Tomatoes

This is what I am doing today:

Today I'm making 2 different recipes for spaghetti sauce. I've never canned spaghetti sauce before, so this is new to me. I have enough tomatoes here that I'm sure I'll be canning some more juice today too. One recipe calls for 4 gallons of tomatoes, so that's why I have some tomatoes in that 5 gallon bucket. That was the best way I could figure to measure 4 gallons of tomatoes.
Last night I made 5 pints of ketchup. I have never done that either. I wanted to try it. We'll see how it tastes in a day or two. If it's good I'll post the recipe.
And I'll post about today's spaghetti sauce too.
The house smells AMAZING.

Sorry I haven't been on here much, I'll try to do better! :)

Baby Corn

We had a nice little harvest of baby corn along with our regular corn this year. Actually, it was the biggest amount of baby corn we've ever had.
Baby corn isn't just corn that's not ready yet. It is little bity ears of corn that grows with a larger ear of corn. Not every ear has baby corn on it. Sometimes there will just be one, usually there's two, but every now & then there's three! I picked up one ear to shuck & it had four! As soon as I started shucking it, I realized I should have taken a picture of it. It was really amazing looking. So the next ear that had three babies on it, I snapped this picture. You can see that everything about the baby ears is a miniature of the big ear. And you can see in the background to the left are the regular ears that have been shucked, & to the right is the growing pile of baby corn that has been shucked.

Also, sometimes the baby corn doesn't grow on the outside of the big ear, but on the inside, just under the first few layers of husk. So you may think you have two baby ears, & then start shucking to big one only to find one or two more on the inside!

Our baby corn filled a WalMart bag full. You can see that there's one piece in there that's not actually baby corn. It had produced a few kernals, so it was just an immature cob. Immature cobs do not taste good. It snuck into this bag, but it did get tossed out.
Here's what a nice bowl of cooked baby corn looks like. You can either boil it or steam it. Add a few tablespoons of butter & some salt & pepper when you serve them. They are pretty good. They don't taste anything like regular corn. I think you have to have a taste for them. My husband doesn't like them. I like them, & our both our kids LOVE them.

I fixed one bowl for supper that night, & then blanced the rest (boil for 6-7 minutes then submerge in ice water) & fill up some quart freezer bags. We've never had enough to freeze before. I usually just cook up all we get to be a side dish with our supper, & if it's a large batch there's enough left overs to have again the next night. But this year I got 6 freezer bags full!

To think that years ago I used to just toss these babies out when I was shucking corn!
If you get a chance to grow corn, don't throw the little babies out, steam 'em up & eat 'em.

They're delicious. That maybe didn't sound quite right. But you know what I mean. LOL

Harvesting our Indiana Sweet Corn

One of the things that I love about Indiana, is the sweet corn.
It's so sweet & delicious that you don't care if you have butter running down your chin while you are eating corn on the cob.
Actually, that's part of eating it. :)
We had 3 50 foot rows of corn this year, & we were blessed with a wonderful crop.
This wheelbarrow is full of 1 row of corn.
Here the tractor wagon is holding the other 2 rows.

It took me quite a few hours to shuck this load. We also had a lot of baby corn this year, but I'll do a seperate post on them later.
We had a lot of really nice ears.

I love to see a sink full of corn!

Here is our process for preserving the corn by freezing it.

Freezer Corn

Shuck the corn & remove all the silk.
Rince the corn in a sink full of water.
Bring large pots of water to a boil.
Place the corn in the boiling water, & when the water returns to a boil, time the corn for 5-6 minutes.
Immerse the boiled corn into a sink full of ice water.
Cut the corn off the cob.
Place into freezer bags. (I put 3 cups into quart freezer bags.)
Write the date on the bags & put them in the freezer.

To prepare the freezer corn:
Remove from freezer & thaw overnight in the frig, or pop it in the microwave for 1 minute. Add 1-2 T. butter & some salt & pepper. Cook (microwave or stovetop) until warmed through. Easy. Delicious.

It really is easy. It's not near as tedious as green beans. After canning green beans I always look forward to doing the corn!
One 'trick' that I use is that I have a 'system' using my double sinks. If you've got a LOT of corn, you can set it up as sort of an assembly line. The corn can be stacked on the counter to the left of the sinks. The corn getting rinsed sits in the left sink. The corn that is done, that has been boiled for 5 or 6 minutes sits in the right sink. You wont get them mixed up, because the corn that has already been blanced is a deeper color than the un-blanced corn.

As far as cutting the corn off the cob, my husband likes to use a nice sharp knife. After you cut the corn off the cob, be sure to use the back of your knife & go over the cob again to get all the 'corn juice'. I like to use what I call a 'corn cutter'. I know that's not the name of it. It's not one of those plier looking things, it looks more like a slicer. I really like it. I can cut corn really fast with it. I've never cut myself with it, but it wouldn't be pretty if that ever happened. I have used this 'corn cutter' for at least 15 years. My M-i-L gave it too me, & I think she got it at a garage sale. You can also use an electric knife. That's what my dad always used.

