August Food Preserving

Technically, my food preserving challenge is over.  But I can't bring myself to stop.  Today I'm planning to make some pickle relish, and I still have a couple of jellies to make that I didn't get around to yet, and some beef stock from the bones in my freezer.  But, I have to start winding down because it's time to move on to the next thing, and catch up on the things I've neglected while focusing on this.

This is what I preserved in August.

Canned:

gingered peach preserves, 4 12-oz. jars

halved peaches, 5 qts.

ketchup, 6 12-oz. jars and a half pint

salsa, 9 pints

apple pectin, 3 qts and a pint

bread & butter pickles, 3 pts.

watermelon jelly, 4 half pints

watermelon rind pickles, 4 pints of one version, and 3 and half pints of a second version

whole tomatillos, 4 qts.

salsa verde, 3 pts and 4 half-pints

plain tomato sauce, 2 qts and a pint

tomato sauce with onion and garlic, 8 qts

lamb stock, 5 qts.

froze:

3 pints tomato paste in a variety of re-used jars

a quart of lamb tallow

several large jars of chopped green peppers

dried: 

several bunches of cayenne peppers

about 10 pounds of green beans, "leather breeches" style (on a string)

some basil and some lemon balm

lacto-fermented:

pinapple vinegar, which I then used to make encortido (Latin American sauerkraut)

habanero hot sauce, which I'm not sure is edible - it smelled funky, but it's not something you can just taste a spoonful of.  My husband thinks its okay though.

I lost several ferments, including two attempts to ferment tomatoes, and two attempts to make cucumber pickles.  I was very discouraged.  I don't know if it was the summer heat, or if there's some bad bacteria strains in my kitchen, or I've just lost my touch.

I'll tell you a little about the lamb tallow I froze.  I skimmed the fat off my lamb stock, and rendered the fat still clinging to the meat, then filtered it.  It is a very hard, white tallow, and I think I'd like to make soap with it, if I ever get going with my soapmaking.  If not, I'll use it for cooking.  I try not to throw away animal fat in my kitchen.  (In fact there are several mystery jars of gelatin-topped fat in my fridge that I suspect were the juices from roasting chickens, which I saved but neglected to label.)

Surprise favorites: salsa, and watermelon rind pickles (both versions).  Another surprise: I reluctantly hauled out and used my Victorio-type food food mill, which I've had since 1999, and found it works much better than I thought it did.  It made such efficient work of saucing tomatoes that it was well worth the set-up and clean-up.

Seed saving is kind of like food preserving too.  I'm going to harvest a mature yellow pickling cucumber in my garden for seed today.  I saved seeds from 3 types of tomatoes, none of which I know the names of.  One was a volunteer in our corn patch which produced nice tomatoes with no water or fertilizer.  (My husband planted corn and field peas without thinking about how he was going to water them.  The corn didn't make it.)  The others were from the farm market, but obviously heirloom types, and I liked them for canning.  I took pictures of them for my own reference, though I have little hope of ever identifying them, with so many tomatoes in the world.