellent taste combination that I need to try in other dishes.
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| Tomato, Garlic, and Rosemary Mussel Soup |
Recipe: Mussel Soup - two servings
1 Tablespoon of Butter
3 Cloves of Baked Garlic - Baked a head of Russian Red Garlic the night before
1 Can Tomato Soup (10.75 oz)
2 Cans Water
2 Sprigs Rosemary
15 Fresh Mussels
In a small pot, melt butter. Add baked garlic. Maybe chopped garlic would work? But baked garlic is soft and melt into the sauce so that it disappears, only to resurface on the taste buds. Brown garlic and butter.
Add can of tomato soup and two cans full of water, bring to boil.
Add two sprigs of rosemary - fresh or dried both seem to work well.
Add mussels to boiling soup, cover for 3-5 minutes until all shells are open and cooked. If any shells do not open, they are bad and should not be eaten.
Fish out rosemary, serve in bowls with a fork and spoon and a secondary location for the shells.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Chicken Coop Construction
As soon as we moved onto our new property, we started figuring out where to put the chicken coop. Chickens are easy to raise and take of if you build them a nice enough place with extra room and easy access. Benefits are free eggs, great manure, and lots of fun for the kids!
For this coop, I used alot of materials left over from other projects or left by the previous owners of our home who left extra supplies from building the house in the garage. Siding, shingles, and roofing asphalt were all leftovers, along with about 25% of the 2x4s and other boards.
We picked up the windows and doors from the local Habitat for Humanity store. They are all old farmhouse style - windows were $5 each and the door was $15. Habitat Store
Design: I used a 6' x 8' design for my chicken coop, 6' high walls and a peaked roof. Tracy did extensive research of coop designs and determined what the coop should look like. Our primary source of information was a great site - Backyard Chickens - it was also a great source for the "how to" for me to create what my beautiful wife needed our coop to look like.
Base: I leveled the base then placed 4" cinderblocks, ensuring that they were all level. The base is built out of 2x6 treated boards to prevent rotting.
Over the foundation timbers, I installed 3/4" treated plywood to cap my foundation.
For the structure, I used 2x4s roughly 20" on center. Corner posts are double 2x4s. Note the door framing on this structure - a slight drawback of buying a used door is that you do not get the exact dimensions that you may want, but if you find something that you can make work then it is great. A slight modification to the top of the door frame, raising it up three inches, allowed me to utilize my Habitat for Humanity door.
The lucky girls - only two for now that were donated by a neighbor who's coop was overrun by hawks and raccoons. Scruffy and Stripes are the survivors!
Hatch opens on the back of the coop to allow access to the nesting boxes and the eggs.
For this coop, I used alot of materials left over from other projects or left by the previous owners of our home who left extra supplies from building the house in the garage. Siding, shingles, and roofing asphalt were all leftovers, along with about 25% of the 2x4s and other boards.
We picked up the windows and doors from the local Habitat for Humanity store. They are all old farmhouse style - windows were $5 each and the door was $15. Habitat Store
Design: I used a 6' x 8' design for my chicken coop, 6' high walls and a peaked roof. Tracy did extensive research of coop designs and determined what the coop should look like. Our primary source of information was a great site - Backyard Chickens - it was also a great source for the "how to" for me to create what my beautiful wife needed our coop to look like.
Base: I leveled the base then placed 4" cinderblocks, ensuring that they were all level. The base is built out of 2x6 treated boards to prevent rotting.
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| Building the base. |
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| Foundation construction |
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| Carter enjoying an improvised slide! |
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| Dylan "tests" the ladder when Dad is distracted. |
I sheathed the sides and top of the coop in 1/2" plywood then cut out the windows.
I used 1x4 inch trim around the windows, corners, and door of the coop, then used left over cedar siding from our house, with cedar shingles in the top.
The chicken run is constructed of 8' poles planted 2' into the ground. Six foot chicken wire fence surrounds the coop buried one foot into the ground. Bird netting covers the top of the coop to keep away hawks, eagles, and owls.
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| Chicken coop and run |
Hatch opens into the chicken run! The hinged hatch has a cord that runs through a pulley so that we can open and close the hatch from outside the run.
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| Scruffy and Stripes foraging away in their new home! |
The lucky girls - only two for now that were donated by a neighbor who's coop was overrun by hawks and raccoons. Scruffy and Stripes are the survivors!
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| Nesting box hatch. |
Hatch opens on the back of the coop to allow access to the nesting boxes and the eggs.
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| Dad and Carter feeding the chickens. |
Job complete, fresh eggs for everybody!
