With our still ongoing drought, these amazing souls are doing their best to bring us “colorful” although they never receive the benefits of irrigation like their veggie neighbors do. Good job, guys. But…
Shy Visitor
…several gorgeous others dropped in to give us a really good show. This one was terribly camera shy. The red wasps were NOT. I had to work quickly, dodge a bit, and get back into the house, pronto. Still, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how many flashes of “colorful” they were willing to add to our fun, here:
Caught ya!
I have no idea what kind of butterflies these are, except I know they are the faithful kind; they come to my lantana beds every year. Some new ones showed up this year, though:
Swoosh!
I followed this one around a bit, and am so glad because…
Exposed!
…we get a glimpse of blue and red undies! Can you see it? If you click on the photo, it will zoom in for you. And, oh, look! Here is the shyest of them all:
I Spy!
It probably thinks it is hidden–I took several of this one zipping out of the shot.
These are not mostly canning recipes, but mostly hints about getting out from under a pile of vegetables on the counter. Of course, the solution is to eat them, but did you know:
It is perfectly fun and delicious to eat a cheese and mayo sandwich with a whole tomato on the side to eat like an apple?
Carrots, are irresistible sliced lengthwise and fried in butter, with a dash of onion, until soft and caramelized?
Grated zucchini keeps well in the freezer, and in recipe-sized batches would be ready for bread in the winter in a short time?
Bitter cucumbers, sliced and soaked in the refrigerator in vinegar/salt water will lose their bitterness in a couple days? And are yummy?
If your onions are not keeping well, you can still save them by slipping one into each jar of green beans before canning them at the same pressure?
Okay, now for the recipes!
Summer Squash Patties
3-4 c. grated summer squash
1 egg
¼ c. chopped onion
¼ c. self-rising flour
¼ c. powdered milk
¼ c. corn meal
salt and pepper
oil
Mix all together well. Fry in 2” patties in ½ inch oil over medium-high heat until well-browned. Drain on paper towel. Serve hot.
Cucumber and Onion Marinade
3-4 cucumbers, sliced thin, peeled or not
1 onion, sliced and separated into rings
3 Tbsp. salt, non-iodized
2 c. cider vinegar
Place onion rings over cucumber slices in large serving bowl. Add vinegar and salt. Add water to cover. Serve well-chilled; we like a few ice cubes in ours. Some people add black pepper, but I do not. If cucumbers are bitter, hold for 3 days before serving. If sweet, these are grand served immediately.
Green Tomato Minced Meat Pie
2 c. chopped green tomato
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
3 Tbsp. melted butter
½ c. brown sugar
½ c. raisins
½ t. salt
¾ t. cloves
¼ t. nutmeg
1 two-crust pie shell
Cover tomatoes with water. Bring to a boil. Drain. Add rest of ingredients. Bake in pie shell at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. Green tomatoes may be frozen in 2-cup batches, in summer, for use in this recipe, in winter. Just chop, package, and freeze. No need to thaw, first.
“No-tel” (Tastes just like the R-real thing.)
1 pt. peeled, raw tomatoes
1 jalapeno pepper
1 pinch rosemary leaves
½ t. canning salt
Place the above ingredients into each pint jar until you run out of ingredients. Cap with hot lids. Process at 5 lb. pressure for 10 minutes. To peel tomatoes, dip into boiling water for 1 minute. Dip into cool water. Slip skins off. Core.
This final recipe is for handling all the garden scraps such as vegetable peels, old pea vines, etc., IF you do not have chickens:
Compost
1 bushel clipping, leaves, vegetable waste, etc.
1 handful balanced fertilizer
1-2 pints good garden soil
Sprinkle to moisten, if needed. Mix well, using hoe in wheelbarrow. Seal in large plastic bag. Tie shut. Stack bags anywhere (barn, garage, etc.) and store for 3-6 months at 70 degrees or so. Open and apply to garden.
Oh, there is so much more, but we’ll change subjects for a while! See ya’ tomorrow!
Since we’ve been on the subject of canning all week, let’s talk about canning and children.
Children who are old enough ought to help. Little ones ought to stay away. Too much is going on for you to trust yourself to watch them carefully. All that blanching and lugging jars adds a safety factor with which they are too young to cooperate, and one act of confusion or disobedience could be disastrous.
So draw a line and make it stick. This is a time when high chairs, play pens, door gates, etc., are proper for the safety of precious little ones.
Let me tell you how we enlisted our children’s help in the garden when the days were blistering hot. We woke them at daylight, and had them dress quickly and go directly to the garden with us. Everyone had an assignment, only 30 – 45 minutes worth of work.
Each one managed his own row, which he kept weeded and proudly displayed to guests. Really, the garden looked good.
The youngest one’s work was to play nearby without walking on garden plants or eating dirt.
Then it was back to the house for our reward. On these days we would have treat-type breakfasts such as cantaloupe and ice-cream, oatmeal raisin cookies, fruit juice popsicles, strawberries on cereal, frozen chocolate-dipped bananas, cheesecake with blackberry sauce—whatever they considered rare and delightful. They loved it! They knew how hot the world would be by 10:00, and they seemed to appreciate my organizing things this way.
Then if we HAD to work in the heat, we would take quart jars of ice water with us and drink straight from the jar. They loved this, too. When such hot work was done, their daddy would throw them squealing into our large stock tank (which was kept for the children, only, and was un-licked-upon by any livestock) and they had water play in their work clothes.
These types of rewards were the heartbeat of our children’s summer gardening memories. They are adults, now, and still remember it with smiles, still do gardening, themselves.
Sometimes they fussed a little or grew competitive, but often the sweet sounds coming from the early morning garden rivaled those of the birds.
