How I Spent My Thanksgiving Vacation

Situations and revelations often bring about change. Over the past few years, my husband and I have really made changes to how we live. We raise chickens for eggs and try to grow a good chunk of our groceries as well as put up fruits and veggies for out-of-season enjoyment. We brew beer and make a variety of fruit wines and embrace a do-it-yourself kind of life. However, with these changes came an influx of supplies like canning pots and jars, brewing equipment, peat pots, feed bins, and tools. Our organizational band-aids can no longer handle the clutter.

Oh yeah, did I mention that we’re selling my husband’s truck? We’ve been operating as a single-car family for about a year now and realized that transportation isn’t an issue.

However, that back end of the truck filled with tools is a huge issue. Those tools have to go somewhere, and no, my living room is not an option. I just got the radial arm saw out of there!

Let me add in here that we’re kind of on the poor side. A shed would be the perfect answer for my husband’s tools that are in the truck and for the ones in the house. The tools leaving the house then frees up space for organizing the other supplies and our pantry. Unfortunately, we have to sell the truck in order to have the money to buy that shed. I think you can see my conundrum. It’s like one of those sliding picture puzzles where you use an empty space to slide the pieces around until you put the picture together correctly. In my case, the picture was messed up but someone filled the much-needed empty space!

Enter Freecycle and a wonderful blessing from the Lord! A FREE 6’ x 8’ shed in great shape! All we had to do was pick it up. Not a problem!! Tom and Jared took off with a bucket of tools and a couple of hours later hauled the disassembled shed into the backyard. The perfect empty space for our sliding picture puzzle!

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my dear husband and son put that shed in place and moved our other shed across the yard.

Then they built shelves for both sheds and organized Tom’s tools and the garden equipment.

With open space on the tool shelves in the basement, we emptied the “Cave,” a room we use for storage but was so disorganized that it was more of a dumping ground than useful storage.

Tom and Jared lined half the Cave with shelves for all the jars of food I’ve put up over the last couple of months as well as the extra jars, canning pots, and beer and wine making equipment.

Write directly on the jar with a Sharpie. It comes off in washing with no residue unlike labels that can leave a mess behind.

The other half of the Cave, behind the shelves, will become a music room for Jared so he has space for his drums, keyboard, and guitar. He’s pretty excited to have a space for music and clutter out of his room!

We aren’t completely finished with this huge project yet. We still have a few puzzle pieces out of place. The tool shelves in the basement still need work before they can hold all of the coolers and bins we use constantly for our on-the-go lifestyle and some other miscellaneous things like grow lights, water jugs, propane canisters, etc. Jared’s area isn’t set up yet either because we still have some lumber stored there, but we are well on our way to living a little more efficiently. I’m pretty excited about seeing the finished picture in our puzzle!

Thanks for stopping by! By the way, I am confident that the entire project will be finished in a timely manner. Why? Christmas is coming, and we want to decorate! That, and we have a 4-H meeting in 2 weeks, and we need the living room back by then.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

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Menu Plan Monday, 11/28

How was your Thanksgiving? I pray it was filled with wonderful memory-making moments that will be retold over and over again at future Thanksgiving dinners!

Ours was pretty special. We tackled an incredibly huge project and actually got it about 75% finished. My husband and son are amazing! From Thanksgiving until yesterday they built a shed, moved a shed, built shelves for both sheds, emptied a truck full of tools into the sheds, emptied an entire room that was filled to the brim with stuff, built shelves for that room, refilled the room in a much more organized way, and started on the last room of shelves. I think they were very happy to go to work today and get a break!

For the record, they really did do most of the work. I did some of the carting and organizing, but mostly I just kept them well-fed and kept up on the animal and garden chores, washed dishes and monitored a steady stream of freecycle posts as we got rid of stuff. It was quite the interesting Thanksgiving vacation.