Monday, July 23, 2012
The Joy of Nettles: Green Nettle Tea
Stinging nettles. Nearly everyone in the Northwest has a story from growing up about an encounter with this particularly painful forest herb.
Walking down a nice green trail and brushing your hand against the innocent looking greenery only to feel the sharp sting from the miniature hypodermic needles covering the leaves and stem of this plant.
Reaching for those ripe berries and getting thwarted by the welt delivering plant hidden among the vines.
Putting on a glove, pulling up some nettles, and trying to slap them across your brothers neck (my brother started it!).
Only recently have I discovered that there are even more uses for this smarting plant other than the joy of getting back at your brother for countless Nuremberg level crimes.
Green nettle tea is simple and easy to make, as follows:
Pick (carefully!) a half dozen green nettle tops. Preferably the young tender shoots, either in the early spring, or coming up later from plants cut earlier in the year. Pick the top 6-8 inches that have not yet developed the woody inner fiber.
Wash (still wearing gloves) any dust or whatnot off of the leaves and stems.
Place in a pot with 4-5 cups of water, boil for 5 minutes.
Pick out the leaves and stems, save for other applications (will post these later).
Pour water into coffe mug.
Drink.
If too strong for you, add a drop of honey.
If you want to serve to other people, add honey and a dash of lemon juice, at least the first time.
It makes a strong, herbal type tea that I find invigorating. I always think, the sting has gone out of all the leaves and stems at this point, so it has gotta be in the tea right? Maybe that is what makes it invigorating!
Enjoy!
Walking down a nice green trail and brushing your hand against the innocent looking greenery only to feel the sharp sting from the miniature hypodermic needles covering the leaves and stem of this plant.
Putting on a glove, pulling up some nettles, and trying to slap them across your brothers neck (my brother started it!).
Only recently have I discovered that there are even more uses for this smarting plant other than the joy of getting back at your brother for countless Nuremberg level crimes.
Green nettle tea is simple and easy to make, as follows:
Pick (carefully!) a half dozen green nettle tops. Preferably the young tender shoots, either in the early spring, or coming up later from plants cut earlier in the year. Pick the top 6-8 inches that have not yet developed the woody inner fiber.
Wash (still wearing gloves) any dust or whatnot off of the leaves and stems.
Place in a pot with 4-5 cups of water, boil for 5 minutes.
Pick out the leaves and stems, save for other applications (will post these later).
Pour water into coffe mug.
Drink.
If too strong for you, add a drop of honey.
If you want to serve to other people, add honey and a dash of lemon juice, at least the first time.
It makes a strong, herbal type tea that I find invigorating. I always think, the sting has gone out of all the leaves and stems at this point, so it has gotta be in the tea right? Maybe that is what makes it invigorating!
Enjoy!
Friday, July 20, 2012
Red Huckleberry
Red huckleberries are the lesser known of the huckleberry plants. Bright red, they look too good to be true on the tall bushes that they grow on - some are tarter than others depending on the bush location and level of ripeness, but all are delicious!
We have a 1/2 dozen large red huckleberry bushes growing across our property. We started getting ripe berries around July 4th and most berries will be ripe by the end of July. The berries are very bright and look like salmon eggs, it would be interesting to try fishing with them to see if they worked as bait.
My boys and I collected a about two cups full from one large bush that ripened before all the others, and that was after eating more that 1/2 of the berries as we picked.
Not enough berries for Jam, so we made a red huckleberry crisp with what we did not eat:
Recipe:
2 cups of berries
1/2 cup of white sugar
1 1/2 cup of flour
1 cup of brown sugar
1 stick of butter
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix berries and white sugar, put on bottom of pan.
Mix flour, brown sugar and blend in the stick of butter until you get a crumbly type texture. Crumble on top of the berries
Cook in oven for 20-30 minutes until the berries are bubbling through the crumble mix.
Enjoy!
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| Red Huckleberry Bush |
My boys and I collected a about two cups full from one large bush that ripened before all the others, and that was after eating more that 1/2 of the berries as we picked.
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| Red Huckleberries |
Recipe:
2 cups of berries
1/2 cup of white sugar
1 1/2 cup of flour
1 cup of brown sugar
1 stick of butter
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix berries and white sugar, put on bottom of pan.
Mix flour, brown sugar and blend in the stick of butter until you get a crumbly type texture. Crumble on top of the berries
Cook in oven for 20-30 minutes until the berries are bubbling through the crumble mix.
Enjoy!
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| Red Huckleberry Crisp |
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