Hi,

When I pick up corn next Saturday for the picnic. I will also pick up a lug of Concord grapes costing $29 plus tax from Vonbergens in Hebron, IL. I would have liked to postpone this purchase a week or so, but they cannot guarantee beyond next week what they will receive.

A lug is around 20 pounds. I will be making grape pie filling almost exclusively.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

When I pick up corn next Saturday for the picnic. I will also pick up a lug of Concord grapes costing $29 plus tax from Vonbergens in Hebron, IL. I would have liked to postpone this purchase a week or so, but they cannot guarantee beyond next week what they will receive.

A lug is around 20 pounds. I will be making grape pie filling almost exclusively.

Regards,

that's a lot of grapes to skin!

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

When I pick up corn next Saturday for the picnic. I will also pick up a lug of Concord grapes costing $29 plus tax from Vonbergens in Hebron, IL. I would have liked to postpone this purchase a week or so, but they cannot guarantee beyond next week what they will receive.

A lug is around 20 pounds. I will be making grape pie filling almost exclusively.

Regards,

A labor of love!

USDA wrote:pH of melons;
Honeydew pH = 6.3 – 6.7
Watermelon pH = 5.2 – 5.6
Cantaloupe pH = 6.2 – 7.1

Hi,

I hate to rain on your parade, but melon is not safe to make into a jam or preserve if it is a fruit-sugar combo. Whatever you make should be refrigerated and eaten in a fairly short period or frozen.

I have not seen Paul Virant's or Ferber's recipes, is there any addition of acid? What are the proportions?

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:

USDA wrote:pH of melons;
Honeydew pH = 6.3 – 6.7
Watermelon pH = 5.2 – 5.6
Cantaloupe pH = 6.2 – 7.1

Hi,

I hate to rain on your parade, but melon is not safe to make into a jam or preserve if it is a fruit-sugar combo. Whatever you make should be refrigerated and eaten in a fairly short period or frozen.

I have not seen Paul Virant's or Ferber's recipes, is there any addition of acid? What are the proportions?

Regards,

Cathy,

Here are the proportions:
Christina Ferber's recipe
2.25 pounds melon
7 ounces Green Apple Jelly
Juice of 2 lemons
1 lemon
1 orange

Paul Virant's recipe
16 cups melon
1 juiced lemon

Hi,

I would not process Paul's and while Ferber is adding some acidic, it is nothing like the acid of a pickled vegetable. These melons are so high on the pH scale, if they were pickled with vinegar, I would say for go for it.

I might make those recipes, though I would not can them.

Just because you can seal a jar, does not mean contents are suitable.

Sorry!

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

I would not process Paul's and while Ferber is adding some acidic, it is nothing like the acid of a pickled vegetable. These melons are so high on the pH scale, if they were pickled with vinegar, I would say for go for it.

I might make those recipes, though I would not can them.

Just because you can seal a jar, does not mean contents are suitable.

Sorry!

Regards,

No, I appreciate the heads-up on these. I will refrigerate whichever one I end up making.

Cathy2,

Wouldn't pressure canning work for those melon recipes?

Diannie wrote:Cathy2,

Wouldn't pressure canning work for those melon recipes?

Diannie,

Possibly, maybe, though will the finished product be anything you want?

My initial thought was using tomato paste as a comparative, except I didn;t find anything in the USDA website offering any recommended processing time.

The other is headspace, the 1/4 inch suitable for a jam will not work for pressure canning.

Why not make a small batch, keep some in the fridge and freeze the other. After a few days, defrost and make a comparison.

Regards,

Slideshow of vintage WW I and WW II posters encouraging home food preservation.

I want to cook some crabs or shrimp with preserved egg yolk, I like to do stuff myself when it makes sense, or poses a challenge.

Started these salted eggs today, Ill call the liquid a brine as it is water, kosher salt, 5 spice, green tea, chinese wine. 6 raw eggs per quart jar, hand tightened, and onto the counter in my kitchen for the next 30-60 days, fixin to give one a test in 30 days by preparing it hardboiled to test the salt level.

Made and canned watermelon pickles this summer. Haven't tried them yet!

jimswside wrote:I want to cook some crabs or shrimp with preserved egg yolk, I like to do stuff myself when it makes sense, or poses a challenge.

Started these salted eggs today, Ill call the liquid a brine as it is water, kosher salt, 5 spice, green tea, chinese wine. 6 raw eggs per quart jar, hand tightened, and onto the counter in my kitchen for the next 30-60 days, fixin to give one a test in 30 days by preparing it hardboiled to test the salt level.