We’ll be decorating for Christmas a little late this year, but it’ll be worth it. We’ve had to put these projects off for so long because of time and money issues that it’s kind of exciting to get them done.

Anyway, I have a few more things to list on freecycle and Christmas jammies to get working on and a sewing machine to fix. Have a wonderful week!

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 11/28/2011

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, or smoothies.

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, and pears (the fruit selection will probably stay about the same now until March. No more summer fruits…sigh.)

Dinner

Monday – Turkey-rice soup, salad, artisan bread

Tuesday – Big salad, artisan bread

Wednesday – Sautéed veggies and marinara over homemade pasta, salad

Thursday – White chili, salad

Friday – Vegetable barley soup, salad

Saturday – Chicken and broccoli in orange sauce over rice, salad

Sunday – Tater tot casserole, salad

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by! Can you tell the weatherman is predicting a cold snap this week? I just love a nice, hearty soup when it gets cold!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Last Minute Change

A couple of weeks ago I ran into an amazing deal on cabbage and picked up cabbage heads at a quarter a piece. Yes, that’s a quarter a head not a quarter a pound. You know me and an amazing deal like that. I picked up 10 heads of cabbage and started looking for what to do with it.

Since I have a long list of Polish ancestors, it wasn’t too difficult to find plenty of yummy cabbage dishes like halupki and halushki. I’d also been itching to try my hand at making sauerkraut, but I was content to wait until the garden produced the 25 pounds I needed.

You can imagine that I made quick work of shredding, salting, and getting that cabbage ready for fermenting into sauerkraut. 

However, I didn’t look very closely at the big picture here. Sauerkraut takes about 4 weeks to ferment and be ready for canning. I didn’t realize until this week that canning day was also Thanksgiving dinner prep day. Yeah. That was not the best laid plan at all.

So, amid pies and potatoes, I canned 7 quarts of sauerkraut, which, by the way, came out great for my first time! My Babchi would have been so proud.

You don’t get the recipe today, but you do get to have a good laugh at my poor planning. On the plus side, we’ll have plenty of yummy sauerkraut for our New Year’s Day kielbasi and sauerkraut.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

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Holiday Camping

It’s that time of year again. Time to go camping!!

No, I don’t mean the back-to-nature-fun-in-the woods kind of camping. I meant the let’s-spend-Thanksgiving-week-in-front-of-Best-Buy camping.

Yes, our burg made national news again this year because of the people who have nothing better to do with their lives than to camp out in front of Best Buy for a week or two before Thanksgiving. You read that correctly. A week or two. Both last year and this year, the first tent was pitched nine days early! Last year’s early birds got 2 free IPads and tons of free food from area restaurants and a little more than the usual 15 minutes of fame. I’m not sure what this year’s campers received, if anything. All I know is that Best Buy gets a lot of free national advertising out of the deal.

I remember standing in a Black Friday line only once about 15 years ago and I didn’t show up until about 6 AM. I still got what I wanted. Granted, all I wanted was 2 Gameboys and this wasn’t the first year for the Gameboy. They were probably out a couple of years by the time I broke down and bought one for our oldest son. We were never the first people on the block to have anything, and we still aren’t.

As you know, most of the so-called deals are on electronics, and if you’ve been around me more than five minutes, you know I’m not really an electronic gizmo person. In fact, neither are my husband and kids. Sure, we like our laptops and MP3 players, but none of our gadgets are top of line. I got my laptop on clearance and my husband’s and my MP3 players cost about $10 each last Christmas, and they all work just fine for us. I don’t even have a cell phone. And I don’t miss it. The last game console we purchased was a PS2 many, many years ago, and we don’t have any plans to get any more. We don’t have cable or Netflix or any other subscription type thing to watch television shows, so we don’t really care about an upgrade for our television set. It plays DVDs and the PS2 just fine. As you can see, we just don’t buy the things people are willing to use up their vacation time for, living in front of Best Buy.

