Yesterday if was pretty nice and cool we had a ton of produce and I was feeling good so we did a marathon of preserving and baking. Our agenda included baking bread, making and canning tomato salsa, making and freezing basil pesto and freezing sweet corn.

I love getting homemade gifts. Last year my aunt, who has been a mentor at preserving, gave me a jar of apple butter and one of salsa. I had been looking for a cooked salsa recipe I could preserve and here it is.

 

It smelled wonderful bubbling on the stove. I addded coriander instead of oregano and though I didn’t do it this time I think it could handle a hint of heat with a jalapeno or two. I also processed it for 30 minutes in my steam canner.

We also worked on sweet corn. Here I blanched some of our sugar pearl sweet corn for 3 minutes before taking it to the “cutting station.”

Avril liked putting the corn in bags, she is really getting to be a great helper! and we had plenty of corn for dinner.

At the end of the day we had 2 loaves of good brown bread, 3 bags of pesto, 6 quarts of corn and 7 pints of salsa. A good days work.

It is the season of home canning–at least if you have discovered the superior taste of items from the home kitchen and you really don’t want to rely on the grocery store this winter. This week is cooler so I am slightly more motivated to can–slightly. I have put away 6 quarts of my freezer tomato sauce. Since I am the only one in the family who likes this that will probably be it for the season. I have 8 gallon freezer bags of grape tomatoes. We add these whole to a family favorite from my husband’s family, chicken sour soup, and so don’t have to eat winter tomatoes from the grocery store.

Today the agenda called for something only slightly more complicated–diced tomatoes.

I’m serious, it’s not that complicated, or time consuming, the planning is really what makes the time. I had a couple bushels of tomatoes, uniform round ones work really good for diced tomatoes.

The first step is to blanch them in boiling water, this makes it easier to peel.

Then I just cut the tops off and peel the skin off. Avril asked for a job and so I let her cut them up and put them in the jars. She was so funny she said, “I want to help you because I love you so much and I don’t want you to get too tired.” She did a really good job for quite awhile before the acid from the tomatoes got to be too much for her.

I wash the jars in hot soapy water with a bottle brush right before packing. Then attach new lids and reuse the rings from last year.

The kind of canner I use is a steam canner which is basically an inverted hot water canner. It uses less water and so boils faster and the steam in the dome works like a boiling water canner. Some day maybe I’ll get a pressure canner so I can do soup and other vegetables and stuff like that.

I put my diced tomatoes in pints so once the steam starts coming out the hole I time it for 35 minutes.

Then it’s done. So far I have 18 pints. I would like 30 but I also want to do tomato sauce, salsa and soon I will have peaches and pears coming so the diced tomatoes will have to wait. I am trying not to get so task oriented I exhaust myself. Even with the cooler weather it was pretty hot in the kitchen.

What a busy, busy weekend. In addition to all the weeding and harvesting at the farm we celebrated Two’s birthday and had our first shipment of fruit arrive. We are getting better at making the birthdays more low key and enjoyable for parents as well. So that was more fun then anything. And then there was the fruit.

Looking back it was fun and something enjoyable to do together but last night not so much. It would be a very long story to explain how Proeun and I ended up unloading our bulk fruit order from a refrigerated semi parked outside our house at 12:30 am this morning. But this morning the children woke up to boxes and boxes of fresh fruit in the living room–almost like Christmas.

We haven’t had very many real meals today since most of us can’t stop eating the fruit. I have bought fruit with my aunt for years now we are a dropsite also. Last year I only order 1 box of cherries, 1 of blueberries and 1 of Apricots.

This year I increased that to 2 boxes of blueberries. I have already put one away for winter in little freezer bags. Last year I tried dehydrating them but didn’t get enough moisture out and they spoiled. Someday when I have a bigger kitchen maybe I will buy my own and learn the process. For this year it is freezing. Oh so simple with blueberries, just label the baggies, wash them quick or check them over for steams. I like to use quart bags and put 1 pint in them.

