Gettin' Canny with Peaches

I love to live life true to my heritage.  I'm just a wee bit Scottish. Okay, I'm a lot Scottish.  Faithful to my progenitors, I look for ways to pinch a penny.  In a word, I'm "tight".  I come by it honestly, both my parents were the same way and it was my father who encouraged me to can.  Dad grew up on a farm in Tennessee during the Depression and he appreciated hard work and the fruit of that labor.  Even as a successful businessman he worked on his own car, built his garage and always had a wonderful garden. 

When my husband and I bought our home, it had a 2,000 square foot garden and 18 fruit trees.  Back then, when I brought home a plant, my husband would chortle, "Another one goes on Death Row!"  As a young wife and mother, I had no clue how to grow things; that had been my dad's department.  Now I had to step up to the plate and learn how to grow things to put on our plates!  So I contacted the local extension service and signed up for the Master Gardener program.  What an incredible experience!  The training one receives through the program is like a college education!  You learn everything from turf management and orchard management to insect control and so on.  That education has been invaluable and I had the opportunity to return the favor of that free education by volunteering with 4H, the University of Maryland Extension Service and the local county and state fairs.

Once I learned how to grow food, I had to do something with it. It became a matter of "put up" or, well..., I had to put it up.  So, I learned to can (and freeze, and dehydrate). With canning, I found I could prolong our bounty throughout the year for our family and preserve our budget to boot! You may be thinking that canning is just not for you because it is too difficult.  Trust me, I'm as blonde as they come and if I can do it, so can you.  Below is a very simple recipe that yields a delicious treat.

Canned Peaches

Things you'll need:

 

Peaches

Sugar

Water

4 - quart canning jars with lids and rings

Water bath canner with wire rack

Jar Tongs

Fruit Pectin or lemon juice

Step One:  Sterilize your jars and lids.  I run mine in the dishwasher and then submerge in hot water in my sink until ready to pack peaches.  At the same time, raise your wire canning rack to hang on the side of your canner and fill with water high enough that cover your jars with an inch of water over the top of the lids (once you lower them in your canner).  Turn heat on high - you'll need a rolling boil.

Step Two:  For 4 quarts of peaches, I picked about 20 peaches.  Ours are cling-free, which make it easy to slice up.  Peel and pit your peaches.  I slice mine because when I use my peaches later, it's usually to make a pie or cobbler.  Sprinkle your peaches with fruit pectin (ascorbic acid) or lemon juice to keep the fruit from turning brown.

Step Three: In a large saucepan add 4 cups water to 4 cups sugar.  Heat and stir to dissolve sugar and create a simple syrup.  This is to pour over the sliced peaches. 

Step Four:   Pack your peaches in your hot jars.  Don't pack too tightly.  Pour simple syrup over peaches to the bottom of the neck of each quart jar.  Run a butter knife around the inside of the jar.  This allows any air bubbles to rise.  If you need to add more syrup to bring the level back up to the bottom of the neck of the jar, do so now.  Put on your lids and rings until they are "finger tight", meaning tight enough, but you can loosen with your fingers (you don't need a vice grip, lol!) 

Step Five:  Once the water has reached a rolling boil, take your jars and place them evenly around the rack and lower in the canner. If you need more water to cover the jars, take a big pot and fill with the hottest tap water and add until the jars are sufficiently covered.  Put the lid on the canner.  Usually, your water will slow it's boil. With the lid on, the water will heat up again and once the boil rolls again, begin timing.  For peach quarts, I process for 30 minutes.

Step Six:  After 30 minutes, turn off the heat.  I wait until the water stops boiling and then remove my jars with my jar tongs.  Place your jars on a folded tea towel in a draft-free area.  Allow to cool to room temperature and then mark on the lid what you canned and the date.  You are done! Aye!

Now, what shall we do with those peaches?  One of my favorite recipes is my 

Aunt Mary's Poor Man's Peach Cobbler

Ingredients

5 slices white bread, crusts removed, cut each into 5 slices

1-1/2 cup sugar
1 stick butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 egg

Directions

1.  Preheat over to 350 degrees F.  Butter an 8 inch baking dish.

2.  Cut crust from bread slices and cut each slice of bread into 5 slices.     Spread fruit onto bottom of pan and cover with a layer of bread.