@ 30 days broke a few open for some recipes, and one done in the rice cooker.

pretty succesfull, flavor and texture was there, just missing the color, ill have to tweak the wine content in the next batch and use duck eggs vs brown chicken eggs.

Hi,

National Center for Home Food Preservation has a webinar on the 'History, Science and Current Practice in Home Food Preservation.'

This is very densely packed with information, you may want to listen more than once.

Regards,

Preserving Food at Home, a self study
Announcing a free, self-paced, online course for those wanting to learn more about home canning and preservation.
Introduction to Food Preservation
General Canning
Canning Acid Foods
Canning Low-Acid Foods
This course is offered in the University of Georgia eLC system. UGA requires registration for you to receive a login: https://www.fcs.uga.edu/ext/food/nchfp_elc/

Home Canning Hobby Leads to Near-Fatal Medical Emergency

Cautionary tale of poorly canned elk meat causing botulism.

Regards,

Canning 101: How to substitute pectins

Oh Cathy,
I'm so happy to tell you I made some blueberry jam from a B H &G book called you can can.
It turned out "wonderful"!
On the FIRST try!
LOL
This is the first time jam has turned out right for me.
And it's delicious.
So happy.

Serious Eats has an interesting recipe up from a book "Little Jars, Big Flavors". Cardamon-Plum Jam.

They are giving away a few copies of the book, so go ahead and try.

Caramon-Plum Jam

Hi,

I found this article on a community cannery in Tennesse absolutely fascinating. Places like this were once all over the place. When Greater Midwest Foodways presented a program on the Great Depression a few years ago. One speaker discussed these local canneries, though in the past tense rather than present. It is cool this community cannery is alive, well and recently updated:

Renovated Cannery Reopens

On Friday -- the second day of the facility's operations this summer -- more than a dozen people worked, sweated and laughed as they processed peaches, corn and beans throughout the morning.

"People were desperate to get back into the cannery," said Mary Lou Woods, who supervises daily cannery operations.

"At last!" exclaimed Beirne Beaty, a canning veteran who has used the cannery for a number of years.

Do you know of any other community canneries functioning anywhere? I'd love to visit one sometime.

Regards,

Community Cannery Locations
Two identified in the Midwest:

Glass Rooster Cannery
1673 State Route 605
Sunbury, Ohio 43074
Phone: (740) 815-4324
Website: http://glassroostercannery.com/

Duluth Community Garden Program - The Cannery
206 W 4th Street
Duluth, MN 55806
Phone: (218) 722-4583
Website: http://www.duluthcommunitygarden.org/prog_cannery.html

For the canning experts...

Found this recipe today and it sounds like it could be mighty tasty and definitely interesting, but from the looks of it, it seem like there is WAY too little sugar to make it safe for regular hot waterbath canning.

Am I wrong? Is the fact that there's alcohol (though it seems like this recipe allows for this to be pretty variable, depending on the beer and wouldn't most of it cook off anyway?) override the need for more sugar?

Beer Rhubarb jam

Hi,

I believe you are correct, there is too little sugar. Unless you want to call it freezer jam for long term and use it fairly soon.

What I do when I find recipes that seem off proportionately, I go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation for a similar recipe: Rhubarb Strawberry Jam and Strawberry preserves.

The method used in this recipe, influenced by that French woman I'm sure, is a preserve rather than a jam. It is where you have whole bits of fruit than the mash-up we call jam.

The differences between jam and preserves is similar to people who call BBQ when they are grilling a piece of meat instead of low and slow over smoke:

Preserves

These "preserves" contain large or whole pieces of fruit within a thickened sugar syrup of medium to thick consistency. Fruit pieces retain their size and shape. If you are looking for a jam-like spread, please refer to the sections on jams, marmalades and conserves.

The sugar is necessary for the preservation in these methods. These products cannot be made without the sugar, or with sugar substitutes. The sugar should not be reduced, either. If you want reduced sugar preserves, try jams made with purchased pectins sold specifically for reduced- or no-sugar-added jams and jellies.

Anyway I think you are on the right path to figuring it out. If you want to make it as stated in the recipe, freeze it or use it sooner rather than later.

Regards,

Do you happen to have a go-to recipe for water bath canning of peaches? Do you prefer raw packed or cooked? I'm trying to find the perfect recipe, hoping to use low sugar.

And I swear I read something about just filling jars as tightly as possible with peaches and no sugar at all, that the cooking brought out the juice...does that sound reasonable to you? I don't want to screw these up

Hi,

There isn't so much a recipe for canning peaches, rather there is a method. All is pretty much covered by this link as well as embedded links: http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_02/peach_sliced.html

The first time I canned peaches, I used a light syrup with the thought of letting the natural fruit sweetness shine. I didn't especially like the outcome. The peaches tasted watery and diluted of their sweetness I thought I was preserving. Nothing to support my theory, though I suspect there was some osmosis going on here with the sugars from the peach leeching into the less sugary syrup.

The next time I canned peaches, I went with a medium syrup and liked the result much more.

There are people who can their peaches in apple juice. I never tasted any, so I have no idea what the outcome would be.

***

To answer a prior question, I never got around to answering. You can find reduced sugar recipes at this link: http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can7_jam_jelly.html

Since sugar functions as part of the preservation process, when you reduce sugar you may not always be able to waterbath preserve it. You may have to opt to freeze your jam. At the grocery store, there are low-sugar pectins with precise methods to follow. At Williams-Sonoma, they have Ponoma pectin priced around $5 or twice the cost of normal pectin. Don't let price turn you off, because that package has enough for at least two recipes of jam/jelly.

I hope to be making some peach jam this afternoon.

Regards,

I've successfully used the Pomona pectin with lower-sugar recipes. I believe I purchased it at Whole Foods, though I can't guarantee they have it now. I made a lovely spiced peach butter.

Hi,

Late Sunday afternoon, I did a visit to the farms. Earlier in the week, I brought home some corn from Iowa. It was our first taste of fresh corn this summer. Corn was something keenly desired by the family.

At Von Bergen's stand, 13 ears of corn is $5, whereas 60 ears of corn was $20. I knew a dozen ears would not quite satisfy our urge for good corn. I went with the 60 ears with the idea to pickle corn and perhaps freeze some, too.

Last night, I began shucking 40 ears of corn, then blanch, chill, slice off the kernels into one pot and scrap the remaining cream into another. By 9:00 pm, I had 18 cups of sliced corn kernels and a quart of cream.

I measured out the vinegar, sugar, water and spices, before going to the store to pick up red and green peppers. I wasn;t sure I had enough vinegar, but I came within a quarter cup of finishing my white vinegar.

I was the greatly efficient until it was time to go to the store. I really didn't want to go, so I poked around. Instead of being finished by 10:30 at the latest, I fiddled around finishing around 1:00 am yielding 11 pints of pickled corn.

Next week, I will make creamed corned and corn for freezing. The cream from this week will make a fine corn chowder.

Regards,

Cathy, your pickled corn sounds great-- but a lot of work!

This year our crabapple yielded a lot of nice fruit, with fewer buggy fruits than in any previous year. Hurrah! With the help of a friend, I made crabapple jelly:



following this recipe:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/10/ap ... am-recipe/

The yield was a lot more than I expected. Also, the recipe adds 10 cups of water for 8 pounds of fruit-- I would add less, especially if using regular apples. Crabapples are so intense that the amount of liquid was fine-- but it did yield a lot more than the specified amount of juice. I skipped the lemon juice, as crabapples are very acidic, and forgot to add the brandy.

Tomorrow, fresh biscuits for breakfast!

Happy canning,

Jen

Two questions for the pros: (1) some of y jars have a bit of a white powdery residue when they dry after being removed from the water bath. I presume this is something from the pot or rack but am worried it means the food isn't good. I've checked the seals several times, they're definitely sealed. Are the jars safe to eat from? And (2) one batch of peaches had sticky jars, like some juice seeped out during cooking or something...again, are the jars from that batch safe? Everything looks good and sealed but I don't want to get anyone sick!

Hi,

I will often wash my filled jars before storage. I pretty much remove what you are highlighting here.

Store these with the rings removed. If later when you take them from the shelf and the seal is broken, don't eat it. Plus those rings often rust and are a dog to remove later.

Regards,

I didn't take pictures of the raw grapes, but yesterday DH took in all the Concord grapes, ripe or (mostly) not. The birds were killing us, and they were dropping onto the deck without being ripe. I don't know how grape farmers do it. Anyway, having some unripe grapes helps, since the riper the grape the less pectin it has.

Today we stemmed and washed them, separated the skins from the pulp and pureed them with some sugar, cooked, used a food mill to remove the seeds, cooked more (with sugar and lemon juice), water bath canned them, and 4.5 hours from start to finish I have 7 one-cup jars of jam! I have heard 5 pops so far... (not sure how to embed from Instagram) http://instagram.com/p/dxhcpwDlzw/