I bought a full box of rainier cherries for fresh eating, my goodness they are amazing. About 3 weeks ago Proeun was telling me, I was just thinking about eating a big bowl of cherries.

I got 2 boxes of dark sweet cherries for freezing. I was thinking I might try some jam also if I find a good recipe. I also bought a cherry “stoner” at Fleet Farm–so much easier then doing it yourself.

Finally I bought a box of apricots. Last year I dehydrated some, canned some and did jam. I loved the jam but wasn’t really happy with anything else. Of course I can’t find the recipe. Maura if you are reading this do you have an apricot jam recipe?

So the next couple of days in my “free” time I’ll be working on my first preserving of the season. So so much fun.

When you are living on a tight budget and saving for a farm there are a few things that can really help a busy family get by. One is a pantry. About a year or so ago I was reading an article in Countryside Magazine about having a pantry. The article recommended a book from Backwoods Home Magazine called Self Reliance:Recession-Proof Your Pantry. Though money was tight I promptly ordered it and got started. The book has great tips for how to get started.

The first thing I did was buy an industrial shelving unit at Sam’s Club. I have since discovered you can get really high quality shelving at Menard’s and the like.

I belong to wholesale buying club that buys natural and organic food bulk called Country Life Natural Foods. Every four weeks we purchase grains, beans, dried fruit, pasta, oil, honey, maple syrup, etc. Of course we don’t order all those things every month and now I am looking for more local options for things like honey and maple syrup. We purchase jasmine rice in 50 pound bags at our local Asian store. With our staples purchased once a month we try to go to the grocery store no more than once a week or every other week if we can last. Here we purchase fresh vegetables and fruit and some of our meat. We are hoping to raise our own meat chickens this year but that is another story.

Here is a picture of our pantry
                
                                                              

It includes some both home canned and purchased canned food. The bins on the bottom shelf hold 5 lb bags of beans, dried fruit, nuts, and some flours. We also purchase and keep on hand extra oil, maple syrup and honey. For the Asian tastes in the house we have cans of coconut milk, Pho broth and sardines in spicy tomato broth.

What is great about having a pantry is it allows you buy food when you have the money and store it for when you don’t, like this week. I discovered we have less then $100 to live on until the next pay day, over 1 week away. Oh did I say the car needs gas. But even with this extremely tight budget we have the pantry we can eat out of. There are multitudes of options with dried beans (my favorite) pasta and rice. We have eggs steadily from our chickens now and some meat in the freezer. We have plenty of canned fruit, pickles and tomato sauce.

The only thing I would do different is I would have canned more diced tomatoes. I started the winter with 28 pints of diced tomatoes. I thought that would be plenty. But home canned tomatoes are soooooooooooooo much better then store bought I didn’t realized how often I would use them. Proeun and I used to struggle with heartburn every time we ate canned tomatoes, not the case with our home canned, certified organic, heirloom tomatoes. I only have 5 cans left. Can I possibly eat store bought tomatoes?  Next year I will have to do more.

Mentally I am just about done with tomatoes. i can’t imagine living in a part of the country that doesn’t have seasons. They just seem like such a welcome change to all that it happening. Almost from the beginning of the summer I was ready for winter and here it comes. Harvests are winding down and while I could always do some more canning I am done with that too.

I am on to planning for homeschool, knitting, reading, journaling and quiet evenings at home finishing up our garden out back and cleaning the house for winter. Cleaning out all the dust and grime that have been tracked in and blown in through the windows. Fall has always been my favorite time of year,. This year is no different.

To help with my cleaning I bought a bunch of Norwex cloths at a product party my aunt had. I loved them so much I decided to have a party. They seem to fit right into the lifestyle Proeun and I are working to build. The cloths have a really tight weave and actually have silver woven through them which makes them antibacterial. I bought some for my kitchen and love clean counters and tables. I bought some travel size for my purse and a multi colored baby pack. None of the products have any chemicals in them and you can actually use them to clean chemical free. I had been using Melaleuca for years but this is really easy. Moms are so funny when our new toys are cleaning supplies.

