Yesterday was very warm in the sun. Today is supposed to be warm in the sun. Overnight temperatures are falling into the teens. I wonder if we will get a heat wave this month, this does not quite qualify as such. Most Septembers that I can remember featured a short heat wave. The first year I was teaching, in the very early 70s, in the first week of school all the candles in my apartment melted in the heat. I didn’t have air conditioning, so it was memorable.
The garden is loving this mild heat wave. It has been dry, so Attila is watering the garden daily. And continuing to harvest small amounts of many things.
Every few days we can pickled peppers, or cowboy candy, as the peppers are producing a lot of peppers.
At the grocery store last week onions were on sale, local onions, at $2.77 for ten pounds. We bought two bags, or twenty pounds of onions. Beets and carrots were also on sale for the same price per pound, so we bought ten pounds of beets, and ten pounds of carrots. These purchases generated a lot of activity in the kitchen.
Onions
I have wanted to try canning onions for a very long time, not pickled onions which can be steam canned, but plain onions which would have to be pressure canned. I have been waiting for September when the freshly harvested onions are sold at reasonable prices at our grocery store. Finally I found a tested recipe for canning plain onions posted by Clemson University. Attila and I got busy with our local yellow onions, dicing them into one inch or smaller pieces. We used 10 pounds of onions to can 10 500-ml jars, they all sealed.
The aroma of the canned onions was wonderful! There was a small bit of siphoning in the pressure canner, so that when I opened it up, the delicious aroma filled the kitchen.
I shared the recipe in a Facebook canning group, operated by the Ball company. At first there was some controversy, as it was unclear in the Clemson recipe if the onions needed to be whole as in pearl onions, or could be larger onions cut to size. Luckily, the administrator of the group had contacted Clemson for clarification on this issue some time ago, so I was sure my method was tested and safe.
I will try using the canned onions in soups and casseroles. The first experiment will be today, as I will use half a jar in the pickle soup for supper. Someone commented on my post on facebook that they use the canned onions for creamed onions, I will try that too. Another possibility is to use the canned onions to make onion gravy.
Beets
I was going to can the beets, but Attila said there was enough room in the freezer to accommodate them. Attila washed the whole bag, then setup the Instant Pot to cook half of them. After cooking, he peeled, diced, bagged, and froze the first batch. Then he headed out of doors to split firewood, and I took over with the beets. After cooking the last half of the beets in the Instant Pot, I peeled them. Attila came in for a break and took the project back, dicing and freezing the last of them.
Pickled Peppers and Onions
Attila harvested quite a few jalapeño peppers, which became four jars of pickled peppers and diced onions.
Jars
We are coming close to running out of 500-ml canning jars. They are four times the price of the last jars we purchased two years ago! Ridiculous price gouging in my opinion, but that is the way of things now. We may or may not have to purchase more jars, we shall see. There is only one binge canning project coming up, applesauce. I think I will have enough one litre jars to manage.
This is the time of year when the balance is shifting. Through the harvest season we fill empty jars, and eat fresh from the garden. Then a shift occurs when we eat both fresh and canned food, emptying a few jars. Those jars are then available to can additional produce. Eventually, usually into December, we reach a point when we are no longer refilling those newly empty jars. Then we are creating empty jars, as we eat our canned food, washing and storing the jars for the next years harvest and preserving season. And so it goes through the seasons, year after year.
A Fun Day Trip
We recently took a vacation day trip!! The last time we did this was when the Van Gogh exhibition was being shown at the National Gallery of Art, in 2012.
This day trip was to visit the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, which neither of us had visited before. It seemed oriented towards children, and most of the other visitors were families with pre-school children. It was a little early in the school year for classroom trips to the museum, so it was quiet and relaxing.
We both found it restorative to be around the farm animals for the day, and to smell all the familiar farm animal smells. I never would have thought I would miss those! The highlight of the visit for me, was the Canola Oil exhibit, which highlighted the role of Canadian Agriculture in the development of the product since the 1960s and 1970s. So much I did not know about rapeseed oils, and canola oil. Canola oil is made from a specific variety of rapeseed that has been selectively bred, and bioengineered. It has been selectively bred to remove,
“…erucic acid, which is nutritionally undesirable, and glucosinolates, which are sulfur compounds that are responsible for the strong undesirable flavour of radishes, mustard, and other vegetables.””
