No, not that. Were it not for the wonders of modern medicinal chemistry, you could already call me a crone. It’s been 9 months since my last post, which I wrote about the time my sister died, I find myself talking in my head to the blog again. I blame this thread on Twitter where I started documenting my daily acts of food preservation. It’s something Carla Emery recommended in the Encyclopedia of Country Living, to plant something every day as soon as the soil could be worked until midsummer, then preserve something everyday until winter.
Keeping up with that thread is busting my butt. I’ve run almost out of zucchini. And I have more to say about every project than fits in 280 characters. And I should own my own content here, not just give it free to @Jack’s profiteering machine for Russian bots and their treasonous handlers. Not that any Russian bots care about homesteading, cider making, or living in a small town at 7000′ on the Utah edge of the Colorado Plateau with too many animal mouths to feed.
I gave away two zucchini today and almost regretted it when I decided that today’s food storage project would be Zucchini Pineapple. And I decided that on a whim, because it sounds just weird enough to be good. We don’t eat a lot of desserts or baked goodies, and I despise zucchini bread, so this is an odd choice, but it’s only zucchini. We’ll probably end up putting it in pancakes or maybe I’ll make a coffee cake with it when it’s cold and blustery. Worst case is that it ends up on ice cream.
And since when did zucchini start giving me a skin reaction? It’s apparently not uncommon for one’s hands to get dry, taut and itchy. Luckily I remembered to bust out some nitrile gloves. Naturally, living with a biologist, we are well-stocked in the sanitation department.
One thing I try to do is prep two more jars than the recipe calls for, one in the size intended (pint, quart, etc.) and one a half size smaller. That way I’m ready if the predicted amount is way off, as it often is. This recipe should have made 4-4.5 pints and I got a full 5 pints. So what if I end up with an extra clean jar to put away that I didn’t use?
The canner finished up in the time I was writing all this up, and I remembered a couple other little tricks I’ve adopted over the years. When I take the jars out, I put them on a towel on the baking tray. That way, if I have to move the jars around on the counter before the 24-hour cooling period is over, I can gently slide them across the counter. I’ve even stacked trays when things are really cooking in the kitchen.
I used to print up nice labels for each jar, but they don’t fit so well on the reusable lids. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do until R told me that you can remove the Sharpie ink from plastic (or glass or metal) with hand sanitizer alcohol gel. Mind blown. So now I do my labeling with a fine point Sharpie.
And that’s that: another day’s food harvest safely stored away. I think Carla would be proud.