Besides, do you really trust the quality of those rushed-to-market-for-the-Christmas-frenzy electronics? I’ve seen too many problems with these products in the past to have any confidence in them now. If there’s something we really want, we’ll wait. Except for a Kindle, that is. I’m willing to take the chance with a Kindle. I’m just sayin’…in case my honey reads this. Can you camp out in front of Amazon? Is that physically possible?

Thanks for stopping by! I pray that if you are in the middle of the frantic Black Friday frenzy, that your war wounds are minimal and heal before Christmas.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

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Menu Plan Monday 11/21

Happy Thanksgiving week, everyone! Are you frantically running round getting the last of your ingredients for the big Thanksgiving feast? I think I’m down to the turkey, a loaf of bread for the stuffing and a dozen eggs. My poor chickens just can’t keep up with the egg demands of the holidays!

The holiday week menu is always rather dull. Between the shopping, the prepping, and the cleaning along with all of the regular chores and work, dinner gets really simple! I make up for it on Thanksgiving with a serious feast, though. Why do I make such a big feast for 6 people? So I don’t have to cook for three days afterwards, of course. I am grateful that my family is perfectly content with “slop bowls” of leftovers. Having those days off from cooking after Thanksgiving kind of make all the prep beforehand worth the fuss.

This year, those leftovers are really going to come in handy. We originally were going to paint the outside of the house, finally, but a few things changed, and we have to jump into the reorganization of about 75% of my house. A shed has to be built. Another shed has to be moved. A truck full of tools will be emptied. The “Cave” will be emptied, new shelving added and the room changed so that half of the room will be Jared’s music room and the other half will have the beer making and wine making supplies, beer and wine storage, and canning supplies storage. What is now the tool room will be emptied into a shed and half of the “Cave” will move into the tool room which will then be the pantry. It’s all kind of like one of the sliding puzzles with the piece missing and you have to slide the other pieces around until it makes a pretty picture. It all starts with the addition of the second shed (a Freecycle find! Score!) and then everything moves. We hope this whole project can be done over the four-day holiday break. Please, pray!

On the plus side, we’ll definitely be working off those yummy pies!

So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? It’s probably going to be a whole lot more relaxing than ours. Please, share so I can drool over your plans of rest and relaxation.

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 11/21/2011

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, or smoothies.

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, and pears (the fruit selection will probably stay about the same now until March. No more summer fruits…sigh.)

Dinner

Monday – Vegetable marinara over homemade pasta, tossed salad

Tuesday – Big salad, artisan bread

Wednesday – Big salad, artisan bread

Thursday – Turkey, smashed taters, apple and sweet potato bake, stuffing, orange cranberry sauce, mashed turnips, broccoli, green beans (not the casserole), corn, rolls

Friday – Leftovers

Saturday – Leftovers

Sunday – Leftovers

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Scrap Happy

I’ve been a little scrap happy lately. Nope, I’m not scrapbooking our urban homesteading adventures. I’m not much of a scrapbook person. I am, however, a quilter. While my friend Linda’s idea of a scrap heap is a table covered with pretty papers and sparkly embellishments, my idea of a scrap heap includes bins filled with leftover colorful cotton fabric pieces just big enough for a 4-inch by 4-inch square. My mother went from sewing factory worker to self-employed seamstress to quilting queen over the years. I have lots of wonderful scraps!

Right now, I am quite grateful for all those scraps. My husband’s and my comforters are at the end of their lives. Since we only have two Wal-Mart special comforters that we alternate and have had them both for many years, I pretty impressed that they’ve lasted this long. We definitely got our money’s worth out of them, which, I can assure you, wasn’t very much.

Unfortunately, I’m not willing to part with any of our Christmas stash to buy a new comforter. However, at the rate our blankets are aging and deteriorating, we’ll be shivering under the sheets when the temperature drops. Central Florida doesn’t see any snow, but the temperature has been known to dip into the thirties in December and January. I love cuddling with my hubby, but how is he going to stay warm while he’s keeping me warm?!

