The Last of This Year's Canning

I am officially done canning! Hooray! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy doing it, but once I'm done, it is wonderful to have nothing to do when I get home but read a book, scrapbook, or do anything besides can.
My last canning venture was applesauce. I deliberated between apple pie filling and applesauce. I decided on applesauce because more often than not, I choose to make grape pie. (By the way, I made a pie out of one of the "burnt" pie fillings, and it tasted great! Woohoo!)
We picked our apples from the same field where we picked pears. The farmer who's allowing us to do it simply waved at us while we were climbing in the tree like little kids...I love country people. The majority of the apple tree was over a particularly mucky part of the pasture, so we chose to pick the apples in the tree rather than shake them down. We got about 2 bushels of apples.
To start, I washed the apples even though they weren't sprayed and we were planning to peel them. Otherwise, the little bits of dirt on the apples get everywhere. Then we used this awesome little machine: the Apple Parer, Peeler, Slicer, and Corer:

I love this machine. My mom used one when I was growing up, and it was such a treat to turn the handle and watch the apple transform into fun, springy circles. It's genius. I should have taken a picture of how the apple is in little circles, literally like a spring. You can kind of see the slices in this picture.

As the bowl filled up, I transferred the apple "springs" to a crock pot, where they would stay for about 2 hours to cook on high. This isn't necessary, but we threw in a little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon. Yum, yum. I love waiting for the apples to cook, because the smell of apple cinnamon pervades the air, and our apartment smelled like a bakery within an hour.
Once the apples bake down, they look something like this:

It doesn't look appetizing, I know, but it is good. You can eat it like this. The apples are in little chunks, although soft, so the texture isn't quite what you'd buy at the store, but the flavor is vastly superior.
I like the smooth texture, so I took it a step further. I put the apple sauce through a food mill. This is a different kind of food mill than the one I used for grapes.
The bottom of this "pot" has little holes in it. A blade goes across the bottom, pushing the apple sauce through. As the apples push through, they are forced into a uniform texture, giving you the applesauce texture you're used to. Here's another view of the food mill that shows a little more of it's mechanics:

Anyway, after this step, it's easy! You simply throw the apple sauce in jars, and can them up (25 minutes to process)! I ended up with about 12 jars of applesauce, and man is it good! I should save it, but I've already started on one of the jars, and it won't last long. Yum yum yum!
Now that I'm done canning for the year, there's nothing to do but sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labors, while picking up a few projects I haven't touched in some time. I've got some serious scrap booking to do (I'm about a year behind), and I want to pick up the guitar again. I also need to do some sewing, and as promised, I'm dying to start that rag rug I mentioned in an earlier post. We'll see what comes next! At any rate, I am excited to do something new for a change.

Fall Camping

Last weekend, we took a break from canning and went camping. Fall camping trips are the best because the heat from the fire feels great, but it's not so cold out that you're freezing your butt off. You can still sleep comfortably, and the chill in the air makes your sleeping bag the coziest place on earth.  The lean-to we went to was on the Finger Lakes Trail, a long trail extending from Alleghany State Park in Western NY to the Catskills, in the southeast of New York. We love the Finger Lakes Trail. I don't think we'll ever live far from it, and it's a good thing because we use it several times per week. The Lean-To's are awesome things. When we first brought friends there, they were expecting the boy-scout lean-to made of a tarp and some sticks...wrong. These lean-tos are more like a three-sided cabin. It was dark when we got there, so I didn't get a pic of the one we went to, but here's en example:

These things are great. Sometimes, there's a nearby latrine, and the lean-to pictured even has a natural spring a stone's throw away. There's always a fire pit, and depending on the person who maintains it, there's often kindling, toilet paper, and I've even found a bible at one of the lean-tos. There's a trail register, where all who pass by or camp for the night can leave a quick note. It's fun to read those. Sometimes there are some pretty weird entries.

The lean-to we went to last weekend had a load of firewood, which was nice since we didn't arrive until after dark, and a stream running by it. It was a nice place, and we decided we'd be coming back sometime soon.
We went with a couple of friends: Alex and Danya. I unfortunately didn't get a picture of them. We both brought our dogs. It was their first time camping, and they did well! We were thrilled to discover that Sarge wouldn't be up all night protecting us from unseen demons (she does this at home sometimes. Super annoying, but cute).

