Playing in the kitchen

Yeah I bet I know what you were thinkin. No Rodger was at work. I have been playing in the kitchen by my self. Well guess that didn't sound any better did it? OK so I will explain. I been making hand dipped chocolates. That sounds sophisticated don't it? Or in hillbilly terms, I been making candies. The candies are from the recipe from the previous post. But see ya know I don't do things according to a recipe. I have to tinker with everything. And that is what I did with the candy making too. So maybe I will post this as a recipe for Christmas candy-part 2. You make the basic mix of 1 12oz box of vanilla wafer, crushed fine, the finer the better, 1 stick or 1/2 cup butter and 1 lb powdered sugar. Mix this really well. It will be crumbly in texture. But thas OK. Then I separated it into 3 different bowls. In one of the bowls I added about 1/2 cup Baileys Irish Cream with a hint of caramel. Oh yeh! Ya know I like my Baileys. To another bowl I added 1/4 cup pina colada mix and about 1/2 cup of flaked coconut. To the third bowl I added about 1/4 cup of Kahlua and about 2 tablespoons of Hershey's baking chocolate (powder). I stirred em all up in each bowl real good to mix pretty well. Then I would get in there with my hands and finish the mixing and roll each batch into lil balls, these about the size of large grapes. I put these on a plate and set them in the freezer. After I got all of em rolled I melted my chocolate bark or Candi Quick and started dipping the rolled candies. Placed em back on a sheet pan lined with foil and set them in the fridge to harden. These things are so dang good. AND I bet ya can guess my favorite. Yep, Its the Baileys Irish cream. But the strawberry daiquiri is good too. And I do like the coconut ones. I might get brave tomorrow and try my hand at peanut butter fudge. Of all the things I cook and cook well, the ability to make really good cooked fudge eludes me.
Any way, with all this candy stuff I didn't fix a big supper. We had chicken soup with some stock I had canned and some leftover chicken from last nights dinner. One of the things on my to-do list for tomorrow is to siphon off or rack my bucket of wine. Dang I have put it off for a few months now. But it really needs to be done. Rodger kinda hinted at the idea of making a batch of beer pretty soon and the best place for the beer barrel is where the bucket is sittin with the wine in it. I had him stop at the hardware store on his way home and pick up one of those handy lil Kerosene siphon thingys, ya know the one with the bulb ya squeeze to get it started? Well I am gonna wash it really good and use it to siphon off the wind into another container so it can settle again and rack it the second time. After that its sweeten if need be, sterilize and bottle. Then off to the cellar to age. Maybe I will remember to take some pics to share with ya. Mouse trap mind here ya know.
I did go OUT side today. Don't laugh, I trudged thru the snow all the way to my summer kitchen. See thas where my food processor lives and I had to make vanilla wafer crumbs. It was not too bad cold out. A nice sunny day, the ground is still warm so lots of the snow we had melted today. You can see bare ground all over where the sun hit. But we posed to get slammed with more snow and freezing rain and possible 1/2 inch of ice Wednesday and into the night. I am so thankful I don't have to be out in it. But I do worry bout my guys and the many others that do have to be out on the roads and have to work out in the mess. Thas why I like to at least give them a nice filling hot meal when they get home.
So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Things are slowing down

It seems like just a few weeks ago we planted our garden and as I look at it now, most of it has been mowed down. Not as busy as I was a few weeks ago. Not much left to can from the garden.  All the things that are done producing have been mowed or bush hogged down to make turning the ground easier. Kinda makes ya feel like fall is around the corner. I still have 2 kinds of shell beans (great northern and cranberry) that are in the garden to allow them to dry on the vines. My tomatoes are still producing some along and I still have peppers in there. The tobacco worm beans that were planted the week after fathers day are starting to bloom now. So I do hope I have some of those to can. My Kentucky wonder bush beans didn't do well at all this year. I think one thing that hurt them was the fact that I planted 1 long row along side the field corn and they were not well pollinated. Beans and corn need to be planted in blocks (several short rows) instead of 1 long row. This does help a lot with the bees working the area. We only had about 20 sweet potato plants total to plant so those are in the garden somewhere in the grass.
My cucumbers in the garden have stopped producing and the vines are dying out. I planted the National Pickling cukes this year and they are an heirloom variety. I have seen several large yellow cukes on the trellis where the cukes were so I will be getting those to save the seed.
I have already saved some of the Abe Lincoln tomato seeds. They are a really good tomato, and don't have a core in them to speak of. Instead they will have 3 or 4 small green core like spots. Makes nice juicing tomatoes. They are from a plant that hitchhiked to the flower bed in front of the cellar in some flowers that I planted there. It got really big in the poor dirt that was there and we did stake it up till the kittens climbed up in the plant and broke it. Although broken it still grew and produced some really nice tomatoes. There were no others close to cross pollinate and ruin the seed so I have saved those for next season. So I do have a start on the basic necessary seeds for us for next garden season. Slow progress.
Rodger got the second brewing of beer bottled a little bit ago. This one was a dark beer. I had him store this bottled batch in the cellar. Last time we bottled, we put it in the pantry near the back entry. Then one night I heard a loud pop in that area. Sure enough I checked and 1 bottle had exploded, beer ran all over. We do think it was from a defective bottle tho and not the beer itself.  Now to get all the equipment sanitized and start another batch.
Till next time, blessing from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