So, I raided the scrap bins for anything and everything blue. It’s not going to be the most artistic looking quilt, but it’ll be quick, cheap, and warm. In fact, I’m almost finished cutting all of the 4-inch squares. I already have enough border and binding material, too, along with a blue flat sheet that a friend gave me for the backing. All I’ll have to purchase is the batting. To make the project even faster, I’ll most likely be tying it instead of quilting it.

Thank you for stopping by! Hopefully, next week I’ll have a picture of the finished hodge podge scrap quilt. Is your sewing machine humming these days with holiday projects or have you put it aside because of all of the holiday activities?

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Canning Pumpkin

Canning pumpkin is a time-consuming labor of love. I related my odd adventure into cutting up just one pie pumpkin last week. Multiply that by ten, and you have pumpkin canning day. I am so grateful that my husband volunteered to do the tough stuff. How embarrassing that he made it look so easy. I think he volunteered out of self-defense, so he wouldn’t find pumpkin innards all over his tools.

Although hubby made short work of cutting up those pumpkins, they still needed to be scraped clean, peeled, cubed for canning, heated, packed into jars, and processed for 90 minutes. Yep, you read that correctly. NINETY MINUTES! In the end, I put up 4 canner loads of quarts, cleaned the kitchen really well, and played a hand or twenty of solitaire while babysitting the pressure canner.

Obviously, canning pumpkin is one of those canning adventures you have to have a really good reason to undertake. In this case, the price of the pumpkins was amazing and well, you absolutely can’t beat the taste. Would I do it again? Yep. Only next time, I hope I’m using pumpkins we grew in our own garden.

By the way, the directions for canning pumpkin are the same as canning winter squash like acorn or butternut squash.

Also, take note that the pumpkin is cubed when canned, NOT puréed! Do not can puréed pumpkin! That’s just a recipe for disaster. When you open the jar to make a pie or a little pumpkin bread, simply drain the pumpkin and purée using a food processor, blender, or stick blender.

The USDA Canning Guide thinks I should have gotten about 2 ½ pounds of pumpkin cubes into each quart-sized canning jar. I got one pound into each jar, and I thought I was really cramming it in there. I think the USDA’s weight estimate is the beginning weight before cutting, scraping, removing the stem, and peeling, but don’t quote me.

One last note about canning large quantities: know how much your canner holds and only prepare that many jars at a time. Most recipes give you estimates on how much produce will fill a canner load of 7 quarts or 9 pints. My pressure canner only holds 6 quarts, so I have to adjust the recipe accordingly. Do not prepare and fill jars ahead of time, thinking you’ll just get an extra batch ready. Temperature is an important factor in preventing bacteria growth and spoilage. The jars start hot and have to stay hot until they hit the canner. I learned this one the hard way. When I first learned how to can, I joined a group of friends in putting up a few bushels of tomatoes. Unfortunately, the prepping and filling went faster than the processing, and the jars had to sit a little before processing. The only jars I’ve ever had go bad were jars from that batch. Only can what will fit in your canner at one time!

Canning Pumpkin

Adapted from the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning.

Quantity: An average of 16 pounds is needed per canner load of 7 quarts; an average of 10 pounds is needed per canner load of 9 pints—an average of 2-1/4 pounds per quart.

Quality: Pumpkins and squash should have a hard rind and mature pulp of ideal quality for cooking fresh. Small size pumpkins (sugar or pie varieties) make better products.

Procedure: Wash, remove seeds, cut into 1-inch-wide slices, and peel. Cut flesh into 1-inch cubes. Place cubes in boiling water for 2 minutes. This is very different than bringing to a boil for 2 minutes. Placing the cubes in already boiling water heat the pumpkin without cooking it. Placing the pumpkin cubes in water and then bringing to a boil runs the risk of cooking the pumpkin and making it soft, which increases the chances of spoilage.

