This sweet flavorful jam combines two of the earliest garden yields, strawberries and rhubarb. Adding rhubarb to this jam enhances the flavor and texture.
Baked beans are a long standing tradition at barbecues, picnics and potlucks. In the off canning season I will pressure can quarts of baked beans to have on hand for the summer months. Homemade baked beans are so much better than bought and you can control what you put in them.
Cucumbers have always been a top priority when deciding what to plant in my garden. Our family loves to eat them raw and I love to pickle them. A favorite recipe to can for years was Seven Day Sweet Pickles. This recipe can be found in old cookbooks from our grandmother’s time. The original recipe took quite a lot of sugar but you can have the same crunchy sweet pickle using Stevia.
Have you wanted to learn the art of canning? You can! Here is a step-by-step tutorial on canning diced tomatoes. This is an easy item to start with and you can just do a few pints at a time as you learn the process. The best thing of all –you will have a superior product compared to what you can purchase in the store because you control what you put into the jars. I love to can diced tomatoes in the summertime to add to Taco Soup and Beefy Cabbage Soup in the cold winter months.
Pickling cucumbers always find an honored place in my garden. These cucumbers are different than the cukes you buy in the stores. Pickling cucumbers are especially bred for pickling–just like their name says. They are short and blocky, medium yellow/green in color, and have black spines. They make the BEST pickles. I love to can all different kinds of pickles and my family loves them.
Canning and preserving foods has become a lost art to many people in our generation. I still enjoy gardening and processing most of our food. Our family loves tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. If I don’t preserve enough of soup to last a year–they let me know very quickly.
Fermented foods, such as sauerkraut have a long history in German culture. Sauerkraut is finely cut raw cabbage that is salted, packed into crocks, and allowed to ferment for a number of weeks. I learned to make sauerkraut in a large 10 gallon crock from my late mother-in-law. She would slice as many as 50 head of cabbage by hand on sauerkraut making day.
This is a great time of the year when orchard begin to give of their bounty. Plums are a delicious tart/sweet fruit and we enjoy them picked ripe from the trees. This Plum Jam features four kitchen staple ingredients and has a wonderful flavor. I use unflavored gelatin in almost all of the jams I make and they store very well. The jam will need to be refrigerated to thicken. This evening I found my teenage son eating the jam from the jar by the spoonfuls! That’s just how good it is.
Summer is coming and with it comes delicious berries of all kinds ripening in our garden and orchard. Triple Berry Jam has become my favorite. I will eat it over ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese , and I must admit even right from the jar for dessert. You also can you all strawberries if you prefer. That option is listed below.
Fall has arrived and the lovely aroma of cinnamon fills the air as apples and pumpkins are turned into delicious fall treats. Years ago, making Apple Butter was an all day affair, as it was made in large copper kettles over an open wood fire. It had to be stirred continually with large wooden paddles so it wouldn’t scorch. The Apple Butter was slowly cooked until the point where the sugar caramelized giving it a dark rich color and great flavor. Today, crock-pots have replaced the copper kettle and the sweet cinnamon aroma fills our kitchen.