Sgt, our dog, carried in her own gear with one of the dog packs we purchased at the REI Sale. She was a little uncomfortable wearing it, but I am told that it's normal for the dog to take a while to get used to it. This picture stinks, so you can't really see her, but she looked so cute in the pack.
When we arrived back at our car the next morning, there was a surprise waiting:

Yep, somebody smashed in our windshield. Probably some lame teenagers trying desperately to amuse themselves. Here's the funny thing about such random acts of vandalism: you don't get to enjoy it. You smash the windshield, then go on your way...you don't even get to see the peoples' reaction. In our case, it would have been disappointing to wait around for our reaction, because this is what Brian said when he noticed it: "Hey Esther, you should come take a look at our windshield." hahahaha. We still drove the thing the entire day. Luckily, our car's junky enough that comprehensive insurance is only an additional $10 per month, so it was covered. When the windshield was replaced, it was like having a new car. I didn't realize how stained our old one was. It had been bombarded with bugs on the outside, and with my toe prints on the inside (I like to put my feet on the dash). Anyway, despite the quaintness of the lean-to, we've decided not to go back. Even though it wasn't a huge pain, we'd prefer not to serve as entertainment for the local youth.

Grape Goodness

While Brian and I were still in Massachusetts, we received a voicemail from my mom, telling us that the next day would be grape-picking day. I had luckily taken the following day off of work, so we took off from Boston right away and got home around midnight. The next day was grape picking. The family that allow us to pick at their vineyard have a beautiful place overlooking the lake. It's just beautiful.

















We picked about 110 pounds of grapes (which was more than I was planning), and as tradition would have it, the kids got on top of the car to ride out of the vineyard for the weight-in. I remember enjoying this part of grape-picking trips as a kid almost more than the grape-picking itself.

They enjoyed themselves immensely, and I drove slowly so that none of them would fall. It's weird to be one of the grown-ups. I used to be the carefree little kid joyously singing at the top of my lungs on top of the car, and now I'm the one driving, trying not to accidentally kill one of my neices or nephews. 
We took the grapes home, and immediately went to work. Making grape pie filling is a long, laborious project, but it's worth every bit of the effort. Grape pie is Brian's favorite pie, so I always make a good bunch of pie fillings and can them for the coming year. Here's how it goes:

First, take the grapes off of the stems and measure how much you've got (this takes forever). You need 4 cups of grapes for a pie, so figure out how many pies you have enough grape for.

Next, slip the grape skins off of the gooey inside. It starts to get sticky at this point. Concord grapes are not seedless, so it's necessary to go through this step in order to remove the seeds.

Once you've got them separated, you can begin the seed- removal process. This sounds hard, but it's not too bad if you've got a food mill. The old-fashioned way to separate the seeds is to cook the insides until they fall apart and the seeds rise to the top, then you skim off the seeds. This leaves plenty of room for error though, so I avoid it.

With a food mill, you simply cook the insides until they are soft, then you pour your filling through the food mill and mill out the seeds. This simple machine is genius. You role that wooden pin around and around on the mill, and it eventually pushes all of the juice and pulp out into the bowl below. Then you end up with just the filling and the juice. The seeds are left in the colander, and you just throw those out.
Then you throw the filling and the skins together in a pot and mix them with the ingredients for grape pie filling, cook those together for a bit, then process in canning jars for 25 minutes to store. I don't have a water bath canner, which hasn't really caused any issues in the past, but with pie filling, it just doesn't work so good. One batch of 9 pies went over just fine in the stock pot. I hot-packed those, and they are perfect.

Two other batches, however, slightly burned (HUGE disaster). One burned so badly that we just chucked it. Believe me, dumping would-be grape pie filling down the toilet is not a pleasant experience.

The other batch, I caught just as it began to taste a little smoky. I canned those anyway. My husband said the taste was barely noticeable (who knows if he's just being nice). I couldn't bear to part with it though, so I kept them and marked the cans with a B (but not for baby and me) to distinguish the good fillings from the burned ones. I think it was the pot. I stirred the fillings every 4 minutes in both pots, but the one pot burned 2 batches. I took vengeance on that pot by chucking it. Sad day.

As I mentioned earlier, we ended up with more grapes than expected. Grapes perish super-quick, so I decided to juice them. I don't have a juicer yet (my wallet dictates that I have to wait a little bit longer for it), so I called my Mom to find out the old-fashioned way of doing grape juice. My grandmother used cheese cloth, so I went to the local store and got some.

Here's the process: You cook the grapes (whole, but separated from the stems) until they are super-juiced. Doesn't that picture look like something from a horror show? haha.
Once the grapes are cooked down, you dump them in a cheesecloth-covered pot, like so:

The picture's dark, but you get the idea.  Let the grape juice drain out for a few minutes, then remove the clothespins and squeeze what you can out of the cheesecloth. This part was a little weird, because the cheesecloth became thoroughly dyed, and I felt like I was squeezing a human organ.