3.  Beat together butter, sugar, flour, and egg. Pour mixture onto fruit and bread.

4.  Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Thought for the day:  Ya cannae beat a canny Scot!  :-)

Feeling a Little Seedy

I love going shopping at my favorite Amish stores near Lancaster, PA.  It's like a treasure hunt every time I go as they never have the same thing from visit to visit.  These stores stock items normally too expensive to buy at prices too hard to resist.  Food items are especially fun because it gets the creative juices flowing trying to decide how to incorporate them into daily living.

Yesterday, I found good unbleached Occidental flour and wheat gluten, pumpkin seeds, whole flax seed, and wheat germ.  This gave me the idea to incorporate these into a hearty honey whole wheat multi-grain bread using the foolproof bread recipe.  Here's how I changed the recipe:

Ann's recipe calls for 1 - 2 cups of milled flax seed instead of using dough enhancer.  I, instead, used 1 heaping tablespoon of wheat gluten.  Wheat gluten helps heavier doughs such as whole wheat multigrain breads to rise and are therefore, less dense.  Don't we wish we could sometimes add gluten to our brains when the fog rolls in?  I do!  :-)  I then added to my recipe a half cup of roasted pumpkin seeds, a half cup rolled oatmeal (not the quick oats), a quarter cup of toasted sesame seeds, half a cup of Kretschmer's Honey Wheat Germ, and a half cup of whole flax seeds.  I also used half unbleached Occidental flour and half whole wheat flour.

I have to say, I couldn't resist making a whole recipe of bread.  In a previous post, I mentioned that the recipe is really too large, even for my commercial grade Hobart mixer.  The dough hook will keep the dough from climbing out of the bowl, but truthfully, I have not mastered the art of dough hooks and prefer the regular paddle.  So while making bread I was delightfully flouring myself, the kitchen counter, the floor, and anything else within about a 6 foot radius.  It was a little hard to see whether or not the dough was really pulling off the sides of the mixing bowl, so I added additional flour until I felt it was sufficient for a good loaf without making it too dry.  This was fairly subjective on my part:  ummm, that looks pretty good. While I sprayed my cleaned off counter with oil and oiled my hands, I lifted up a silent prayer that all that gooey goodness would transform into a warm, sweet, nutty delight.  I took the yeasty blob and divided it into three large loaf pans, covered, and I let them rise for about an hour.  Ann's recipe says 30 minutes or until doubled.  I wanted to see what would happen if I let them go longer.

To diverge for a moment,  our Friday night bible study, One Thousand Gifts, focused on grace.  Part of our discussion revolved around the need to just "be still".  This, "being still," is really an action.   In order to experience real peace, I must first actively stop.  Frankly, I am a pretty active person and once in gear, it's hard to get me to down shift and then I usually just run out of diesel.  Lately, though, God has been taking me to new places in my life where, rather than trying to control and manage areas of my life (like my career), I realized I needed to stop, ask God to lead, and just quietly wait on him.  There is such a peace in the quiet that cannot be heard or felt in the din of a hurried day.  A result was a promotion.  It is so much easier to know where I belong when I let the One who created me show me where he wants to use me next.  It gives life meaning when I know I am placed somewhere for a purpose.

So, are there other areas where I could be still and know that he is God?  What if I just left the bread to rise a little more?  As I lifted the flour sack that covered my rising loaves I was thrilled.  They were huge!  Now, if only they tasted as good as they looked!  I lowered each pan into the oven, worrying  they might not all fit.  Fortunately they just fit and off they baked.  Soon the smell of freshly baking bread came floating through the house and I could hardly wait to see the finished product.

The time came to take them from the oven and they looked beautiful.  I felt like Steve Urkel:  did I do thaaat?  I slid them out of their pans and onto the cooling rack not feeling a whole lot of "peace be still," but a whole lot of "I want some of that!"  Finally, the loaves were cool enough to slice and I called my husband in to try a slice together.  A little butter, a little pear honey and wow, the sweetness of the honey, the nuttiness of the pumpkin and toasted sesame seeds- it all came together.  The crumb turned out perfectly and it reminded me - God asks for obedience from us, and then he does the proofing.  In the desire to understand "peace, be still", he took a good recipe and taught me how he makes it so much more than I could ever expect.  What a lesson.  What a God!