My sister-in-law and I both love to cook. I remember fondly the day when I was around 11 and I saw a dish in a magazine I wanted my mother to try making for me. When I asked, “Can you make this for me?” she loving said, “Why don’t you try?” Apparently she had decided it was time for me to try my wings. And it probably was. Within a year I was doing the majority of the weekly cooking for the family, including making grocery lists and menu planning. My parents would come home from work to a completed meal.

Luoth, my sister-in-law has also shared a majority of the family cooking duties. Even now at family gatherings she is the one who spearheads the majority of the dishes. I am not too ashamed to say she remains my husband’s favorite cook.

For me writing, reading and cooking have always gone together. I decided what to cook based on what someone else had written about a dish. Sometimes I would be tempted by a picture or just the list of ingredients. Luoth grew up without books. I remember how stricking it was to me to visit my soon to be in-laws for the first time and realize there were no books anywhere in the house. Her first experiences with food were watching her mother cook over an open fire the fresh food of the day. Later in the refugee camp she learned how to make do with meager rations. After coming to America, the land of plenty, the food still did not flow freely on to their table, (which was really a mat on the floor). Proeun has a unique view on maternal love. He remembers that when there wasn’t enough food to eat and the children were more hungry then not his mother would chose not to eat so the children could have enough.

When I came into the family I struggled to learn how to cook to taste, how to just make up dishes off the top of my head with whatever I had on hand. Add to that that I was cooking with ingredients I had never heard of. If I was going to the store by myself my sister-in-law could occasionally struggle to remember the English words for an item.

Now I find myself with a much expanded culinary repertoire. Today I attempted to make stuffed bitter melon. I was surprised at how bitter they actually are. Not many cuisines use bitter as an taste to strive for. The taste sensation didn’t go over well with the children but I did pick up some brownie points wIth Proeun who often worries about his family’s culinary traditions being lost.

I have to credit Sami Scripter and Sheng Yang for their cookbook, Cooking from the Heart: The Hmong Kitchen in America for helping me along. Many of the dishes are similar to my husband’s family kitchen and it helps those more used to learning to cook from books along the way. Proeun is now suggesting that Luoth and I write a similar book for the Cambodian kitchen.

We are just coming off of the 2 hottest days of the year. Well back middle of May we had one day hotter, but no one knew it until after it was over. These last couple of days however were real punishers. Factoring in the dew point it was a heat index of over 105 degrees yesterday. Up until then we had toyed with the idea of not installing our window unit this year. I had been reading about how young children have maximum sweating capability. However if they live in an area with a colder climate they gradually loose this ability and later in life will most likely not be able to regain it. Also I know that constanly moving between extreme temperatures like going outside and coming back inside is really hard on your body. Then there were the questions about air quality when using an air conditioner (central or window). So we decided we would try and tough it out.

The first day of heat came. We kept the shades closed, fans on and used the slow cooker, rice cooker and toaster oven to cook our food. On the plus side clothes on the line dried really fast. We sweated away the day in front of the fan. I looked forward all day to Proeun coming home and taking a quick dip in the kiddy pool, or at least my feet. Finally he was home. Two was outside and threw his “spear,” a piece of wood, into the the pool and punctured it–of course right at the bottom so there was no way we could fill it up. This was a hole and not a crack so duct tape wouldn’t fix this one. I had to settle for a cold shower.