Now that definitely looks like something out of a horror movie. The trouble was, the cheese cloth's fibers were too far separated, so the guts of the grape poured through a few times.  This wouldn't do, so we tried something else: an old Tshirt.

This worked marvelously. We poured the grape filling into the tshirt (cut into one big piece of fabric), let it drain, and then squeezed the life out of it to get the grape juice out.

We ended up with 9 jars of grape juice. Each quart makes a gallon with some water, and you can add some sugar if you like. Mix it with lemonade, and you've got "gremon" a family tradition. Yum!

Road Trippin'

Brian and I are members of REI. For those of you unfortunate enough to not know what that is, it is the best of outdoor gear stores in the world. Every once in a while, REI has a huge sale (called Garage Sale, Scratch and Dent Sale, Return Sale, etc.) open only to members. When we lived out west, we went to these religiously and purchased great gear for astronomically low prices. There are no REIs in New York, which is one of the only regrets about living here (besides being away from my family in the West). To make up for this huge loss, we make a roadtrip once or twice a year to the sales in nearby states. Our favorite place nearby to go for the Sale is Boston. There are 4 REIs there, all of which have pretty good, reasonably priced stuff. We try to make it to 3 in one day, making for a pretty crazy, fun day.

We are cheap travelers. We camp in our car. We have a Subaru Forester, so a twin mattress fits in the car when we put the seats down. We sleep comfortably on that in church parking lots and rest stops (whatever's closest). We drove over to Boston on a Friday night and slept in a church parking lot somewhere halfway through the state, woke up early and drove the rest of the way to Reading, MA to wait in line.

There were some crazies in the front of the line who had literally camped overnight for the sale. We're not in that much of a need of gear, so we're not that hardcore. We waited for about 2 hours, and as always, met some great people. We met Nichole, (in the green jacket) who works for Trek Bikes planning expensive bike tours for overly-rich people (pretty sweet gig, in my opinion), and also works overnights as a nanny specializing in multiple children. Right now she's putting two newborn twins on an overnight schedule. This girl was awesome. We plan to visit her on future Boston visits.
Anyway, as long waits always do, the wait finally came to an end, and the onslaught began. It was actually hilarious to see people literally running to the piles of stuff awaiting us. I tried to get a picture of all of it, but this picture only shows about half of it. they were still setting it out. There are crazy hoarders at these sales who grab as much as they can, then gather as a group and slowly go through it all. It's fun. We didn't spend too much time at this sale, but we did get some great finds here.
After the Reading sale, we headed to Framingham (my favorite). The crowd had died down by the time we arrived, and they were cutting the prices in half, so we arrived just in time. We spent a considerable amount of time here, just combing through everything. Afterward, we made our way to the Boston REI. This is the best place to go last, because their prices are expensive at first, but by the time we got there, the prices were going down. It was such a fun day. We filled our car with the gear, and feeling satisfied, set out for the rest of a wonderful vacation.

Here's a list of what we got:

brand new Chaco sandals: original price: $80.00, our price: $9.83
Cambelback daypack: original price: $85.00, our price: $4.83
Sanuk flip flops: original price: $17.83, our price: $4.83
Vibram 5 fingers for water: original price: $99.95, our price: $9.83
Soloman hiking shoes: original price: $112.00, our price: $9.83
Mountain Hardware (our favorite outdoor gear brand, because their stuff really is tough) tshirt: original price: $25, our price: $4.83
REI fleece pant: original price: $30.00, our price: $3.83
Mountain Hardware shell: original price: $149.93, our price: $26.83
REI Half Dome tent (for my sister): original price: $150.00, our price: $29.83
Thermarest lightweight sleeping pad (for a friend): original price: $55.00, our price: $5.83
brand new Chaco Shoes: original price: $115.00, our price: $12.83
Northface women's fleece jacket: original price: $44.99, our price: $4.83
Arcteryx women's fleece: original price: $175.00, our price: $4.83
REI flannel pajama pant: original price: $29.50, our price: $2.83
Smartwool leggings: original price: $75.00, our price: $4.83
REI silk leggings: original price: $32.50, our price: $1.83
Teva water shoes: our price: $12.83
REI sleeping pad: original price: $74.50, our price: $4.83
Thermarest inflatable pillow: original price: $29.95, our price: $.83
Alps inflatable pillow: our price: $2.83
Vibram five fingers: original price: $125.00, our price: $8.83
medium stuff sack: our price: $.83
Pacific Outdoor full-length sleeping pad: original price: $68.00, our price: $8.83
small stuff sack: our price: $.83
Smartwool socks: $.83
Waterproof electronics bag: original price: $12.50, our price: $.83
Camelback daypack: original price: $90.00, our price: $8.83
Ruffwear dog pack: original price: $74.50, our price: $15.83
REI dog pack: original price: $54.50, our price: $7.83
Mountain Hardware daypack: original price: $95.00, our price: $5.83