The dog days of summer

We are having the typical Kentucky weather for the past few days. Hot and humid, kinda drains the energy out of ya. Had a long night last night, didn't get finished canning and git in bed till around 4 am this morning. So that made for a late morning for me, which is normal. After I finally got up and moving around, had my coffee and got started on the day. I went to the summer kitchen to wash off all the jars of canned stuff from the night before and get them ready for the cellar. I had picked some hot banana peppers the evening before and was thinking of slicing them to pickle. Then I had second thoughts. Well ya know, I wear contacts, and can not imagine how painful that could be to have hot pepper on your hands and then stick ya finger in ya eye. Nope not me, so Rodger volunteered to de-seed the peppers. Well now he is complaining, but we ain't goin there. Anywho this is the recipe for the pickled peppers.

1 peck(2 gallon hot or mild banana peppers)
1 ½ cups salt
4 quarts water
10 cups vinegar
2 cups water
½ cups sugar
2 tablespoons chopped garlic 
Wash peppers, cut off stem end and split length wise and take out seeds. Mix water and salt to dissolve and add peppers. Let set 12 hours or so. Drain and rinse and drain well. Make pickling solution of remaining ingredients and heat to boiling. Pack peppers into hot jars and pour boiling solution over them in jars. Seal. If you choose these can be water bathed for 10 minutes. This made 5 pints.

I don't think we will need any more hot peppers for a bit. But if there are more on the plants, I reckin I would have to can em.
The blackberries that I had taken out of the freezer yesterday had thawed enough today that I could mash them up and get the wine started. So that is doin its thing in a big 6 gallon bucket in the kitchen.
I went to the cellar to get jars for the peppers and be dang, I noticed my crock of kraut. Gosh it has been in there for seems like a long time. I got it down and toted it to the kitchen to see if I had let it ruin or if it was kraut. Well it was kraut and dang good at that. I will need the crock in a week or so and decided to just pack the kraut in canning jars for storage. As you know I got this new vacuum sealer thingy this year and we decided to give it a try on vacuum sealing the kraut. Well it worked like a charm. I don't like to heat the kraut because that destroys all the good healthy bacteria that is in there that is good for your belly. The German fermenting crocks are a neat trick, they have a rim around the top that you fill with water to make a sort of water lock to keep out air which can cause kraut to mold and get soft.
So here I am packing it in jars.

The kraut needs to be pushed down and pressed and have enough of the liquid from the crock to cover it. This will help prevent it from becoming dark as it sits.

Now this is a proud vacuum sealer operator after the jars are sealed. Now they are stored in the cellar just waiting for me and my fork.
Then Rodger went off to get the yard mowed before it rained again. This is the first year that we have been up here on the hill that we have had what you could call a yard. We really have grass now, and no weeds. We didn't use any chemicals to accomplish this either, just mowed on a regular basis and it kills the weeds out. Now we still need to trim, but thas minor detail.
Oh and I forgot to share a beer with ya last night too. Gosh how rude of me! But anyway the pale ale that we bottled last weekend is the one we were sampling last night. After tasting the ale, I don't think I can drink any store bought beer now. This was smooth, one of those you could drink yourself into a stupor and not know till ya couldn't walk. The alcohol content was at 9% which is perfect for me. More adventures on the beer making later. Till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Butchering and canning chicken, bottling beer

