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Rule-breaking comes with pickles and jars

July 30th, 2008 · Food preparation, Tools

Home canning has enough rules to fill a peck of pickled peppers, which is probably why:

  • Most canning seems to be done by people who learned it from their elders.
  • Most canners break the rules.

I arrived at those conclusions after years of interviewing home cooks, including some who canned. They included individuals who:

  • Never processed their jams, jellies, preserves or pickles in a boiling-water bath.
  • Used paraffin to seal their jellies.
  • Always saved jars and lids from commercial salsas, pickles and so forth and used them for their canning.
  • Never added citric acid to their canned tomatoes.
  • Added unauthorized items to their jars. Peach pits come to mind.

Each of these practices is strictly forbidden by the canning authorities, notably the USDA’s Complete Guide to Home Canning and any ag extension agent you might want to ask. (If you like your guidance and recipes in book form, it’s also available from Amazon.)

Hazardous but…

If I understand correctly, the first three banned practices above might result in food spoilage, which would be a shame but not something to panic about. The fourth item, the citric acid in the tomatoes, has the potential to allow botulism poisoning, which is big deal, although it’s worth noting that only 19 cases of food-borne botulism occurred in the most recent report, for 2006, I could find at the CDC. (The botulin toxin can develop in low-acid foods, and many of today’s tomatoes aren’t as acidic as old-time tomatoes.) Of those 19 cases, only two resulted from home canning. Oh, and nobody died. I’ve ranted about this before.

I mention all this as prelude to my new adventure in pickling. I came into more free food the other day, in this case cucumbers from my neophyte gardening baby sister who is overrun with cucumbers. I offered to take some off her hands and attempt to pickle them, inspired as I was by Jennifer the Baklava Queen and Ed “Mr. Pickle” Bruske at The Slow Cook.

This decision plunged me into pickle research and then back to my conclusions that most people who do these things learned it from their elders and break the rules. I decided I could break rules, too. Maybe if I’d gone and bought or borrowed the highly recommended by all Ball Blue Book I wouldn’t have been as frustrated. I didn’t, though, so I muddled through using the USDA guide’s recipes, sort of, so that I’d do it right, mostly, this first time I really canned. (I’m not sure last fall’s two half-pints of unprocessed pickled okra count.)

Rules I broke

In an upcoming post, I’ll get into the pickling process, but for the moment, here are rules I broke:

  • Use pickling salt. I don’t have pickling salt, but I do have kosher salt and sea salt and both, contrary to the rules, contain an anticaking agent, although a different one (yellow prussiate of soda) than in my table salt (calcium silicate). I used the sea salt, and so far, the pickle juice hasn’t turned cloudy.
  • Match jar and lid brands. Oops. I can’t remember why I have jars or lids, but one is Kerr and the other is Ball. They sealed anyway.
  • Use lids that are less than a year old. Oops again. I don’t know how long I’ve had those lids, but it’s a lot longer than a year. They looked fine. The seal compound wasn’t cracked or otherwise bad-looking. Again, they sealed anyway.
  • Process correctly. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. The official way is to put your jars in warm water about halfway up the sides of the jars, then add hot water to cover by an inch and quickly bring to a boil and boil 10 minutes. I guess I did. Sort of. It took more water than I anticipated. It took longer for the water to boil than anticipated. I didn’t use a ruler to measure the 1 inch. I think they boiled for 10 minutes. Hope that works.
  • Use unblemished produce. Yea. Sure. Not.
  • Use Kirby or pickling cucumbers. I have no idea what kind of cucumbers these were. Guess I’ll find out whether it matters.

So, there’s my list, at least as far as I can recall it. Stay tuned for Part 2 of Adventures in Pickling.

Credit: Top photo courtesy of Xandert at morguefile.com

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Preserving apples, part 2: frozen slices

July 29th, 2008 · Cooking for one, Cooking tips, Environment, Food preparation, recipes

If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have undertaken this exercise in freezing apples. But this is how we learn, right? It started because I wasn’t of a mind to turn on the oven, so I decided to prep half my apples, freeze them and turn them into pie at some future date. (The rest of the apples became applesauce.)

I therefore set up my aging apple machine, peeled, cored and sliced the apples. I had to fuss a little, as the Lodi apples had deep seed husks and the meat wasn’t quite as firm as the peeler’s spring, so I had to jockey the blade arm a little so as not to remove most of the apple along with the peel. Plus, there was the darned, not entirely cooperative suction cup, whose face is more cracked and wrinkled than mine. Not that mine is, of course.

Ain’t it purty?

Anyway, I dropped the slices into water treated with a bit of citric acid, which is supposed to prevent browning.

Then I drained them, packed them into 1 pint freezer containers. (These really were 1 pint, I promise, aka 16 fluid ounces.) Then I stuck them in the freezer where they’ll remain until some time as I feel inclined to turn the oven on.

Learning from leftovers

I had a small quantity of slices left that wouldn’t fit in one of the three pints I filled and weren’t nearly enough to fill a fourth. I didn’t particularly care for the Lodi flavor raw, so I decided to make a mini apple crisp. It was delicious. In making it, however, I learned that Lodi apples turn to applesauce when baked, too. Which means, if I want an apple pie instead of an applesauce pie come fall, I’d better combine these with another kind of apple. Or, regarded another way, I could have made all the apples into applesauce and saved the peeling, coring and slicing for some other variety. No harm done. Lesson learned.

Apple crisp for one

  • 1/2 cup-3/4 cup apple slices
  • 2 tablespoons old-fashioned rolled oats
  • 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons butter, softened or melted
  • Cinnamon, to taste
  1. Place apples in the bottom of a buttered individual casserole dish (ramekin).
  2. Blend oats, brown sugar and butter, and distribute over apples. Sprinkle with cinnamon to taste.
  3. Cook 1 minute on high in microwave. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes in toaster oven. (Test with fork, knife or toothpick to make sure apples are done.) Cool, and serve. Makes 1 serving.

Note: I started the dish in the microwave because I feared the top might burn if I did the entire bake in the oven. If your toaster oven is taller inside than mine is, you might not need to do the microwave start.

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Garden strategy: friends with green thumbs

July 28th, 2008 · General

I’m supposed to write a garden update for my friends at Ethicurean.com. I’ll say this much: My flowers are looking pretty good.

(OK, the composter in the foreground is a little inelegant, but it was the only good angle from which I could capture all the colors.)

My new herbs? Not so much. The new sage is thriving in its spot between the ornamental grass, the rose bush and candytuft. Can’t get a good picture of the whole plant, given its situation, but its leaves look healthy.

Over in the more spacious but less sunny location where I planted oregano, parsley and thyme, I find three small plants, with only the oregano being significantly larger than the start I planted back in May. It’s a disappointment, but not a surprise. If they survive and reappear next spring, maybe I’ll hack the shrubs around them to see if I can get them a little more sun. The lemon balm did take root in the alley, but now it’s gone. I suspect some ambitious person pulled it, thinking it was a weed.

In the pots, the bay laurel is a few inches taller, and the rosemary continues to prosper. The mint is ready for another harvest, but I think I’ll pass this time. No point in saving it and drying it if I can’t use that much. Besides, it’s being guarded.

I’ve concluded that my best vegetable-gardening strategy is to be extra nice to people with bountiful gardens. To that end: Thanks, Lynn, Lori, Loren and the Lees family. (Hmm. Maybe I’ll be extra nice to anyone whose name begins with L just in case.)

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Preserving apples, part 1: getting saucy

July 27th, 2008 · Food preparation, recipes

I finally got around to those apples, and my second adventure in food preservation for the year. (The dried mint was the first.) Seeing as I prefer to do things the hard way, I decided to turn some of the apples into applesauce and prep the rest for future pie-baking. Turns out I had a few for a little eat-it-now treat, too.

Most of the final product

Since I don’t want to make things too hard, I’m only going to talk about the applesauce for now. (I’ll get to the others later.) Applesauce is the world’s easiest thing to make, especially, I’ve decided, if you have Lodi apples. (Especially, too, if you’re just going to eat the stuff and not worry about saving it.) Here, though, if you’re a newbie, is the recipe:

Applesauce

  • 2.5 pounds tart baking or sauce apples (see note)
  • 1/4 cup water
  • Sugar to taste (optional)
  1. Quarter and core apples. Place in heavy pan with water over low heat and cover.
  2. Simmer until apples are soft. Mash or put through sieve or mill to remove skin and even out texture.
  3. Stir in sugar, if desired.
  4. Cool and eat, or freeze. Makes 5 cups.