Caution: Do not mash or puree.

Fill hot jars with cubes and cooking liquid, leaving 1-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if need­ed. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened clean paper towel. Adjust lids and process. Process pints at 11 pounds of pressure for 55 minutes. Process quarts at 11 pounds of pressure for 90 minutes. Check the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning for pressure adjustments needed for altitude.

For making pies, drain jars and strain, sieve, or purée the cubes at preparation time.

Pumpkin Pie

¾ cup sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

2 large eggs

1 ¾ cups puréed pumpkin

1 12-ounce can evaporated milk

1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Mix sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves in a small bowl. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Stir in pumpkin and sugar-spice mixture. Gradually stir in evaporated milk.

Pour into the pie shell.

Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350°F and bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for at least 2 hours before serving. Top with plenty of whipped cream! Refrigerate the leftovers.

Note:

If you forget to drop the temperature of the oven, the pie might still come out okay, but it’s a little scary when it comes out the oven.

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Menu Plan Monday 11/14

The last two months have really been filled with one activity after another. We had a booth at a history faire, our 4-H club held a yard sale, our county extension office held its annual 4-H open house, we competed at the Hillsborough County Fair, and the list goes on and on. The last event for a while was this past weekend. Believe it or not, the holidays are gong to actually be a nice calm break for us!

I still have a bushel of apples to put up as apple butter and apple pie filling, and I have to get started on a simple quilt for my and my hubby’s bed, but this week is looking like I’ll catch up on some cleaning and organizing. Yay! Our big Thanksgiving plans are to paint the outside of the house. I’d really like to reclaim the inside first though!

How are your holiday plans coming, by the way? Is your shopping done? Are you putting the final touches on a few homemade gifts? Are you buying, making, or ditching the Christmas cards this year? Um, I’m woefully behind on most of my holiday decisions. I know. Shame on me! Good thing I have plenty of extra goodies canned and bottled!

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 11/14/2011

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, or smoothies.

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, and pears (the fruit selection will probably stay about the same now until March. No more summer fruits…sigh.)

Dinner

Monday – Roasted vegetable medley, tossed salad, artisan bread

Tuesday – Big salad, artisan bread

Wednesday – Baked penne pasta with sausage, spinach and ricotta cheese, tossed salad

Thursday – Chicken fajitas, tossed salad

Friday – Vegetable barley soup

Saturday – Grilled Caribbean chicken, coconut rice, green beans

Sunday – Chili, cornbread, salad

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Using Fresh Pumpkin

Although I’m not a fan of the color orange, I love seeing all the pumpkins everywhere throughout the fall holidays. I really love how the price of those pumpkins drops drastically after Halloween. Last week, we walked out of our favorite produce stand with a cartload of pie pumpkins that cost $1 a pumpkin. What a deal!

If you’ve followed me through the strawberry fields forever, the tomato obsession, the peach-a-palooza, and the mushroom mania, you know that my family and I spent several days learning how to use all those pumpkins.

For all that I love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, especially with holiday dishes, I have never used fresh pumpkin in anything. I knew it could be canned because a friend of mine canned all the pumpkins they used at a Halloween event a couple of years ago. However, I’ve never done it, and all of my pumpkin pies, pumpkin cookies, and pumpkin breads started with those classic orange cans of pumpkin purée lining the grocery shelves starting in October. When we started growing more and more produce and learning more about growing seasons, I realized that those cans were processed at least a year ago! So, it was time to learn how to put up fresh pumpkin and how to bake with it.

Today, I’m only going to tell you about turning that plump, orange pumpkin into a usable purée. It’s a little more time consuming than just opening a can, but the results are so worth it. Canning pumpkin, on the other hand, is an all day labor of love that I’ll share tomorrow.

By the way, pie pumpkins are different than those huge carving pumpkins. Not only are the walls of a pie pumpkin thicker, but the pumpkin meat itself is denser and sweeter than the stringy and grainy carving pumpkins. Can you cook a carving pumpkin? Probably, but you will probably be very disappointed with the results of your labor.

