Food Preservation

Citrus Season: Tangerine Triple Sec

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I’ve mentioned already that we’ve got an abundance (and then some) of tangerines at our disposal. I’ve made Tangerine-Ginger Jam. I’ve made Tangerine Syrup. Now I’m even getting boozy on you. When I spotted this recipe for homemade triple sec made from Cara Cara oranges, I had to try my hand at a slightly different version featuring our ever-plentiful tangerines.

After sitting in the closet for a month

 

Tangerine Triple Sec
makes 5 pints

2 cups tangerine juice (about 15 tangerines)
4 cups sugar
1 cup water
750 ml bottle of vodka

Peel and juice tangerines, reserving the peels from four tangerines. Use a spoon to scrape the white pith from the inside of the tangerine peel; discard. Slice the remaining peel into 1/8″ strips and divide between five pint sized jars. In a large saucepan, combine sugar and water; heat until sugar is dissolved. Stir in tangerine juice. Simmer for five minutes and then allow to cool to room temperature. Pour in entire bottle of vodka, then divide liquid between the jars. Screw on caps, set the jars in a cool dark place, and forget about them for a month. Once your month of waiting is up, strain out the tangerine peels and you’re ready to mix a drink.

While I’ve yet to mix up a margarita, a little sip of the sec gets two thumbs up. Booze may not be on your list (or mine) of must haves for living a more self-sufficient lifestyle, but it’s kind of a fun diversion, yes?

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Use It Or Lose It

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I’ve been preserving my garden produce for years – I’d say at least 25 years or so. Only within the last few years, though, have I found a solution to using my canned goods in an organized manner, making sure that we had enough to last us until the next season or avoiding an excess of something that wasn’t a favorite. Prior to moving to an apple-less location (sob!) I made hundreds of pounds of apples into applesauce every year. This was by far my kids’ favorite pantry item, so it was easy for us to use it all up and then find ourselves without any for months on end. Or the opposite would happen: those six jars of pickled peppers that tasted fine but turned out mushy kept getting pushed to the back of the pantry, leaving us with canned peppers at the height of fresh pepper season.

I found the solution in a copy of The Tightwad Gazette years ago. In it, the author shared her plan for making sure her preserved foods were used up before the next season’s glut of zucchini and green beans without depleting the stores too soon: A simple chart.

 

Once my canning for the season was done, I’d create a chart similar to the one above by determining how many jars of each item I had and dividing it by how many month’s I’d like my stock to last. I’d mark the result in each month using little circles to represent the number of jars and then tape the chart inside the pantry. Every time I pulled out a jar of applesauce or peaches, I’d fill in a circle. It was easy to tell at a glance what I had plenty of. Or what I needed to serve more of. I generally started my chart in November, since that’s about when the garden stopped producing. Keeping track of the canned goods in the pantry in this manner meant that we had a nice variety all winter long.

Do you have a system for using your canned goods? Or do you just use them willy-nilly until they’re gone?

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Tangerine Ginger Jam

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My neighbor has a tree that is dripping with ripe tangerines. He came out and hollered at me the other day to pick some – lots of them – so I filled my market basket with about 15 pounds. It barely put a dent in his crop. It’s tangerine central around here right now.

Let me be honest: I’m not a fan of marmalade. Those little bitter bits of peel? Very off-putting to me. Yeah, ick. I decided to modify the orange marmalade recipe from Pomona Pectin just a bit to see if I could come up with a less bitter citrus spread. I peeled the fruit before chopping it up, and of course used tangerines instead of oranges. Where the recipe called for water, I used tangerine juice for more flavor, and I added a bit of ginger and vanilla. It’s like marmalade, but without the peels. Let’s just call it jam.

Tangerine Ginger Jam
Yield: 8 pints

  • 16 tangerines, peeled and seeds removed (this should net about 12 cups of segments)
  • 6 cups tangerine juice
  • 6 cups sugar
  • juice from a 2″ piece of fresh ginger
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1 package Pomona pectin
  1. Prepare the calcium water from the Pomona package. Put 1/2 teaspoon calcium powder (the small packet) and 1/2 cup water in a small jar with a lid. Set aside. Shake well before using.
  2. Fill your water bath canner to a level that will cover your jars. This varies depending upon jar size. Heat water to boiling, while proceeding with next steps.
  3. Wash and rinse jars. Bring lids and rings to a boil; turn off heat and let stand in hot water.
  4. Finely chop the tangerines. I cheated and used a food processor. Much faster, if you have one. Put chopped tangerines, tangerine, juice, ginger juice, and 2 tablespoons of the calcium water into a large stock pot.
  5. Measure 6 cups sugar into a separate bowl. Thoroughly (and I mean thoroughly) mix in 3 tablespoons of pectin (the large packet from Pomona).
  6. Bring tangerines and juice to a boil, stirring frequently. Add sugar mixture and stir vigorously for a couple of minutes to dissolve the pectin. Return to a boil and then remove from heat.
  7. Stir in vanilla.
  8. Fill jars to within 1/4″ of top. Wipe rims clean with a damp cloth. Screw on 2-piece lids/rings and place in boiling water bath. Bring water back to a boil (it doesn’t need to be a hard boil) and set the timer for 10 minutes. Remove jars to a towel-covered counter top to cool.
  9. Check seals. Lids should be solid and pulled down tight. (if they flex and pop, the jar didn’t seal; put unsealed jars in the refrigerator and use those first).
  10. Remove rings and wash outsides of jars. (You don’t need to store the jars with rings.)

The final analysis: I like it. The vanilla really helps to cut the residual bitterness of the tangerines. It will be good with butter on toast, but also as a pantry staple for baking or to flavor chicken dishes.

 

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Plan Now to Share the Harvest Later

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locavore, eat local challenge, 100 mile diet

It’s that time of year when – for many of us – scouring seed catalogs for potential garden additions stands in for actually getting our hands dirty. While you’ve got time (and not dirt) on your hands, you might want to consider organizing a method to share your eventual harvest right in your own community. Just imagine back fence trades – your abundance of zucchini in exchange for some of your neighbor’s prized turnips – a little bit larger in scale. Call it vegetable commerce if you will.

Sonia Martinez and Kim Hoffman, both part of the leadership team for Slow Food Hawaii, envisioned a way for backyard gardeners to barter their abundance with others in the area. Share the Harvest is the result.

Modeled after the successful Freecycle program, interested parties sign up to become a member of Share the Harvest and swap, trade, or barter anything that is food related. Fresh produce, baked products, preserves, dairy products, or even plants and seeds are fair game. Members who have an abundance send in an ‘offer’ listing what they have available and what they’d be interested in trading for. The message goes out to the list and anyone can respond to the offer. The individual parties determine what would be considered a fair trade.

For instance, I had way more egg cartons than my girls could fill, so I posted them on Share the Harvest. A woman responded that she’d love to have them, and offered me a dozen eggs, some sweet potatoes, and sweet potato slips in exchange. Deal!

The Share the Harvest program is based on the Big Island, but there’s no reason you couldn’t start a similar program that reaches out to your surrounding community. What a great way to diversify your pantry. Instead of figuring out what to do with 300 pounds of pears, you can preserve half that and trade the other half for something that you just don’t seem to be able to grow in your garden, saving you from long winter months filled with complaints of “pears again?” Win, win.

 

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Tangerine Syrup

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December means citrus around here – lots and lots of citrus. Two of my neighbors have trees that they can’t keep up with, so we’re eating tangerines and oranges hand over fist.

When I ran across a recipe for tangerine syrup over on the hip girl’s guide to homemaking, I wondered if it was something we’d use. (I’m famous for going all gung-ho and canning a bunch of stuff that seems like a good idea, but in retrospect is just not something my family will eat – hello, mint jelly!) The list of possible uses that the hip girl included with her recipe sold me. Add it to sparkling water for a citrus-y soda! Make a marinade! Sweeten granola! How could I not try it?

The recipe was really very simple and easy to do. Since this was the only canning project I had going on, I processed the small jars in my stock pot, rather than heating up my big canner. The cute little jar you see up above was not processed; it will go into the fridge for my neighbor.

Hip girl suggests using 3 cups of tangerine juice, or up to 4-5 cups juice for a slightly less sweet, more zingy syrup. I used four cups of juice and my kids both thought the syrup was too sweet. Even when we added some to a glass of Perrier, they felt like the sugar overpowered the juice flavor. I’ll definitely make it again, but next time I’ll try five cups of juice. Or perhaps I’ll start with more juice (eight cups?) and reduce it down before I add it to the sugar, for a really intense flavor.

Do you have a favorite way to preserve citrus? I’m all ears!

This post is linked to the Living Well blog hop and Simple Lives Thursday.

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Save Those Green Tomatoes – Make A Batch of Chow Chow

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Circa 1970s: The old metal grinder is firmly mounted to my mom’s kitchen table, the abundance of our summer garden stacked in bowls and baskets around us. As often as I could, I’d take a turn at the grinder, cranking the handle despite my stinging, watering eyes.  I watched as onions, bell peppers, and green tomatoes were pulled into the turning screw, a crunching sound coming to my ears over the noise of the squeaky handle turning. Mom hovered, sure that with every turn of the handle one of my tender young fingers might join the mix in the pot that was catching the crushed green vegetables. Clear juices, tinted green, dripped from every point of the old grinder, running down to my elbow and then to the floor where a large towel was ready to catch the overflow. The bright green pulp from the unripe remains of a bountiful harvest would be transformed into a relish with the funny name, “chow chow.”

Circa twenty-first century: As times have changed, so too have my methods.  Nowadays, an electric food processor makes quick work of the unripe tomatoes, peppers, and onions. But while I am feeling nostalgic about the days I spent hand cranking the grinder in my mom’s kitchen, I share the details with my boys. I want them to know that this is a family recipe, one that my grandmother and theirs made, salvaging the last of the fruit from the vine before winter relegated them to the compost heap. Thirty-some years later, the chow chow tastes the same and my eyes still water, though as I think back to my childhood I’m not sure if it’s the pungent ingredients or the memories that cause the tears.

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CHOW-CHOW

  • 12 pounds green tomatoes
  • 8 large onions
  • 10 green bell peppers
  • 3 tablespoons salt
  • 6 hot peppers
  • 1 quart cider vinegar
  • 3 Tablespoons dry mustard
  • 1 3/4 cups sugar (one and three-fourths)

In a food processor, chop tomatoes, onions, and peppers in batches, using the pulse mechanism. Stir together in a large bowl. Sprinkle with the salt and refrigerate overnight.  Drain off liquid and stir in vinegar, mustard and sugar.  Bring to a slow boil; continue boiling until tender (about 15 minutes). Pack into canning jars and refrigerate, or process according to safe canning methods.  Makes about 10 pints.

**Adapted from the Ball Blue Book.
**For more information about safe canning, contact your local cooperative extension office.

Photo: Flickr user opopododo under Creative Commons.

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Going Bananas

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(Click through for more photos.)

They always ripen all at once! We’re eating tons of fresh bananas, but a bunch of this size calls for a preservation plan. Time for Excalibur! I sliced each banana a scant 1/8″ thick, dipped them in lemon juice, and placed them on a dehydrator tray. I’m telling you this because while you may not have a banana tree in your backyard, you probably DO have the chance to harvest bags full of slightly spotty bananas from your grocer. Not local, no. But just think: you’ll be saving those fruits from a terrible fate. And they’re generally cheap.

I filled the dehydrator before I’d used up all of the bananas from that big bunch. They’re drying right now – soon we’ll have dehydrated bananas in the cupboard.

My compost pile will be so happy!

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Food Preservation: A Day of Home Canning

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Ready for the pantry!

I recently shared my tomato chutney recipe, but I didn’t mention that on the same day I also made marinara sauce. For those of you who have yet to tackle home preservation, I thought it might be interesting for you to see what a day of canning looks like. I started with 40 pounds of tomatoes – not a lot by my usual standards – and processed most of them in a little more than five hours. In the end, I added 8-1/2 pints of chutney and 7 quarts of marinara sauce to my pantry – not bad for half a day’s work.

  • 1:00 start making chutney
  • 1:15 chutney ingredients in pot, ready for 2 hour boil
  • 1:15 move chutney to back burner so I can begin with the marinara sauce
  • 1:16 begin chopping ingredients for marinara sauce
  • 1:35 discover that I turned on the wrong burner for chutney; remedy the situation
  • 1:40 turn heat on under marinara; start cooking onions, peppers, and garlic
  • 2:45 finish chopping ingredients for marinara.
  • 3:00 put water bath canner on to heat
  • 3:10 wash jars
  • 3:15 put lids and rings on to sterilize
  • 3:25 put chutney in jars and set to boil
  • 3:30 pour cup of coffee
  • 3:40 take chutney out of water bath canner; turn heat down on canner while marinara continues to cook
  • 3:41 tink…tink…tink as jars seal
  • 3:45 clean up, wash dishes, continue to stir marinara sauce
  • 4:45 fill quart jars with marinara sauce
  • 4:50 set jars in boiling water bath; set timer for 30 minutes.
  • 5:00 pour glass of wine
  • 5:20 remove seven jars of marinara sauce from water bath canner

So, does this scare you off or make you think that it’s not as daunting as you expected?

This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday.

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Spicy Chorizo Soup and Chow Chow

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As the weather cools in the States, gardens are slowing down and many of us are shifting to meals that warm us up. Over on Popcorn Homestead, you’ll find one of my family’s go-to cool season meals: chorizo soup. Whip it up with fresh tomatoes and peppers from the garden and top it with the salty crunch of tortilla chips or baked tortillas and you’ll soon know why it’s a family favorite.

And if you’re pondering what to do with the green tomatoes still hanging on the vine as autumn approaches, may I suggest a batch of chow-chow? I shared a little bit of nostalgia as well as my recipe for this relish made from green tomatoes over on New Life on a Homestead recently. It’s an excellent addition to a hot dog bun, though not like anything you’d find in a store.

 

Photo: Flickr user dickdotcom

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A Cure for Watery Homegrown Tomato Sauce

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With many gardeners in the thick of their tomato harvest, stock pots are bubbling with tomato sauce, marinara sauce, pizza sauce, homemade ketchup, and lots of other bright red tomato goodness. If you’ve ever made sauce from fresh tomatoes, you know that no matter how much you cook it down, the sauce often separates, leaving an unappealing watery puddle under your pasta. Not good. Even worse is a watery pizza sauce (soggy crust!) or ketchup.

watery, canning, preserving, garden, tomatoes

Years ago I figured out a way to combat this problem. When I feel that the sauce has cooked down to the right consistency, I pull out my metal sieve and set it right on top of the boiling sauce. As the sauce bubbles, the thinner liquid boils up through the mesh. I use a bulb baster to suction it off, saving the flavorful juice to add to soups or stews. tomatoes, garden, preserving, tips

Be careful – at this stage the sauce can be quite volcanic in its bubbling, and your hands will be right in there as you work. If there’s still a fair amount of liquid in your sauce, the sieve will fill quickly and may become submerged. I usually try to prop it up on a wooden spoon, as you can see in the photo.

Whether you’re preserving your sauce through home canning, or just making a big pot of sauce for dinner, this trick should eliminate the watery puddle.

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Welcome

It’s one thing to think, “Hey, I’d love to be more self-sufficient!” and quite another to implement a lifestyle change that might require learning some new skills.

Attainable Sustainable is about bridging the gap between wanting change and making it happen without becoming overwhelmed. Nobody’s saying you have to go get a tractor and a cow. Attainable Sustainable is about discovering – one step at a time – how to make changes in your life to support a sustainable lifestyle.

The Author

Kris Bordessa has been gardening for most of her life. She's been authoring books and writing features for the past ten years or so. It's about time she combined the two, don't you think? [More about the author]