Canning Tomato Sauce, Grape Jelly, Pears. 9.10.2021

 I learned that home grown fruit isn't solely for fresh use.  Freezing is great, still home grown flavor and quality.  No comparison to grocery.  But freezing takes up too much freezer space, so it needs to be limited.

The jellies are also better than store bought.  I think even when sugar is needed, it's better in flavor and healthier than the damn high fructose corn syrup.  Plus the tree or vine ripened fruit is more flavor, and not fertilizing and watering too much also helps.

I made jelly from "Venus" grapes. Easier than expected.  I used the "low sugar" pectin.  

Using extra grapes, but leaving out the sugar, pectin, and canning step, makes for a very "grapey" flavored grape juice. So that is more benefit and less waste. I did this a few days ago. Canned pears, also last week. I made 7 pints. That's about what I buy for 7 weeks, so not too bad. Plus the same amount of peaches.

Last night I canned 4 and 1/2 pints of Roma tomato sauce. No spices or garlic, I add those when I use it. Per USDA recommendation, each pint has 1 tbsp lemon juice as a preservative. Also, they recommend pressure canning instead of boiling water canning for better quality and nutrition for tomato products, so I did. If the 1/2 pint jar is good on tonight's pizza, I can can some more. I'm not sure if that lemon juice will impact the flavor.

Tomatoes. 8.31.21

Some of the tomatoes. In this batch, there is Amish Paste, various cherry tomatoes, Dwarf CC McGee, Golden Siberian King, Improved Dwarf Champion, and a few others.

The Dwarf CC McGee was one of the most tasty. Sort of a tropical fruit flavor.  So I saved seeds from this one.

A pot of sauce tomatoes about to become sauce. The pear shaped ones are nonhybrid Romas. Most of the elongated ones are hybrid Romas. Those were also quite long.  I think those were the most productive. The Amish Paste were a little too juicy for boiling down, and not as productive. Their flavor was good. The Tyren hybrid were productive, later (most not ripe yet), maybe a little too dry, like green peppers inside with almost no juice, and have green shoulders.

Tomato Pie. 8.31.21

 I made a tomato pie.  The original recipe was from a "Cast Iron Skillet Classics" recipe magazine, but I made a lot of changes.  Recipe is below, how I made it.

Prepare  a crust for 1 crust pie.  I like to blind bake the pie crust.  I use the butter flavor crisco recipe on package.  For one crust pie, I do half- recipe but increase everything by 25% so I can use larger pie plate.  Also, I put 1/4 cup pastry flour into the measuring cup before adding the all purpose flour.  That makes it more flaky.  The original recipe did not blind bake, so either way should work.

I blind baked the crust at 375 F while the tomatoes are resting on the paper towels. (this takes some planning and is a separate recipe).  I don't let the crust cool, rather I start assembling the pie while the crust is still hot out of the oven.  To blind bake, I first refrigerated the crust 30 min, poked lots of holes using a fork, lined with foil and placed pie weights on the foil.  After baking 20 min, I removed the foil and pie weights and baked 5 more minutes.

I used a mixture of slicing tomatoes and sauce tomatoes, which are meatier.

2 1/2 pounds tomatoes sliced 1/4 inch thick

2 teaspoons salt

1 cup grated gruyere cheese (what I found this time at store was a blend with cheddar).

1 cup grated Pepper Jack cheese

3/4 cup mayonnaise

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon dried Italian herbs

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 cup chopped onion.

Place tomato slices on paper towels.  Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of the salt.  Let them sit 30 min.  The salt draws out a lot of the water.  I also lightly pressed some paper towel on top of the tomatoes to wick out more water.

In a bowl, stir together the egg, mayo, cheeses, Italian herbs, the other tsp of salt, pepper.

Sprinkle the onions across the bottom.  Add 1/3 of cheese mixture.  Layer with 1/2 of the tomatoes.  Spread on second 1/3 of cheese mixture.  Layer with remainder of tomatoes, then spread on the rest of the cheese.  "Spread" is a hopeful term - more like gently mush it around but don't worry about spreading evenly.

Cover the crust edges with aluminum foil so they don't burn.  Bake the pie at 375 for 50 min.  I actually check at 45 min and then every 5 min until it looks set.

I like to blend ceasar or garlic butter croutons to make bread crumbs, mix about 2 tbsp of those with 2 tbsp parmesan cheese, sprinkle on top of the pie and bake 5 more minutes.

I think this pie is even better the next day, cold.   

Cherry Pie. 8.31.21

I made a pie, using a batch of tart cherries from June. It was worth the effort. By freezing the filling with all of the ingredients already, assembling the pie is much easier and faster.

8.31.2021

The second planting ("Ambrosia") is almost gone. I've been harvesting it for about two weeks. Excellent production and flavor,,

I liked these very much. From planting seed, to harvest, was about 90 days. I froze 9 ears, blanched and sliced off the cob. There are still two blocks to ripen fully - "Delectable". I already cut one ear. The kernels weren't fully developed yet, but it was quite good.