What you need:

A very sharp knife…or six

Sharp-edged spoon for scraping

The first time I cut into one of those pie pumpkins I was a little concerned. My knife got stuck in the pumpkin. Evidently, the pumpkin was the inspiration for self-sealing tires. You know the kind that immediately reseal themselves around a hole or leak. The pumpkin sucked in around that knife so fast that I used two other knives in jaws-of-life fashion to rescue the first knife. They all got stuck.

After a little trial and error, I finally found a way to press on the pumpkin to open the knife slit enough to pull the knives out and try again. I’m not going to lie to you. This part was tough. Not only are the walls of a pie pumpkin thicker than a carving pumpkin, but the rind is a lot tougher. By the time I finished quartering the first pumpkin, I was raiding my husband’s tools in a desperate search for anything with a sharp blade and a powerful motor! Every kind of saw came to mind, but my dear hubby takes his tools with him every day. I used to believe that he took them with him because he needed them on the job, but I now realize that he hauls everything around so he doesn’t have to pick pumpkin guts out of the teeth of his saw blades after his wife has one of her “brilliant” ideas. Right then and there my “brilliant” idea was that we needed a band saw. I don’t actually know what a band saw is, but I hear people butcher deer with one so I knew it would work on pumpkins!

Anyway, after the initial quartering, the job did get much easier…probably because I pressed my son into service. No, really, once the pumpkin was in quarters, it really did get easier. Jared and I used spoons to scrape out all of the stringy innards and seeds until the pumpkin flesh was nice and clean.

Jared used his hands as only a 12-year-old boy would do!

Almost clean. Those strings up at the top have to go!

 

At this point we moved on to peeling and cubing for canning. To use the pumpkin right away or to refrigerate or freeze the purée, all you have to do now is cook it. You can microwave it (not going to happen in this house), bake it, or steam it until the flesh is falling off the rind, which happens pretty quickly.

I had about a pound of cubed pumpkin leftover from canning that I tossed in a steamer basket and set over boiling water. It was ready for mashing in about 5 minutes. If you take the unpeeled quarters and place in a steamer basket over boiling water and cover. The edible meat will be falling off the rind in about 10 to 15 minutes minutes.

OR

Bake your quartered and cleaned pieces in a covered, oven-proof baking dish for 350°F oven for about 45 minutes.

OR

Microwave the pieces in a covered, microwave-safe dish with an inch or so of water for 15 minutes on high.

Do not boil your pumpkin in water to cook it. Your pumpkin purée will be watery and flavorless.

Once your pumpkin is cooked, it’s time for puréeing. Scrape the cooked pumpkin meat from the rind and transfer it to a bowl or sturdy container.

A couple of months ago I found an immersion blender for $3 at Goodwill (Score!). I’ve come to truly appreciate how that little blender makes short work of puréeing a bowlful of just about anything. You can also use a blender, food processor or food mill. Use whatever you have that will turn that pumpkin into something that resembles baby food.

Do not add water! In fact, you’ll need to let your purée sit for a few minutes as it drains off excess water. If you like, you can place the purée in a double layer of cheese cloth to drain or just pour off the water that accumulates around the bottom of the purée. The microwave method will have the most water to drain because it cooks with the water in the dish. The steamed cubes had about a tablespoon to pour off. I suspect that the baked version will have the most flavor because of the lack of water and well, that’s just the nature of baking and roasting. 

Anyway, now you have a dish of puréed pumpkin ready for your favorite pumpkin recipe. If you’re not ready to use it, just pop it in the refrigerator for a couple of days or transfer it to a freezer-safe container or zipper-seal bag and store in the freezer for a month or so. Do not can it as a purée! Home canning and puréed food do not go well together! You cannot reach high enough temperatures for long enough at home to make this safe for canning! Please, don’t even think of doing it! I’ll cover safe canning of pumpkin in another post…this one’s long enough already.