Some of these things will be sold on eBay, and some of these things need minor help (all totally do-able with sewing). The coolest part is that we only actually spent $20 of our own money at the sales. We used our Brian's REI Divident (we have REI CCs (which we use as debit cards), and get 1% back for REI gear), and I returned a pair of Keens that died prematurely, and we used that money to pay for almost all of the rest. So it wasn't just cheap, it was practically free. It was so much fun!

Then we stewed around downtown boston, and I saw my first live magic show!

 This guy get himself loose from a straight jacket with rope tied to himself upside-down. It seems complicated, but I think the gravity made this trick possible.










We spent the night at a local church, and to our surprise, that church was across the street from the Boston temple! I fell in love with this temple right away. The stained-glass windows and the architecture were very different and beautiful.

We did the freedom trail, stewed around parts of the Minuteman trail (which we plan to bike in the spring), and Brian got some nice photos.

On our way across the Minuteman trail, we had dinner on our campstove at a local historical site:

We get one of these pictures from every roadtrip we go on. This one was in front of a revolution-aged house. It was neat. The trip was much-needed. We've been doing so much canning and storing of food, we needed this trip. It was so much fun!

Nature's Bounty

We forage as much food as we can. Fortunately, we live in an area that pretty much abounds with natural food from june through October. Blueberries grow well here, so we always load up at a local U-Pick that is super cheap. We fill up several freezer bags and keep them frozen all year, using them in smoothies, muffins, pancakes, etc. 

Over the summer, we kept our eyes on a wild pear tree growing on the edge of a cow pasture near our home. When the time was right, we planned to ask the farm owner if it would be alright for us to pick the pears. The time to pick came suddenly, and the asking was opportune because the farmer was right out there on his tractor. So, we tromped up to him and asked. He was the most agreeable man I've ever met. He had his two little dogs riding behind him on the tractor.

He seemed pleased as punch that we were interested in them and gave us quick permission to pick to our pleasure, warning us that his electric fence went right by that tree. Being shocked by an electric fence is certainly not a pleasant experience, but it's not bad (in fact, it's a little interesting feeling) so we weren't worried. It was a double-fence, so crossing it proved to be difficult, but we managed it.
There were lots of pears on the ground, but there were still plenty on the tree, so Brian got up there and shook several to the ground. We took them home and they fairly filled up our back porch.

They're not that ripe, so they were difficult to cut, but we immediately set out to can them. I love canned pears. They were highly sought-after growing up, and although we made tons of them, we always ran out quickly. In fact, if I remember my Mom's story right, my brother used to hide jars of pears so that when the main supply ran out, he'd still have his own supply to draw from. They're yummy. We can them in a very light syrup: 1 1/2 C sugar and 3 T lemon juice to a gallon of water. It ends up just perfect. I don't have a water bath canner, so I hot-pack my fruit.
I peel, core, and half my pears, and boil them in the above syrup for 25 minutes. While they're boiling, I prepare my jars by washing them thoroughly. When the 25 minutes is up, I put a good ratio of pears to syrup in the jar, clean the rims, put on the lids, and screw on the rings tightly. Then it's a waiting game, and by morning all of the jars are sealed. It's as easy as that! Seriously, the hardest part is peeling the things. Pears are gritty and hard in the center, so you have to make sure you get all of that out. Anyway, it's a satisfying feeling to know that you'll be eating from that pear tree all winter, and I like canned pears almost more than fresh ones too.

More Decoration Ideas

These may not work for you, but we use pottery and books to decorate.

 My mom is a potter, and her cast-offs are just as good as the real thing to me, so we always collect her throw-aways. Most of these are just that, and I can barely tell anything is wrong with them.
I realize that's convenient to have a mother as a potter, but you can get pottery elsewhere. Some of these pieces came from thrift stores. Places like the Salvation Army, GoodWill, Deseret Industries, Savers, Thrifty Shopper, etc, have all contributed to our pottery collection. They're beautiful and affordable, so why not? You can also get cheap pottery at some small potter shops. In my mom's home town, for example, there is a potter who sells his castoffs (which are all incredibly good and beautiful) for $5 a piece. All potters have throw-aways that they can't sell for the full price, so they may be willing to sell them. We actually use these pieces to eat on. Might as well have functional decorations, especially in a small apartment.