Notes

  • I used Lodi apples, which may be the tartest I’ve ever tasted. I like tartness, fortunately, but added 1/2 cup sugar to the finished product. The University of Missouri extension people recommend the following varieties, too, for sauce: Arkansas Black, Cortland, Empire, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Jonathan, Liberty, Lodi. McIntosh, Mutsu (Crispin), Northern Spy, Ozark Gold, Rome Beauty, Spartan, Suncrisp, Winesap and York.
  • After reading way too much about this stuff, I can tell you that some expert (I forget which) recommends that you not add cinnamon to applesauce that you freeze, as it supposedly will lose some of its punch. Add it, instead, when you serve it.
  • I opted to freeze. I don’t know whether it’s critical, but I bought official freezer containers as opposed to general food storage containers. The freezer containers are heavier and have handy screw-on lids.
  • Don’t forget to add the water, as I did. The apples cooked on a little before I noticed, but no harm done. I just added the water and kept ‘em simmering. Lovely enameled pans clean up easily.
  • The Lodi apple skin cooked down so much, some of it passed pretty easily through the food mill, but, then, I was using the largest holes. The skin didn’t seem to harm the flavor, though, and probably adds to the nutritional value.

CORRECTION: Ignore if you’re reading this the first time, but if you’re coming back (or getting it a second time on a feed), please note that the yield is 5 cups not 5 pints.

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Papalo (pipicha/pepiche?) has powerful flavor

July 25th, 2008 · Food selection, local food

So I said to the guy at the CSA pickup, “Got any cilantro?” and he says, “try this, papalo, it’s sort of like cilantro.” At least I think he said papalo. I wasn’t taking notes, and I should know by now always to take notes if I want to remember anything. He might have said pipicha. Whatever it was, it definitely started with a P, as in potent.

(That’s one of the cool things about Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance; even after a dozen years, they still offer things I haven’t tried before. This P herb was one of them.)

So I took the pretty little herb, with its velvety soft, scalloped leaves. The moment I broke off a couple of leaves to snip over some tomatoes, its powerful smell hit the olfactory. Curious, I thought. Then I ate my tomatoes. Whoa, this is definitely not cilantro. Yes, it has a hint of cilantro’s citrusy flavor, but it also has a penetrating taste that’s as pungent as its aroma, which is to say it overpowered the tomatoes. I tried it in a pasta dish that had lots of onions, and it overpowered the taste there, too, despite the fact I used only one leaf.

It took a little hunting, but I finally found the little herb online. The Cook’s Thesaurus clearly labels it pipicha. The Homesick Texan, however, says its papalo. Brooklynometry says pipicha. I was ready to go with the Texan since she comes from source, more or less, but finally The Gardeners Pantry pointed me to a page at Garden Mosaics, a a program of Cornell University, which is noted for its agricultural and horticultural programs. (Garden Mosaics, incidentally, looks to be a very cool program.) Garden Mosaics says it’s papalo, so I do, too.

Anybody out there use this stuff? I love cilantro, but, whew, papalo is going to take some getting used to!

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Pass the real food; hold the nutrition advice

July 24th, 2008 · Books, Healthy eating, Research

I’ve about had it with science and nutrition, the combination that is. Those of you who follow such things may recall the publicity Michael Pollan gave the concept of nutritionism. I thought he had a point, but I thought there was still room for studying nutrition, diet and health, especially since so many health problems appear to be diet-related.

I’ve changed my mind for the most part. I suppose my resolve had been diminishing anyway, but then last month in Nutrition Action, I read the cover story, “Multi Complex: Picking a multivitamin gets tricky.” Say what? Amid the ebb and flow of the latest must-have vitamin or must-dodge foodstuff, one constant has been that taking a multivitamin is a good idea. Then the nutrition science people started putting supplements in more foods, and now we have to be careful with taking a multivitamin.

And then yesterday, Ali at the Cleaner Plate Club pointed to a Slate article from 1999 questioning whether calcium was the cure for or cause of osteoporosis. (Actually, I was relieved to see it was from 1999, because I do recall reading of a link between high protein intake, which for most Americans means meat, and osteoporosis, but still…)

So I’m done. The remaining multivitamins hit the trash can. Ditto the fish oil capsules. Hated them anyway. I’m still debating the Tums I take for calcium supplementation, but given my marginal bone mass, I’ll probably keep taking them.

I’m also taking Pollan’s recommendation (which I was mostly doing anyway) of “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” and remembering “food” is something that great-great-Grandma would recognize. Nina Planck has a similar food definition in her book Real Food. (Although I do recall that my 19th-century-born Grandma and Grandpa had an affection for those nasty Guy’s green-onion-flavored potato chips. But that’s an aside. Grandma and Grandpa both lived into their 90s.)

So don’t look for me on the supplements aisle. I’ll be getting my nutrition in my unprocessed, old-fashioned food.

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