The second day came. We got up early to go to the farm. When we got there at 8:30 it was already 80 degrees and the field was full of farmers. We worked  until 10:30 and then had to leave. All day long we sweated in the house. It reminded me of the days when I worked at historic Fort Snelling. You knew it was hot when your eyelids sweat and you could literally feel beads of sweat running down your legs. At least then when the day was over I got to come home to air conditioning. At that point I didn’t care about the air quality. When Proeun came home last night he put in the window unit. It still isn’t a great temperature in the house but at least is is no longer 88 degrees in the house.

I definitely have to be careful what I wish for. Last week I had bought clothes pins and clothes line. In the most recent issue of Countryside Magazine there was an article about hanging clothes on the line. I remember my grandmother doing this frequently and have many fond memories of helping her.

When we moved into this house there was a clothesline in the back as well as a winter one in the basement. These have rarely been used.

However this last weekend I decided I shoud try hanging at least a couple of loads on the line each week. I was hoping to save money and energy cost as well as become more self-sufficient. If we lost our power or chose not to use it, what were my options for drying clothes? Even with my new resolve a week after purchasig the clothes pin and lines they were still in the packages.

Until last night. After trying to dry a load of diapers 3 times I had to face the truth–something was wrong with our dryer. We ended up scrambling to find enough diapers at bedtime.

In any case it appears that this is a new skill I now have to learn. We may be able to fix it still or we may have to buy a new one but in the meantime we are going to hang clothes on the line.

Two showing off his patches.

As our family grows the cost of birthdays keeps going up.  Now we have 3 birthdays to plan throughout the year though we do hope that number will grow. Luckily so far our birthdays are spread out nicely.

I am growing though and getting better at planning. I realize the day is for my children and for family to spend with them and while I try to provide a nice meal for our guests I make sure it is something that will require little prep time the morning of and attention from me once the guests arrive.

This year I decided to make our own cake. While the perfectly formed and decorated cakes look nice in pictures I couldn’t justify spending upwards of $15 on the cake alone. Last year I got a Kitchenaide mixer. So far I have only used it for the weekly bread making and macaroons a couple times. Time to pull out the accompanying recipe book and wow my guests with a fabulous home made cake I enthused.

Saturday night, the night before the party. It is getting late and I am strapped for time to make the cake. I had planned a plain white cake and frosting. I was surprised to see shortening in the recipe. I haven’t used shortening since last year Christmas when we made tamales. When I pulled out the shortening it was more yellow then white and smelled strongly. Could shortening go bad? I didn’t think so and since it had been so long since I used shortening I decided it must be OK. The fact that it was getting late and I had guests coming over the next day at 11:00 am I made a hasty decision, hoping that once the cake was cooked it would be OK.

My first sign of trouble was when my husband asked, “What’s that smell?” as I was beating up the batter in my handy mixer. Baking it didn’t help the smell and the cake tasted slightly greasy. I hoped a good frosting would mask it. I did make a good meringue frosting that I was pretty proud of. I liberally frosted the cake, put sprinkles on and waited till cake time.

My guests are all there, after a mediocre meal—we had other problems I hoped the cake would remedy it. We lit the candles, sang happy birthday then cut the cake. The smell came out, It was awful. My husband’s family asked him in Cambodian about the smell. He said, “does it smell like plastic? I know nothing about it.” My dad asked, “is there a different spice in here? There’s a taste I don’t recognize.” Luckily we had ice cream and our guests filled up on ice cream and threw away cake.

I am sure that this cake will go down in family history, like my aunt’s tough pie crust everyone still talks about. Next time if I make a cake again the family probably will think twice about eating it.

I have compiled a list of tips

1. use only the best and freshest ingredients. When in doubt don’t use it. Run to the store if you have to, substitute or don’t make a cake.
2. don’t over frost. If you are making a layer cake it can cause the top layer to slide.
3. trim off the top of the bottom piece to make if flat for the top piece.
4. Put pieces of waxed paper around the edges of the bottom of the cake. After frosting remove the paper and you have a clean plate.
5. Try, try, try again.

So would I attempt a cake again–definitely. I simply have to own my mistake and laugh at myself.