We got an early start this morning with the chicken butchering. Didn't take long to finish off the last 9 left from yesterday. I got them all cut up, vacuum packed the meat that was going to the freezer and got the stock started. I had about 15 lbs of chicken backs, wing tips, and other bony pieces and fat. I put that in the pressure canner with about 2 cups of celery stalks roughly chopped, 3 medium onions, and about 2 cups of carrots, then added a little bit of salt and pepper and a splash of vinegar and water to almost cover. Then pressure cooked all this for about 2 hours. Strained the stock into a kettle. Luna loves the left over cooked chicken. I had skinned the thighs and legs and deboned the thighs,and put them in the jars. Ladled the stock over the chicken and filled 5 more jars of just stock with the 7 quarts of chicken. Processed this for 90 minutes at 10 lb pressure. So now  I have a good supply of canned chicken and stock. So I have been outside or in the summer kitchen all day long. I am so glad they put an air conditioner in my lil summer kitchen or the heat would be unbearable in there. The heat and humidity here has been terrible. Then we got a pretty good storm this evening too. I had  my laptop out there and could surf the net and wait on things to can.
The guys went to Richmond today to pick up a free washer that Jason found on freecycle and brought it home. I had them stop at walmart and pick up some more canning jars for me. I had them get 10 dozen regular quarts and 5 dozen wide mouth quarts. I don't have many jars left that are empty for some reason. So now I will sure have enough jars for canning green beans and tomato products. The10 dozen pints I bought  a couple weeks ago will be used to can corn and other jams and jellies. I had also ask them to see if Lowes had any 100 lb propane cylinders in stock and they did, so they got 2 of those. One will be used for propane for my summer kitchen and 1 for a propane heater for back up heat here in the house. Cause we know its no fun waking up with the power off and it near zero outside with total electric heat. A bigger tank will be better for the summer kitchen, wont be as likely to run out in the middle of canning something that requires a long pressure canning time. It would sure suck to get within a few minutes of being done with, say a meat, and run out and lose pressure below 10 lb and have to start the counting over again.
It was time this evening to bottle the beer that we had started brewing a couple weeks ago. So Rodger and Jason set about doing that. I think it is kinda cool to make you own beer.

 
This was our first batch so we will let you know later how it turns out. It has to sit in the bottles for 2 weeks before you drink it for it to be at its best. We shall see. But no matter, they wanted to go ahead and start another batch. So the brew tank is on the counter doing its thing.
Till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Playing catch-up

I feel like we have been playing catch-up as of late. The yard is way over grown with the rain. It is either to wet to mow or we don't have time with the garden harvest going on. So this evening we finally got the weed eating done and started mowing. We had a shower of rain today and the grass was wet under neath. So if we don't get more rain we finish the mowing and then head to the garden to harvest corn, cukes and probably carrots. The carrot tops have started to die back and once they do that they have a tendency to sprout and start new growth and get tough with the least bit of rain. The purple hull peas get canned in the morning and by the time I get them canned it will be time to pick again. Hopefully I will get to be home all next week and get a lot done as far as canning.
I took a friend to the big city today for her docs appointment and made a quick stop by the Liquor Barn. I did find some wine yeast that I was looking for to get some good blackberry wine started. Not sure if I want to try and fill my 6 gallon carboy or just make a small batch. I'm just having fun learning something new. Also the beer we started smells really good now. We are making a pale ale as our first batch of beer. It should be ready to drink in a couple more weeks. I think we are going to bottle it  and let it set for another few weeks. Maybe Labor day weekend would be a good time to try it out. We shall see.
Till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Canning, we finally got rain

We finally got a good rain today. It rained some last night and a steady rain most of today. I'm sure this will make the garden grow. And the weeds as well. My new little beans really appreciated the rain. This should also make the late beets sprout as well as the melons that I planted late. Most of all I can appreciate the cooler temps. We had highs in the low 80's today, so nice to be out.
I managed to get some canning done as well. I had 10 lb of pinto beans soaked and got those canned up. I had 13 quarts and 11 pints when finished. Also finished up the blackberry syrup (6 pints and 3 half pints) to use for bedtime drinks in winter. I transferred my kraut that I had made from the red cabbage and got that in jars to store. It is rather tasty with the addition of caraway seed added to the cabbage before it was set to ferment. After supper we made 9 quarts of bread and butter pickles. Then 1 quart of whole baby dills. I had9 half pints of chopped dills to use in things that need chopped dill pickle. Just a convenience thing for me I guess.
I received my beer making kit in the mail today. This is gonna be fun. We got it set up to make a batch of beer. We should be able to enjoy this lil treat around labor day. I also got my wine making supplies today. Now this is something I am looking forward to. I am going to try to get some wine started tomorrow. Kinda excited about learning something new.

All the canned stuff should be ready to clean up and put in the cellar tomorrow and clear off my counter in the summer kitchen. So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella