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Canning for Beginners

If you can follow a recipe, you can can.

Honestly.

You can preserve, process, put-up, store, whatever you want to call it. You can do it.

When I decided that I wanted to learn how to can the bounty of our garden, I thought I’d have to get someone experienced in canning to teach me how. Schedules are hard to coordinate, however, and when I was ready, I learned how from a book.

This is the book I used: The Ball Blue Book. Since then, I’ve followed other recipes from cookbooks, friends, magazines, etc. But this is the book that started it all and this is the book I go back to for a “refresher course” on canning whenever I need one.

What’s great about this book?

  1. Good, thorough, easy-to-follow directions.
  2. Illustrations of equipment and diagrams of important.
  3. Recipes of all sorts
  4. Enough explanation and background information to make you feel safe and secure in canning food.

All in all, The Ball Blue Book is an invaluable resource and a bargain to boot.

Posted in • Cooking.

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By 20 Minute Jan – October 29, 2007

Hops

We grow hops. Two kinds even.

What exactly are hops?… you might well wonder.

According to the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, hops are one of the only three ingredients for making beer (the other two being barley and water. Yeast had yet to be discovered.)

hops.JPGHops are a truly amazing plant. They are hardy perennials that come up from a rizome, grow like mad all summer, blossom, grow, and die down in the winter. In spring, hops do the same things all over again. Jim says he’d have no trouble believing the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, if it were actually Jack and the Hops. They make a sturdy vine that grows 20-30 feet up the guide wire to the telephone pole that is in our back yard. hops2.jpg

We’ve harvested our own hops. We don’t use them for brewing. The way I understand it, the packaged hops that Jim buys and adds to the beer he homebrews are calibrated so he knows exactly how much bitterness he’s adding to his beer (right, honey?) Using the hops from the garden would be a gamble, final product wise.

I know, however, that one day, when Jim gets one of these
tripod.jpg

and the perfect huge copper brew pot

and dresses up like this, ababrewer.JPG

he’ll need those homegrown hops for the authentic (and unpredictable) colonial beer taste.

Posted in • Green Home Brewing, • Growing.

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By 20 Minute Jan – October 27, 2007

Bounty

bounty.jpg

Posted in • Growing.

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By 20 Minute Jan – October 25, 2007

Neat Food Preservation Site

The National Center for Home Food Preservation is a great online resource for research-based recommendations for most methods of home food preservation. Established with funding from the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (CSREES-USDA), this organization’s goals are “to address food safety concerns for those who practice and teach home food preservation and processing methods.” The site provides a wealth of information on how to can, freeze, dry, cure & smoke, ferment, pickle, jam and store an amazing variety of foods, from fruits and vegetables to meat and fish.

The site includes recipes, seasonal tips, publications, and multimedia presentations on steps from filling jars to pressurizing a pressure canner. There’s an FAQ and an easy function for requesting personalized information. In addition, the site offers a free, self-paced, online course for those wanting to learn more about home canning and preservation. This Web-CT course requires creating a login and looks like a serious –but fun!– study of Food Preservation.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation is goldmine of useful information. I recommend checking it out, whether you already make your own preserves, want to learn to how to, or just wonder for how long that can of baking soda will be good (2 years, the authorities say!)

Posted in • Cooking.

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By 20 Minute Jan – October 24, 2007

The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control


If you want to garden organically, you’ll need some advice, knowledge, and encouragement. You might be able to come by some of those things from your local garden store or center, but if you don’t want your advice to come with a strong suggestion that you purchase some chemical pest spray, you will need to widen your circle of experts.

One nearly indispensable book that you’ll want to consult is The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guild to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals. Editors Barbara W. Ellis and Fern Marshall Bradley have crafted a nearly-encyclopedic book that will make you a smarter, better gardener. These are two experts you’ll want on your side.

You’ll learn to look at a plant in a wholistic manner, not simply focusing on those weird little bugs or that rusty mold that you wish were not there, but instead evaluating the overall health of the plant. Moreover, you’ll be offered problem-specific treatments.

The book features lovely pictures and drawings. Page-size illustrations explain the multitude of issues that might arise with, say, an apple tree, including its roots, bark, branches, leaves, blossoms and fruit. You’ll be astonished that anything grows, given all that can go wrong! With this guide by your side, you’ll feel sure that whatever insect or disease concerns might arise in your garden, you’ll be able to deal with it in a non-chemical, non-harmful manner.

Posted in • Growing.

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By 20 Minute Jan – October 23, 2007