Here is our table full of corn! You can see my corn cutter on the left side of the table. My husband & I work together & it makes it go faster. We each have a spot at the table with a pan of corn ready to be cut, our cutting areas (LOOK at those two mountains of corn!), & we also have a bag for the cobs but I moved it for the picture. When we've cut a bit of corn, I stop cutting & get it all bagged up. I put 3 cups per quart freezer bag. Then I rinse the bags (they get sticky) & set them on a towel to dry & go back to cutting. When I go to bag the next load I date the load I did earlier & put it in the freezer.

This year I didn't get a picture of all the bags when we were done, because we had so much I needed to put them away in the freezer as we worked.
Our total this year was 54 quart bags.
It's so great to fill the freezer back up with corn.
Thank you LORD our Provider for a wonderful harvest.

Wordless Wednesday on Saturday--TOMATOES!

Deep Fried Zucchini Sticks

This is one of my favorite ways to eat zucchini.

Deep Fried Zucchini Sticks

Zucchini, peeled, cut into sticks, or wedges like big oven fries
eggs
milk
Italian style bread crumbs OR flour
salt
pepper
and any spices you'd like to add...I usually add garlic & onion powder. Somtimes I add seasoned salt.

In a large bowl, stir together eggs, milk, salt & pepper.
In another pan (I usually use a pie pan, it's a good size for this) place the bread crumbs. OR you can use flour that you've add some seasoning too, like salt, pepper, & garlic & onion powders.

Drop each stick into a deep fryer with the oil set to 375 (you can use a big pan with oil in it on the stove, oil temp at 375). Fry for 3-4 minutes. Drain well, blot with paper towl, sprinkle with salt.
Let it cool a little (this is hard for me!), eat, & enjoy!

Here is a picture of the deep fried zucchini sticks made with store bought Italian bread crumbs:

And here they are dipped in flour:

I love them both.

:)

Cucumber and Onion Salad

Here is another recipe that my m-i-l gave me about 20 years ago. It's that sweet 'n sour cucumber salad that used to be at all family dinners & pitch ins.

Cucumber and Onion Salad

1/2 C. olive oil

1/2 C. vinegar

2 T. sugar

salt (to taste)

pepper (to taste)

1-2 thinly sliced cucumbers

1 large onion, thinly sliced

Combine oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, & pepper. Add the cucumbers & onions. Cover & chill a few hours before serving.

Adventures in Green Beans

We had our first pickin' of green beans last weekend.
Our dogs, Louie & Otto, wanted to help us. Actually they wanted to sneak green beans & eat them. Here's Louie, pretending he's just relaxing & keeping watch while we're picking. He would get up & sneak a bean out of our boxes, & then go hide behind the onions (right behind him in this picture) to eat his bean. He thought we couldn't see him behind those onions! LOL

After 3 hours, here's what we picked.

My husband lit up our burn pile ( just various limbs & stuff that we burn every once in a great while) & we sat around a campfire for many hours, just breakin' beans & eating s'mores.
In this picture, you can see that Louie is gaurding the boxes of beans. He's pretending that he's just relaxing with his ball, but everytime I looked over at him, he had moved just a little closer to the beans. He was just waiting for us to not look at him so he could sneak another bean. LOL
And here are both of our gaurd dogs (bean gaurd dogs! LOL) on duty. Otto's snout looks funny in this picture...that's because he's eating a green bean!

I started canning late, WAY too late in the day for this big mess 'o beans. I put the first load in the canner about 3:00pm.
This is the first canning load of the season!

This was a beautiful sight... but by the early morning hours, quite frankly, I was getting a bit tired of it! LOL
We had so many beans, that for the first time in my life, I didn't finish canning them. I couldn't go on. At 5:50AM I took my last load off the burner. I drained the sink full that I still had in the sink, put them in big pans, put them in the frig, hoped for the best & went to bed. I had canned 70 quarts of beans.
Bless my dear husband's heart, I woke up at 10:30am (hey, I got 4 1/2 hours of sleep!) & he was finishing up canning the last of the beans! He canned 20 quarts, so our grand total for this pickin' was 90 quarts!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Here they are, all ready to be stored for the winter.

I had to find storage place for them quickly...to make room for my zucchini. LOL
You can see just some of those hiding behind the beans.
To be honest, we should have picked the weekend before, but we were just so busy with things that we couldn't do it. Then we weren't able to do it through the week, so it fell to last weekend. The unseasonably cool weather saved us on this one, because if it were as hot as it usually is here in Indiana in August, those beans would have been spongy if they'd been left on the vine too long. Normally, we would have had our first pickin' over a week ago & canned 40-50 quarts. Then picked again last weekend & got another 40-50 quarts. So really, this 90 quarts was 2 pickins' done at one time. LOL

Whew. It's a lot of work.
But it is very worth it.
I have been thanking God all week for this green bean harvest.

Now, I was hoping the corn would be ready this weekend, but it may be a few more days. And the tomatoes are coming on slowly, we get a few a day, but as soon as we have a few 90 degree days, we're going to have LOTS of them.