Source: https://www.cropscience.bayer.ca/articles/2022/canola-breeding-process
The product is also genetically altered, which is more complicated, and less desirable in my opinion.
Rapeseed oil, that is not produced from the varieties developed as canola oil, is not a desirable food oil, in terms of nutrition or taste. Canola oil through crossbreeding removed those undesirable qualities, but has also been bioengineered.
For the moment we continue to use canola oil in breads and baked goods. We use olive oil for everything else.
Home
Today is a fairly quiet day. We just finished our lunch, garden broccoli and cheese sauce. There are no canning projects on the to do list, fresh bread was baked yesterday, and we are waiting for the harvested tomatoes to accumulate for a batch of chili sauce, or pizza sauce, as yet to be decided.
Yesterday Attila split firewood. Today Attila is scraping and painting one of the gable ends of the house. I am gathering up our bills in anticipation of paying them, and sitting here writing this. Ginger, well he wanted a change of scene. Since the day trip, when he was left to his own devices here at Mist Cottage, he has been a bit cantankerous. He has been lecturing us on our bad behaviour, and has decided to sleep draped over the back of the couch, so as to keep a ready eye on all of our activities. Right now he is passed out and seemingly oblivious, but I know that as soon as I rise from my chair, one eye will pop open and follow me around the room. Ginger considers himself a family member, we do too, and he does not take kindly to being left behind for a day!
Worldly
Weather
22°C
Date: 1:00 PM EDT Monday 16 September 2024
Condition: Mainly Sunny
Pressure: 102.7 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 22.0°C
Dew point: 19.4°C
Humidity: 85%
Wind: SSE 10 km/h
Humidex: 29
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
Charles Darwin
1809 – 1882
Maggie, while I enjoy reading about all your canning and preserving, it’s Ginger’s antics that make me smile. He is such a cat!
LOL, Wendy, Ginger keeps us on our toes! He is well and truly established as a member of the family, and he knows it.
Our cats are very good at training us – Lol )
Oh, yum! Those onions look delicious! Reminds me of French Onion Soup and soft fried onions.
Our temps have been in the mid to upper 20s, so upper 70s F, but it’s been very warm in the sun here also. DH had to put out the pergola canopy and pull down some reed blinds when bbq’ing ribs yesterday because he knew he would be way too hot.
When DH’s daughter was young we used to take her to the Royal Winter Fair to see the horses, pigs, cows, the butter sculptures, etc. She used to love it! We still do sometimes go to local cheese fairs and applesauce fairs. They can be fun and have new tastes to try.
Our little Sheltie Loki has big problems with us if we don’t take him everywhere. Unfortunately, he doesn’t care for car rides, so he refuses to go to lots of places with us. He does go to the dog park with us though, which is about a 10 minute drive. Otherwise he often will tell us off, unless he gets a treat in compensation. Lol!
Sandy, so true, LOL!
I love onions! I didn’t know they could be canned. (I usually saute them, with meat, chicken or fish added later. I recently learned I could cut them up and cook them with canned beans. I don’t think I’ll can them, though.) Enjoy! (That is a good quote, btw.)
Teri, French Onion Soup is what other canners say they are making with their canned onions. They were quite nice in the Pickle Soup, but they cannot be be fried, too wet and mushy. The pressure canning does enhance the onion flavour though, so that makes up for not being able to fry them, which will only work for some recipes.
Those fairs sound very interesting, not being able to taste anything would be a downside for me, but Attila would love it.
Smart dog, knowing that the car ride is going where he wants to go. The treat sounds like an excellent compensation!
Joan, I have wanted to pressure can onions for quite a while now, and I was thrilled to find the Clemson recipe. I love sautéed onions, but the canned onions turn to mush when attempting to fry them, tried it for the Pickle Soup, didn’t work. My motivation for canning them comes from them being priced so low during harvest season. They will be fine for soups and casseroles I think, but they won’t replace fresh onions in recipes that need the flavour of sautéed onions.