I road-tested my pumpkin in some pumpkin bread that received two-thumbs up from the whole family. Using the fresh pumpkin really did make a difference. The bread was very moist and so full of flavor! I can’t wait to make a few pumpkin pies! I’ve never tried pumpkin soup before, but I think I might have to venture down that road, too, now that I have 24 quarts of canned pumpkin and three more pumpkins left to can! I told you we filled the cart!

Pumpkin Bread

3 cups sugar

1 cup cooking oil

4 eggs

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups whole wheat flour or fresh-milled flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2/3 cup water

1 ¾ cup puréed pumpkin

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease the bottom and sides of two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar and oil together with an electric mixer. Add eggs and beat well. Set aside.

Combine the dry ingredient in a large bowl (that’s the flours, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg). Alternately add flour mixture and water to the sugar mixture, beating on low after each addition just until combined. Beat in pumpkin. Spoon batter into prepared pans.

Bake at 350°F for 55 to 65 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Set the pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove the bread from the pans and cool completely on the wire racks. Slice and serve.

Tips:

For pumpkin bread with nuts, add ¾ cup of chopped walnuts or pecans into the batter after the pumpkin has been added.

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Cream of Broccoli Soup

Every once in a while we end up with a lot of broccoli at one time, either from too many plants ripening at the same time or my favorite produce stand has a beautiful pile of broccoli for 2 head for a $1. How could I resist?!

Unfortunately, broccoli doesn’t really keep for long periods, even in the fridge, and it doesn’t can well either. Hubby isn’t too keen on frozen broccoli, so I treated my family to a pot of cream of broccoli soup, which uses a lot of broccoli. I hope you and your family like this soup as much as we do!

Cream of Broccoli Soup

4 cups broccoli flowerets

2 cups water

1 tablespoon margarine or butter

¼ cup chopped celery

¼ cup chopped onion

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

½ cup diced carrots

2 cup milk

1 teaspoon dried parsley

Dash salt

Dash pepper

Place the broccoli and water in a medium saucepan and cook over medium-high heat until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Drain, reserving ½ cup of the cooking liquid. Measure out ½ cup of the broccoli. Set aside.

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add celery and onions, sautéing over medium-high heat until the onions are transparent. Stir in the flour and cook for another minute. Carefully pour in the reserved broccoli liquid, stirring well. Add carrots. Simmer over medium-high heat until the carrots are cooked through, about 5 minutes.

Add the broccoli to the mixture in the pot except the reserved ½ cup. Carefully, pour in the milk. Heat slowly over low heat until the soup is heated through and starting to thicken. Blend the soup with an immersion blender or work in batches with a blender or food processor until creamy and pretty smooth. I don't go for perfectly smooth. My family likes the pieces of carrots and broccoli to nibble on. Stir in reserved broccoli, parsley, salt and pepper. Serve. Top with a sprinkling of shredded cheddar cheese, if desired.

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Menu Plan Monday 11/7

The week ahead is pretty full but no where near as crazy as it’s been. I have a couple of bushels of apples to put up as apple butter, apple sauce, and apple pie filling along with a few more pie pumpkins to cube and can. I’m woefully behind, though, on my holiday plans this year. Normally, I already have my list of who is getting gift baskets this year and what is going in them, but all I have are a few crates of jars filled with yummy stuff and no idea who I’m giving it to! Honest to goodness, this has been the most packed school year we’ve had for a very long time.

Anyway, the menu will be pretty simple from now until January. There’s just too many interesting things to do to be worrying about complicated meals. Keep It Simple! Especially through the holidays!

Don’t forget to stop by Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas! If you’re looking for some new recipe resources, check out this Recipe Index Round Up.

Menu Plan for Week of 11/07/2011

Breakfast 

Fruit, granola, yogurt, or smoothies.