Books might seems like a weird way to decorate, but when you absolutely love books, it's not. They are a feast to the eyes, and whenever we have visitors, they always end up scanning our bookshelves. We get our books mostly from a sale in our area called "Friends of the Library". This sale lasts 3 weekends twice per year. The price diminishes with each weekend of the sale, ending up with 10 cent day, which is veritably treated as a holiday in our household. I even take time off to go to this. You can get everything there, and we always end up purchasing around 200 books at each sale. You can find cheap books though, at thrift stores and yard sales. We've landed some real finds at yard sales when a family is getting rid of an old collection. And again, it's functional decorating! We love books, so having so many right in our home is a pleasure.

Pretty Storage Idea

This picture was on my previous post, and I forgot to talk about it. Using old-fashioned wire-bail jars for dry storage in your home is an attractive way to decorate with spices, flour, popcorn, barley, etc. We got most of these jars from my grandmother, but we've found tons at yard sales for next to nothing. They're not as reliable as regular jars for canning, so I don't recommend that, but for dry storage, they are just beautiful. We use them as vases as well, which always looks great.

Red

I don't wear red...it's a little too loud for me, but I must admit that red really is a great statement in decoration. Brian says that whenever a photographer takes a picture of something with red in it, he has to make the red the center of the picture, because your eye is naturally drawn to it. We've incorporated some red into our home decoration, and I love it:

This is just two boards that Brian found at the local dollar store, put together by two small pieces of scrap lumber, painted red, and adorned with hooks from the dollar store.

This is just an old chip-board shelf that we've had forever that was an ugly shade of white. We painted it red, and now it's beautiful!

Picture Shelves

Brian came home with this idea one day. I was super skeptical at first (as usual). Shelves on the wall with pictures? But as usual, he was right. I just don't have the eye he has.

It works like this: Brian got some wood from ReUse (see "...Or make your own furniture" for what this is) to make these. They are just simple 2 x 4 boards cut lengthwise to a couple of inches. Then he put a small piece of board in the front section of the 2x4 to keep the pictures form sliding off. He drilled holes almost all of the way through the boards front to back, then screwed them into the wall through these holes. The holes were unsightly, so he covered them with another thin piece of wood. You can see all of the components in the picture to the right. I love these shelves. We had a huge wall that needed to be filled up with something, and every other previous attempt didn't turn out so well. Brian is a hobby-photographer as well, so it's an opportunity for us to display his pictures. He takes pictures of rural nature (barns, fields, fences, and some waterfalls), so his pictures blend into our home

Nix the electronics.

We don't have TV. I think that having dish or cable inevitably ends up creating a lot of wasted time, so we just don't have it. We do, however, have a TV and DVD player for movies. I like movies, and somehow the intentional decision to sit down and watch a movie prevents me from wasting time like I would with TV.
I hate to go to people's homes and find that their sitting room is designed around a monstrosity of an entertainment center and TV.  TV is just not the center of my life, so I don't want my living room designed around it. They have those fantastic close-able entertainment centers like my Mom has, but those are just slightly over our budget. We puzzled ourselves for a while over the trick of having a TV without making it the center of our home, and this is what we came up with:

  

It's all there: a TV, DVD Player, Speakers, and Subwoofer. Here they are unveiled:

The TV in this picture is actually a bit of an embarrassment to me. Brian found it on Craigslist for $150 complete with speakers and a nice carrying case. It's a good deal for a flat-screen, but I was super embarrassed to have such a huge TV. The fact that it's so hide-able though, is worth it, and this design would never have worked without it. The tapestry (just a piece of batiqued material from JoAnn Fabrics that I sewed loops on to hang. The pole holding the tapestry up is a stick that Brian whittled down to smoothness (same with the wood hooks for the pole). The Tapestry comes down to the top of the dresser, concealing the speakers and the cords. 

The DVD player is in the top drawer of the chest of drawers. We drilled a hole in the back of the dresser through which the cords go from DVD player to TV. The subwoofer is under the red material to the left of the dresser. We just draped a piece of gingham from JoAnn Fabrics and put that piece of pottery on top of it. It works out perfectly, giving us the benefit of watching movies while ensuring that TV is not the center of our world.

More on Barnwood

Brian is getting creative with Barn Wood, and is now making my new favorite thing: Barnwood Frames. I don't have tons of pics, but these hang in my kitchen:

We got those pictures sometime ago at Ikea. I just love the middle one. I haven't found a frame that works for them so well, or atleast that I could afford. Then I showed up at home one day and these were waiting for me! I just love them.