Full Moon (Super Moon) – Apple Moon Crests

So the full moon was yesterday.
I spent it canning tomatoes.
I spent today canning tomatoes.
I still have tomatoes on the stove, in the slow-cooker, and in the dehydrator (but – for the most part – not in my fridge anymore, so there’s that), and I’ll soon have crab apples to jelly and – if I’m very lucky – pears to render into butter as well. I have a small number of peaches to preserve, as well as a few eggplants to roast, dice and freeze, and a few golden zucchini with-which to do the same, and a cup of chokecherry puree with-which to make a small batch of fruit curd in short order (I need to get more eggs, and more butter, before that happens though).

Apple Moon has, thus far, been all about the canning.
My wife commented to me, the other day, that she really enjoyed listening to me and my Canning Buddy hashing out how the day would go, in terms of what needed to be cooked in which receptical and when we’d need to start chopping X, Y, or Z, versus when we’d need to start sterilizing jars in the oven, and so-on, in order to keep things running smoothly and efficiently in the kitchen. She said that we were doing something that women have done for millenia: Planning out how to get things done and make things happen. Just for a moment, I saw backwards in time to my grandmothers, great grandmothers, great-great-many-times-great grandmothers standing in kitchen with wood floors, stone floors, dirt floors, a great kettle steaming on the stove – the range, the hearth-bricks, you name it – bubbling with food that needed to be cooked down or fermented to the point where it would keep over winter and keep everyone alive. Keep me alive, in the abstract, self-centred sense as well. And here I am, doing much the same thing, with all of them standing behind me.

Hello, Ancestors. It’s nice to see you here. ❤

Speaking of which… As far as what I talked about at the beginning of this lunar cycle… What I said about it being a “physical, labour moon” holds true. I’ve been doing plenty of hauling and plenting of physical, get-er-done stuff in the past two weeks, and that’s not going to change. But I’ve unexpectedly found myself also doing some emotional heavy lifting – maybe I can blame that one on Venus’ retrograde coming to a head (and then an end) fairly recently? – that threw me for enough of a loop that all that What Kind of Ancestor stuff I was mulling over, back on the 17th, just got pushed a little bit to the side. Unless I interpret that question more as “What kind of example do you want to set?” In which case: The kind of behavour I want to model as an Auntie/Ancestor/Example is… kindness, patience, open-listening, generocity, proactiveness (wish me luck on that one…), well-rounded creativity, “follow your bliss but also pay your bills” practicality, and… Look, if my lovely wife is Called to help people across the border into Death, I feel more like my Witchy work leans towards helping people deal with how they relate to one-another in life. (I am, and have always been, far more Nanny Ogg than Granny Weatherwax).

Which leads me to ask:
Okay, self, so how do I model that behaviour and, more to the point, which parts of that really need my attention right now?
And the answer there comes pretty readily:
Proactivity and the witchy work of Interconnectedness… without turning into an enormous busy-body in the process. :-\

In another two weeks, we’ll be into what I’m currently thinking of as “Harvest Moon” (although we’ll see if that moniker holds true by the time we get there) but, right this minute, I need to be proactive about getting some dinner (finally) made, now that my second-last batch of crushed tomatoes is off the stove.

Wish me luck.

TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.

How to Turn 30lbs of Tomatoes into Three Different Preserves in Just Five Hours

Hey!
Okay. So, as recently mentioned, a friend of mine and I spent the afternoon canning tomatoes. In the interests of avoiding (a) a lot of extra work, but also (b) a lot of drippy, scalding-hot mess and burnt fingers, I re-jigged my usual tomato recipes so that they involved the Very Easy Crushed Tomatoes recipe which goes as follows (NOTE: You’re going to need 2-3 very large, like 9L+, pots to get all three recipes cooked and canned in the alotted time):
 
Very Easy Crushed Tomtoes
 
Wash, core, and rough-chop your tomatoes (also cut out any bad bits, clearly)
Puree the chopped tomatoes in a food processor, in batches and pour them into the biggest pot you have
For every gallon of tomato puree add:
1C vinegar
0.5C granulated sugar
1 tbsp salt
 
Stir the mixture until all is well-incorporated
Cook down, with the lid off-centre to allow the water to evaporate more quickly, until the mixture is darker and quite a bit thicker, but isn’t nearly thick enough to be called “sauce” just yet
Pour/ladel into sterlized glass jars (we sterilized our jars in the oven today, at 225F for 20 minutes – works like a charm, but you still have to boil the lids and rings)
Cap, and process for 15-20 minutes in a boiling water bath
 
~*~
 
And that’s the Very Easy Crushed Tomatoes recipe.
 
From here, you can choose your own adventure.
Either (a) Roasted-garlic tomato sauce, or (b) Tomato-peach salsa.
 
 
Roasted Garlic Tomato Sauce
 
Start with ~4L Very Easy Crushed Tomatoes
Dice 1 large, red onion and 3 BULBS of garlic, drizzle with oil, and broil on a cookie sheet for about half an hour (or until they smell done).
Put the onion and garlic mixture into a food processor
Add: 2 tbsp dried rosemary, 2 tbsp dried oregano, 2 tbsp dried savoury, and a grind or five of black pepper and blend until smooth
Add the garlic mixture to the crushed tomatoes and stir until reasonably well incorporated
Cook down until things start to thicken up nicely
Using an imersion (stick) blender puree the sauce until it is very fine indeed
Allow the sauce to cook down further until it’s reasonably thick, but not too much[1]
Sterilize some jars of appropriate size (ours went into 1L jars today, but whatever works)
Into each jar include 1tbsp vinegar and 0.5tbsp granulated sugar per 500mL (1pint) of volume
Pour/ladel sauce into sterilized jars
Cap, and process for 15-20 minutes in a boiling water bath.
 