Honey, I'm home.

Canning is one of those fun activities where I actively look for items to can.  My husband would say that if an object sits too long, it's in danger of being pressurized.  I'm beginning to feel a little super-human...  If you can boil water, you can make great pear honey.  It's just that easy.

Recently, my boss was telling me how much he loves pears.  A light bulb goes off in my head (another way of saying a rattling starts in my brain) and I remember my favorite pear honey recipe.  Like the foolproof bread recipe, it's simple to make.  In fact, my last batch I made while watching the Baltimore Ravens win in the playoffs.  Double joy!

Pear Honey

3 pounds Bartlett or Bosc pears
1 8 ounce can of crushed pineapple, with the juice
5 cups sugar (I use half brown sugar and half white)
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
(makes 7 pints)

Wash and sterilize your pint jars and lids.  Keep hot until ready for pear honey.  In a water bath canner (or a large stock pot) place a small metal platform on the bottom to keep jars from sitting on the bottom.  You will need enough water to cover your jars with an inch over the top of the lids when setting in the pot.  Bring water to a rolling boil.

Peel and core pears unless you have a VitaMix blender.  (If you do have a VitaMix, you can just pull the stems off and cut any bad spots off and throw cut up pears, core, peel, and seeds all in the pot.)  In a large non-reactive pot you will add cut up pears, sugar, pineapple with juice and lemon juice.  Cook until tender.  Process in a blender until smooth.  In a VitaMix, the core, peel and seeds are processed in with the pears and completely disappear.  The end result looks like honey.  Such is my love affair with my VitaMix!

Pour honey into pints to the bottom of the neck of the jar and put lids and rims on "finger tight".  If you need a wrench it loosen it, you've gone too far.  Place your jars in the water bath canner.  I recommend using canning tongs to eliminate baking soda on burned fingers later.  Cover with a lid.  As soon as you have a good rolling boil again, time 10 minutes and you are done.

Remove the lid and with the tongs, take each pint out and place on a towel in a draft-free area.  Allow to cool completely.  You will hear the lids suction down as they cool.  That is the sound of success!

Great in Bread

My first successful homemade bread

A slice of homemade whole wheat honey bread
with  homemade pear honey

I love to cook.  People who know me are nodding (and rolling their eyes).  I am always talking about food and I tend to expound on how my creations were made.  I really should have taught cooking!

I really love the art of canning but bread baking has escaped me for so long; I just couldn't seem to get it right.  I would follow the directions, but the dough wouldn't rise.  I began to doubt my yeast, my bread machine, my hands.  I was never sure what the problem was.  Recently, I joined a bible study called, "1,000 Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.  In her video of the same name, she makes bread while talking and it inspired me to try again.  I found Ann's recipe on her website, A Holy Experience called  Ann Voskamp's Foolproof Bread Recipe.  It really is foolproof.

There are a couple of interesting things about this bread.  Normally. when you make bread, you add yeast to a bowl of warm water, add sugar, etc. and then add flour to your concoction to begin your dough.  This recipe you add your warm water, honey, oil, flour, salt and flax, then add the yeast at the end.  Mix, let rise 30 minutes until your dough doubles in size and then bake 30 - 35 minutes.  This has been the easiest recipe I have ever tried - with the best results.

I will say, that if you decide to try this recipe, you may want to cut it in half at first.  The recipe makes 5 loaves of bread and my Kitchen Aid mixer was actually straining toward the end.  My first attempt last week did not rise, but my yeast is getting old, so this week I bought new and I made half whole wheat flour and half unbleached white flour.  I used 1 cup of milled flax seed  as recommended (the grocery store did not have wheat gluten*) added a little molasses.  I may add more molasses next time as I love the flavor.  This time I used my Hobart N50 (commercial grade) and it handled the dough fine, but it really fills the bowl!  Hence, the suggestion to cut the recipe in half.  The bread came out  fragrant and beautiful - sliced warm with a little butter and homemade pear honey.  Warm sweetness melts in my mouth on a cold winter's day.

*If you are new to the idea of bread making, wheat gluten is an enhancer for heavier breads.  Whole wheat, graham and other heavier flours require a "boost" to rise.  By adding wheat gluten or milled flax seed, your bread rises and is less dense.