The Serendipitous Pioneer

Goodness so much has happened over summer and as fall has begun.  I had intended to be able to blog more but well you know......... We have two extra little people living with us now days and that just adds to my happy chaos.  Oh and makes me bone tired.  I am still working out whenever I can and I joined a running group here in town.  I have another five k on Saturday. I have been canning and making stuff like mad so I will attempt to catch up over the next few days with the tutorials and ideas. A couple of weeks ago we were in the cities which of course means I went to Trader Joes and Dragonstar Market.  I love the deals I can get down there.  One of my deals was a heap of Thai basil for pesto.  I try to by a heap each time we go so I can make it all up and then freeze the pesto for later.  I love easy suppers. My pesto recipe is another one of those things in my head.  If you have made pesto before you will know what to look, smell and ...

So for the second round of berry canning delight I went with Strawberry Lemonade concentrate.  I found the recipe on pinterest.  The recipe for this concoction is found here.... http://www.myrecipemagic.com/recipe/recipedetail/restaurant-style-strawberry-lemonade-concentrate It is very yummy and I will be saving most of mine for New Years Eve when I will serve it mixed with chilled sparkling water.  Here is the catch, don't be like me.  I went to Target and bought a little hand operated one.  YOu know the kind, where it has a cone like thing and catcher.  For this you really need either an electric type one, one like they have at those lemon ade  places at the mall where you pull the handle and it smushes the lemon half or about a dozen minions.  I had one minion and he declared it to be an awful lot of work.  He was right.  It takes a lot of lemons to get to five cups.  But honestly the flavor of fresh lemons is worth i...

It is that time of year.  You know, the one when all the delicious things come in to season and that means it is time to start canning.  Well thanks to that lovely prolonged winter we endure here in the northland this year we are just now hitting that season.  This week it is strawberries.  I finally broke down and went to pick our own.  We went to Finke's Berry Farm. Definitely recommend them the berries are fabulous and chemical free.  I am amazed that Stir and the girls didn't have belly aches by the time we got home they were snitching so many.  We brought home 25 quarts of strawberries.  Ok we left the farm with that many.  But now I have to do something with all these berries.  There is a lot of canning in my future.  And in my posts to follow. I am starting with my favorite strawberry jam which is strawberry-rhubarb.  Hey I am doing the canning my stuff first.  I like it because I think the rhubarb lends some sharp...

Poor Viola!  To be honest she has been working hard about once a week as I find new things for her to try and can.  As I try them and do them again I will post the sort of recipes and pics.  "Sort of recipes?" you ask.  Well yes, sort of.  I will sort of tell you what I did and I may even sort of measure for you. Lol. Today Viola and I canned some pork roast I had gotten at the butcher shop on sale and some black beans as I had given my last few jars away over the weekend. I processed everything at once because I only had three quarts of roast and ten pints of beans to do.  I am lazy, sue me. First let's go through the pork roast.  It is beyond simple and I did kind of like my pot roast that you will see in later posts, I am sure. I like my pork with apples. I think the sweetness adds something so used applesauce, chipotle powder, chopped dried onions, garlic powder and salt. Why the yes, that applesauce is my own creation.  Now as I said b...

This lovely lady is Viola with a long I if you please.  She is my most favorite kitchen appliance du jour, an All American pressure canner.  This girl can hold 19 regular mouth pints and 14 regular quarts at a time.  Unbelievable.  I just got her for Christmas and tried her out yesterday.  As she is no small thing it does take a wee bit of finagling on my dinky part but a two step ladder in front of the stove saves me from getting burnt.  For her first time out we canned the all important black beans.  We eat so many I can't believe I was limited to only seven jars at a time before now.  What a charmer.  Then I got lucky and ran into a ground beef sale.  That is when the true fun began. I cooked up the ground beef getting rid of as much fat as possible and the loaded up my sweet Viola.  So far so good but if you know me something has to go awry at some point in what seems like a most productive day.  Well... the seventy fiv...