Following in an age old tradition here at the urban homestead we’ve been busy in our preservation efforts – canning, drying and brewing.
Canning
Made a batch of jalapeno jelly (first time trying this recipe and was quite pleased with the results)
After straining the liquid for the jelly, saved up the leftover chopped peppers and added it to a bit of homegrown/made salsa. But what to put the salsa on? So we splurged and bought a bag of organic blue corn chips to compliment the homemade salsa.
Brewing
With all the herbs and fall soon approaching will be making a few batches of herbal syrups and brewing some herbal wine. I will post all about our herbal brewing efforts here at LHITC
Next up was green beans!
Then elderberry syrup
Drying
With back to normal summer time temps it’s perfect for solar drying tomatoes in the solar food pantries. With the extreme heat, I expect these tomatoes to be dry in just a few days and will pack ’em in olive to preserve them for fall and winter use.
This is some of what’s left (below)….
We’ve also got to “put up” more squash pickles and pickled dilly beans before summer is out – they are two of the favorites here!
Not to mention, more tomato sauce needs to be “put up” and with the guavas ripening soon they’ll have to be dealt with too.
Busy, busy!
Now if you’ll excuse me I have a lunch date with Mr Peppers- going to stuff him and his buddies.
Comments(4)
Maureen says:
August 26, 2009 at 8:49 amWe LOVE our Food Pantry…been drying zucchini like crazy! I have two questions on drying tomatoes. For the most part they are doing fine when I slice them thinly, but when I tried drying the cherry tomatoes cut in half (which I think is what you are doing) and the Romas, quite a few got mold on them (and it was 100 degrees both days). I bring them in at night so the dew wasn’t the problem. Any ideas on what could be going wrong?
Also, how exactly do you store your tomatoes? I was told to freeze them for longest shelf life. If you pack them in olive oil, do you just store them in a cupboard?
Andrea says:
August 26, 2009 at 11:17 amI was wondering the same thing as Maureen…how do you store the tomatoes? Do you seal them in a water bath or just refrigerate them? How do you use them afterwards?
Michelle says:
August 26, 2009 at 2:38 pmI love the photos of the jalapeno jelly and the tomatoes drying in the sun….gorgeous. I’m still waiting for our tomatoes to ripen…it’s been a slow process around here!
Alice says:
August 27, 2009 at 10:51 amI dried some of my green beans. They are and old south thing. They use to string the beans on thread and hang them in the house to dry. Just thread up a needle and string between two of the beans in the pod. Hang to dry in the house. Well that is not quite the way I did it, but that is the old way of doing it. I got out the dehydrator and put them in there whole. To cook just soak for a couple hours then simmer on the stove for a couple hours. Season as you like. Most old timers used bacon, grease, salt pork etc. I bit of veggie bacon would do too. Or I just cook and a little salt and good eating.