Hows my little preserver?

Last week Laura and I  had an epic week of canning foods. Earlier this year we decided that we were pretty into this whole canning thing and decided to buy ourselves a pressure canner. NSA intrusive spying be damned we wanted to can fresh vegetables (and meats!?) without pickling. We ended up with the 'All American Pressure Canner' the internets say this is one of the best canners ever and I believe it, Its built like a tank.

So here is what we did:

Beans:

Beans were the first reason for getting the canner. Pickled beans are yummy but just regular beans are easier to work into meals. We decided to do a taste test before our second batch and accidentally ate the whole pint of beans. No botulism risk for this family!

They are super easy a teaspoon of salt, cut the ends off and cut to whatever size you want then stuff them into the jar and add boiling water. I've been saving some of the pickle brine from some of the jars recently and made some dilly beans with it. All I did was bring my jars of brine to a boil and processed them with the other beans. Process in the pressure canner for 20 minutes at 15 PSI.

Pickling beans is a way to skip the pressure canner process, I added them to the pressure canner because I didn't feel like making a second giant pot of water boil.

Strawberry Jam:

I know a funny joke about the difference between Jelly and Jam, feel free to ask me sometime.
This recipe was a bit more involved. Thanks to reddit I learned that pomona's universal pectin is the shit, you don't need as much sugar for the pectin to set, less sugar in life is always better.

Vanilla Bourbon Strawberry:
This is roughly based off this Peach Bourbon Jelly.
7 Cups of our homegrown chopped strawberries.
3/4 Cup Bourbon
1/2 Cup of Lime Juice
2 1/2 Vanilla Beans
Cane sugar as pectin package recommends. I think I used two cups.
Pomona's Universal Pectin

Rewarded for good work...if you call EW a reward.

Processed in a hot water bath for 10 minutes

Vanilla Strawberry Jam:
Laura and I both made different recipes. She followed this recipe from food in jars using 7 cups of strawberries and the super awesome pectin's sugar recommendations.

I got super excited and tried mine early, my initial take is I could have just used one or two vanilla beans instead of two and a half. Its definitely got the vanilla bourbon flavor with a little strawberry underneath. Yum!

Pickles:

This year we skipped growing pickles and opted to buy them from the farmer's market instead. Since I hate cucumbers I do refer to them as pickles because that's really all they are to me. I never really follow a recipe because you can taste the brine as it's boiling and make adjustments from there, as long as its pretty good then you'll have good luck while it's hanging out in the jar.

I based my spice additions off of the Food In Jars cookbook recipe.

Black Peppercons
Allspice
Coriander seeds
Juniper Berries
Whole Cloves
Dill
Cinnamon stick

In each jar I added whole garlic cloves a habanero (or three in one jar) and a bay leaf.
I used apple cider vinegar as the base but added over a cup of bourbon because I am in love with the spicy maple bourbon pickles that Brooklyn Brine Company makes. Find them and eat them, your pickle life will be changed.

Experimental super spicy lemony pickle jar.

The quarts were processed for 10 minutes.

Okra:

Last year I thought I'd ferment some okra, it was awful, a disaster of pint sized proportions. When you chop okra and pickle (or ferment) it there is a slime that it produces and coats everything. Admittedly my fermented veggies need some work still they were soft, slimy and altogether awful. I've since learned to only trim the stem and nothing more to prevent the slime.

I used some leftover brine from the pickle batch and even processed the okra with them. The Okra got the garlic and bay leaf treatment as well. Hopefully this jar isn't such a disaster.

Garlic:

We got some delicious spicy Transylvanian garlic from the Farmers market for this. Originally I was going to reuse Brooklyn Brine's Whiskey Sour Pickle brine, but I temporarily forgot about it, I used some more leftover Brine from my pickles I topped the jar off with that. I sliced two habaneros into matchsticks as well as sliced red bell pepper from the garden and spread the pieces through the 8 oz jelly jars. These got processed in the hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Tomatoes:

Who centered this picture?