Lunch

Lunch of the week – Salads, wraps or leftovers

Fruit of the week – Apples, bananas, and pears (the fruit selection will probably stay about the same now until March. No more summer fruits…sigh.)

Dinner

Monday – TexasRanger Soup, tossed salad

Tuesday – Bigsalad, artisan bread

Wednesday – Homemade Pizza (I have had this on the menu for 3 weeks now. I think it’s time to actually make it!)

Thursday – Minestrone, tossed salad

Friday – Veggie pitas

Saturday – Roastedvegetables, tossed salad

Sunday – Homemade ravioli (this should be an interesting experiment)

Snacks – Crackers and peanut butter, fruit, yogurt, carrot and celery sticks, or popcorn.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty

Canning Carrots

Last week, I put up several pounds of carrots by freezing them. Although frozen veggies usually taste better than canned, the freezer can only hold so much, and I always keep in mind that a freezer full of food can go bad quickly if the power goes out. Ever since we lost power for five days during a particularly busy hurricane season, I make sure I put up plenty of jars that can sit on the shelf safely even if the lights go out.

Canning veggies is almost as easy as freezing them. You do need a pressure canner, though. Vegetables are low acid foods that need high temperatures for safe processing for long-term storage. A water bath canner heats the food to roughly the temperature of boiling water: 212°F. In high acid foods like pickles, the acidity of the vinegar kills a significant amount of bacteria and the boiling water is hot enough to kill the rest. A pressure canner reaches at least 240°F, plenty high enough to kill any nasty bacteria even in low-acid food.

If you don’t have a pressure canner, borrow one from a friend until you can afford to purchase your own. I have never met anyone who owns and regularly uses a pressure canner who isn’t willing to lend it out. In fact, she’ll probably join you on canning day. Anyone who’s canned a large amount of veggies before knows that many hands and lively conversation make for light work!

Carrots can be raw packed or hot packed, which means they can go into the jars hot or cold. However, the jars must be hot during packing!

Canning Carrots

Ingredients

Fresh whole carrots, 17-1/2 pounds for a canner load of 7 quarts or about 11 pounds for a canner load of 9 pints. Although this seems to be a standard quantity in the canning books I’ve read, I got 16 pints from 10 pounds of carrots.

Canning and pickling salt

Prepare jars, seals and rings.

Wash, peel, and rewash carrots. Slice or dice.

Hot pack - Cover with boiling water; bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Fill hot jars with carrots and hot cooking water, leaving 1-inch of headspace.

Raw pack - Fill hot jars tightly with raw carrots, leaving 1-inch headspace.

Add 1 teaspoon of salt per quart to the jar or ½ teaspoon per pint, if desired. The amount of salt in the recipe doesn't significantly help with preservation, but it does brings out the flavor of the carrots. If you’re watching your salt intake, go ahead and skip it.

Add hot cooking liquid or water, leaving 1-inch headspace.

Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if needed. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened clean paper towel. Adjust lids.

Process at 11 pounds of pressure for 25 minutes for pints and for 30 minutes for quarts. Cool completely, check for a proper seal, and store in a cool dark place.

Notes:

I used to keep the rings on my jars when I stored them. I have since realized why serious canners remove the rings for storage.

First, the only purpose the rings serve is to keep the seals on the jars tightly until the whole heating and cooling process is done and the jars are sealed. Once properly sealed, the jars will stay sealed even if the rings are removed.

Second, rings wear out and unless you can replace them regularly, you’re eventually going to run out of rings if you keep them on the processed jars.

Since I keep running into good produce deals, I’ve been doing a lot of canning. Plus, I’ve recently cleaned out my ring bin and tossed any rusty rings. Imagine my surprise when I came up short on rings! I quickly raided a few from a batch of already processed jam.

Now, after the jars are cooled and ready for storage, I remove the rings, wipe down the jars and sore the jars without the rings!

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