To continue the tricky list from yesterday’s post:
7. To rinse the spines off cucumbers without cutting your hands, use a washcloth, which protects you and is faster and gets them cleaner.
8. In an emergency, apples, bell peppers, and tomatoes may be frozen whole and raw (untreated). They must be perfectly spotless, unwashed, and in an airtight bag or container. They must be used within six months and they should be used for cooking only. Thaw tomatoes one at a time under running water for a few seconds. Skin should slip off easily, then core and pop it into your chili or whatever. For apples, thaw slightly at room temperature, peel or not, slice off of the core for pies, sauce, etc. Open, clean and chop bell peppers, frozen, or stuff and bake.
9. If you have plums galore, try freezing them whole and unwashed. Teach your children to love “plum-sicles” (and to wash them before they eat them.)
10. If you end up with more fruit juice than you have sugar or time, boil it, cool it, and freeze it in clean milk jugs, ¾ full. The jugs should have securely fitting lids. I made jelly with juice that had been frozen for a couple years and it was absolutely as wonderful as fresh. Allow about 24 hours for a gallon jug to thaw at room temperature.
11. To tell if apples and pears are ripe, cut one open. If the seeds are white, it is too early. If they are black, the fruit is ready.
12. The eensy fruits off your flowering crab apple tree make wonderful apple jelly and incredible, rosy, tart applesauce. I love it to serve with meat instead of cranberry sauce.
In case you face canning–or freezing or drying–with more dread than cheer, here are some tips that will brighten your day and lighten your load:
1. Greens can be washed in the washing machine. Do not overload it, use the gentle cycle, cold water, NO SOAP. They will tear a little, but we’re going to cook and chew them, right? you needn’t spin them; they float. And the sand sinks. Yea!
2. To keep fruit from darkening, try using a Vitamin C tablet crushed into the holding water instead of expensive fruit preserving preparations from the store. One 500 mg tablet is enough for one gallon of water. It keeps pears, apples, peaches, etc., just as pale and fresh as the moment they were first sliced. For hours.
3. When cutting the core from quartered fruit, start at the bottom end of the slice (blossom end) and cut toward the top. You will have significantly fewer broken quarters.
4. To separate halves of drupes (plums, peaches, etc.) slice to the pit along the naturally occurring crease all the way around the fruit. Then twist the two halves in opposite directions. Voila!
5. Chop fruit for jam in the blender. Briefly. It is so much faster.
6. For quicker sun-drying, place fruit between two framed screens and set on top of the luggage rack of your car, parked in the hot, hot sun.
Rotel, carrots, pumpkin, tomatoes, beets, tomato soup, pickles, green beans, and more pickles.
I remember canning.
Mama had jars, lids, rings, spoons and pans all over her huge kitchen. She let me hand her the “rings” (screw bands) which I wore like bracelets up and down my then skinny arms. The temperature in there had to be at least 100 degrees, but I do not remember that. I remember her praise when I managed to stay focused on my job and hand her the ring on time. I felt so grown up.
I also remember disappointments, especially the cherry jelly that turned out like taffy. MY we loved that. I remember our neighbor, Eula, tanned and in flip-flops, who made her own catsup. And dear old Mrs. Secrest, who always gave me hand-pumped cold drinks from the well inside her dark, quiet house.
For some reason I’ve kept those memories fondly. I’ve tried to resurrect them in my own adult life. I do canning. I make jelly and catsup. We have a well. I want this for my children’s heritage. I wonder why.
It’s not just that the food is better. It’s not only that it is more healthful. And it is not simply that I grew up with it.
It is the soil–the harvest–the glorious, breath-taking heat–the oceans of perspiration replenished by oceans of teas and juices. It’s working together, sharing . . .
Oh! I know what it is! It is the fellowship with those who have gone before and those who are to come, stepping into my place in a long, long line of real people living a real life, marching to the rhythm of summer.
So all my children and I would march down to the garden to harvest God’s blessing for each day.
I hope you will join us. Then together we will all put back something for those special winter days when only that which is straight from the garden will do.
Tomorrow: Six Tricks to Get You out of the Canning Kitchen Faster!
This is my favorite treatment for every problem–just close your eyes! Maybe it will go away!
In the case of eye health, this is definitely true.
But no one tells us.
Study this set of posts. Link to them. Copy-paste them for your fridge. Someone you know needs this information!
Resting
When we do not get enough sleep, eye health breaks down. Do not let this happen to you.
1. The only time your eyes get a rest or a chance to self-heal at all is when you close them. Open your eyes and they are on the job. Just as never resting would weaken a soldier, so never sleeping could weaken the two guards you call your eyes. A good nightly amount is eight hours. If you cannot get that for some reason (sick children, etc.) then pay more attention to daily resting.
2. You may need a timer for this one, at first. Every time you work for 50 minutes, rest your eyes for ten. This includes computer work, yes, but any reading or crafting is work for your eyes, no matter how fun it is. Give them a break.
3. You know how tired eyes feel to you, When your eyes feel overly tired, try this: lie down and cover your eyelids with cool cucumber slices. Chamomile tea bags, boiled, cooled, and squeezed out, work too. Let the soothing compresses take you away!
So now you have it: Four ways to make for better eye health: nutrition, exercise, detoxify, and rest. Let’s all get going on taking care!
Okay, now comes the part we have to say in this lawsuit-happy world: This post is meant to inform and to satisfy curiosity, only, and is not a substitute for medical advice. Consult your doctor for information concerning your conditions. Much effort has been made to assure this information is accurate, however, medical research is always changing the facts, and new findings may supersede currently accepted data. I am NOT a doctor, only quoting several of them.
Home's Cool! 