This was the big batch of the day, we had to get both our big canning pots in action for it. We harvested a bunch of chopped tomatoes from our garden and chopped them into chunks. We've gotten to the point that removing the skins is more of a trouble and mess than its worth for chunks. These are easy, it takes a tablespoon of lemon juice for each jar. Time in the hot water bath was 35 minutes for pints and 40 for quarts.

Dueling large pots. The right is our pressure canner turned pot.

Kimchi:

I've made some pretty decent sauerkraut a couple of times now and it seems like every time I tell someone I'm fermenting kraut they ask if I'm making kimchi too. I'd never had kimchi, in fact I'd never heard of it until I read "The Art of Fermentation". Recently we found some at the store and it's really good! Since it passed the taste test, and since it's spicy (I'm a sucker for spicy) I went all in. I took a bazillion process pictures to show how I did it, I've included some of the more interesting ones. Tomorrow I'll put it into the fridge since I think it's nearly done fermenting after 4-5ish days.

It's based off this recipe.
I wanted purple kimchi so I got purple cabbage
Daikon
Garlic
Onions
Habeneros
Ginger
Salt
Paprika

Quarted, cored, and cut.

Mostly matchstick daikon cuttings.

Diced habanero(with seeds) and ginger mush.

After everything was cut I liberally added salt and mixed it into and around the bowl of stuff. The salt draws out some moisture from the cabbage and you end up with a crispier end product (it works really well too!). I had a beer brewing while I was making this so after I added the salt I ended up waiting quite awhile before I moved on, so there was quite a bit of water left in the bowl that had been drawn out.

I then stuffed it all into some jars and topped with water. Vegetables ferment best with their own natural bacteria swimming around them so all I did from there was loosely add some lids to the jars and waited. The fun thing about fermenting foods is you can taste them as they ferment, for me there is definitely a point when the cabbage turns from gross cabbage flavor to yummy fermented something.

I will say I get pretty excited that nearly all of our canned food comes from our garden or a local farmer. It takes some time and quite a bit of work and waiting, but over the winter when we are eating the result of our hard work over dozens of meals it's totally worth it.

Hows my little fairgoer?

Yesterday Laura and I decided since harvest is running a bit late this year we should check out the Illinois state fair and it's offerings. I wasn't sure what to expect at all and since I've only ever been to one other state fair. I was constantly drawing comparisons to the Great Minnesota Get Together. How did it stack up? It was fun! the MN fair draws quite a few more people, and seems to be better laid out. Also the midway is considerably more exciting. Illinois matches it in quantity of food with just as many different things to try but the only thing I saw on a stick was my corn dog. The butter cow definitely one ups the butter busts that MN offers. Also since I haven't been to the MN State fair since I achieved 21 I don't know if there is a building that highlights the local wine or beer, but IL does and it was cool to check out the offerings of 20 different wineries in the state.

Here are some of the more notable sights:

Two day old piglets!

Pork Rocks!

Jumbo Corn Dog.

It's hard not to giggle a bit at this.

Fried Oreos, Laura's first.

Butter Cow, wading in butter creek.

Fun fact!

Favorite food we had, chocolate eclair, it was fantastic!

Illinois wine!

The secretary of State had a tent that you could do pretty much everything you can at the DMV right there at the fair! We've been meaning to switch Laura's standard plates that came with the car to the state park funding environmental plates but just haven't yet. Oddly one of the highlights of our experience.

A Diving show compete with men shedding firemen outfits, and an 8 story high dive.

This ass.

Anytime we saw a board with a face hole in it I got a picture with Laura in it.

Homemade flat root beer.

Sheep in sheets!

Because one should give a thumbs up to hogging energy.

After the fair we were beat. We walked all over the place and had our fill of fried foods, our legs were tired, we were hot and sticky, we needed AC, and something a bit more hearty before we made the two hour trek back home from Springfield. We stopped at Obed & Issacs. They make good food and decent beer. This horseshoe burger (there is lamb burger and bread beneath those fries and cheese sauce) was a phenomenal way to cap the day.

Hows my little weatherman?

It looks like August is going to continue what is shaping up to be one of the best summers I've ever experienced in Illinois. If summer in was like this annually I might actually enjoy this season here.