~*~
 
Tomato-Peach Salsa
 
Start with ~4L Very Easy Crushed Tomatoes
Dice 1 large, red onion and mince 1 BULB of garlic
Peel, pit, and dice your ripe peaches until you have 2L diced peaches (I would guess this is about 1.5lb peaches to start with)
Using scissors, snip 6 mild dried chili peppers (I used dried New Mexico chilies, but you could also dice up 6-10 fresh jalapenos if you wanted to)
Add the peaches, onion, garlic, and dried chilies to the crushed tomatoes and mix until well incorporated
Add to the mixture: 3 tbsp dried cilantro, 3 tbsp dried basil, and 1 tbsp dried red chili flakes
Cook down (over low heat, otherwise it will totally scorch to the bottom of the pot… ask me how I know >.>) until the mixture has thickened up nicely[2].
While the salsa thickens, sterilize some jars.
Into each pint jar, add: 1 tbsp vinegar, 1 dried very-hot chili pepper (I used dried Arbol chilies, but you could use fresh Thai/Bird chilies if you wanted to).
Pour/ladel salsa into hot, sterilized jars
Cap and process in a boiling water bath for 15-20 minutes
 
~*~
 
So there you have it.
Five hours. Three types of tomato preserves in large quantities (well, if you’re me…).
Tomorrow it do most if it again in order to make (a) moar crushed tomatoes, and (b) moar (and thicker!) tomato sauce.
 
Wish me luck, folks!
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
 
 
[1] Full disclosure:I actually prefer my tomato sauce to be a fairly thick mix, and today’s results are more liquid than I like. We canned them when we did because my friend had to leave to pick up her kids. Otherwise, we might have let them lose another litre of water-content before canning them.
 
[2] Because we’re starting with tomato purree, and also because of time constraints, we didn’t make as chunky a salsa as I typically go for. I’m thinking of this as more of a sauce for cooking things in – like pouring it over fish or beans, for example – than as a sauce for dipping tortilla chips into as a snack. YMMV.

Tomato-Palooza 2015! (Recipes to Follow…)

So, my canning party for two was today.
Over the course of five hours, we canned 30lbs of tomatoes (roughly), and I now have 10lbs more in various stages of “on the go” (3-4lbs are in the slow-cooker already, with a pound or two (about 15 tomatoes) sliced into rounds and doing their thing in the dehydrator, and the rest sitting, already chopped, in bowls in the fridge – I need to get The Biggest Pot cleaned up before I can finish the rest…).
 
I’ve got one more 20lb box (or most of it) washed, but left whole, sitting in a plastic tub in the bottom of my fridge so that they don’t get mouse-contaminated over night.
 
Still. Having also gone through 0.8L sugar and 1.5L vinegar (maybe slightly more), plus 2L diced peaches, 2 large red onions, and about 5 bulbs of garlic, in addition to those tomatoes, what we got so far is:
4L crushed tomatoes
4.5L roasted-garlic-balsamic tomato sauce
3L (all in pint jars) tomato-peach salsa
 
Most of the above (except for slightly more than half the salsa) went home with my friend today, which was the plan. The only ingredients I’m running right out of are the ones for the salsa, thense me making sure I got some of the big batch we made.
 
The plan is to get another 4L of crushed tomatoes (mostly in pint jars, some of it heading my friend’s way), somewhere between 6C and 12C more roasted-garlic balsamic tomato sauce (in, ideally, half-cup jars), and to put the rest of the romas, thinly sliced into rounds, into the dehydrator so that I can chuck them into stews and similar over the winter. We’ll see if I’ve got the math right on that, mind you.
 
The goal of this whole escapade was multi-fold, but basically boils down to “Pay up front, with a day-or-two’s worth of time, energy, and attention, in order to have numerous weeks worth of convenience food lined up and ready to go”.
And I think we’re getting well on our way.
 
Something I’m doing this year that I don’t tend to do “automtically” is using pint jars for my tomato preserves. In years past, I’ve gone for one-cup jars (salsa, diced tomatoes, bruchetta-in-a-jar) and half-cup jars (fancy tomato sauce), and only reached for the pint jars when I ran out of other options. Partly this has been to stretch my tomato preserves over as many meals as possible, and partly it’s been because “preserved tomatoes” are enough of an acquired taste for me that I wanted to be sure my portion sizes were small enough that I could use up a whole jar in the space of one meal and not need to worry about eating jarred tomtoes more than once in a week ifI didn’t want to. (I have since come to basically rely on jarred tomatoes for multiple meals per week over the course of the winter, so that’s not so much an issue now).
 
That said, I’m still planning on doing my tomato sauce in half-cup jars, because it’s a good one to give away as a gift, and I find that a little bit goes a long way when it comes to meals for 2-3 people.
Regardless, with my “overnight” machines – my slow-cooker and my dehydrator – doing their thing in the kitchen, and all of my remaining tomatoes hidden safely away in the fridge, I’m calling it a night. There’s plenty more to do in the morning.
 
Heh. Other people use this Super Moon energy to get creative work done on canvases and computer screens. Aparently, I put it towards a winter’s worth of jarred tomatoes.
You do what works. 🙂
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.