Jay's Jammin'

How did I get away from making jam? Well, I didn’t. We just make so much that I don’t write about, like the Red Raspberry, Black Raspberry jams and the Dilly Beans.

Then yesterday neighbor Phylis sent her grand-kids over with a sack of sweetcorn. I didn’t know that Momma immediately envisioned corn relish, so I cooked two ears for supper. When she saw what I had done, she politely told me (@#$%###) we would have to buy more corn. So, off we went to McDaniel Farms stand to get more corn and some celery. I also took them some canned pickled beets & got two melons in return. We then came home & canned15 jars of Homestyle Corn Relish from the new Ball hardback cookbook.

Pictures to be posted when my thieving daughter returns the camera cable.

is no fun. The fun was in Momma driving us to Verellen‘s Orchard in Romeo,MI to buy peaches on Friday. They had Red Havens in medium size, so we bought a bushel!

2 half bushel baskets

I couldn’t resist , they looked so nice.

Saturday Momma was up with the chickens, bringing jars up from the storage room & loading the dishwasher. I got up and had the unenviable job of telling her they were not ready to can. They had to set out on the table one more night. She was so charged up, she made a batch of Dutch Apple Pie jam instead!

40 pints ready for storage

Results after a long hot day. You should have seen us, Momma peeling & pitting & packing jars while limping around with the cane. Me making syrup, capping jars & then loading them into the canner, timing and removing them to the counter while dragging oxygen hose all over the place. After tripping over it enough I switched to a portable small tank.

Off to a good start

Wait for me!!!

This is what happens when too many plants are crowded into a container.

Plants supplied by Mc Daniel Farms

I found one of these and had to call Momma to come down and see what she could see. She also spied 8 green peppers, 2 eggplant, and 4 cucumbers. No melons yet. These zucchini were sliced and shredded for the freezer, one bag full went into zucchini bread and muffins.

On the jammin side, today we canned 19 Bluebarb and 21 Blueberry. Blueberries grown by Blueberry Lane.

Two batches each of Dutch Apple and  Carrot Cake Jams were put up by Momma while I was in dialysis two weeks ago. Shelves filling nicely down in the “Food Room”

Even more in the past, we both worked on 16 jars of Strawberry-Rhubarb and 26 of Strawberry. I&J Wolverton told us we were getting in on the last week of berries. Good thing Momma was really coming along healing the broken leg. See her site for the gory details.

Me & my homemade container barrels

in our 3rd attempt to grow any thing.  I topped up the soil level with fresh compost & planted 6 tomato,

The rest of the barrels.

1 eggplant, 4 cantaloupe,1 baby watermelon, 2 cucumber, 1 zucchini, and a bunch of marigolds for bug repellent. This year we are under the deck but still get plenty of sun and it’s closer to water supply.

On the jam front,empty jars are returning at a great rate, and a case of never used jelly jars were given to us by McDaniel Farm. They really appreciated the newest flavor (Carrot Cake Jam).

Several months ago we were visited by my D-I-L’s mother for a breakfast.  After watching calmly from behind me as I murdered  some over medium eggs,she asked if she could turn her own.  Of course, being the non-threatened kitchen hack that I am,I said “Certainly” She proceeded to slide them off the turner Slick as **********.  Now, she is a school teacher, did I ask how she did that? Of course, NOT!  Yesterday, going through my Google read list, I came across an entry on how to cook any style eggs. Lo and behold there it was ,and now I can’t find it.

Eggs at sunny-side up

Turn eggs so yolk is towards you. Slide turner under egg and slide egg off the end and yolk will turn under.

Like so.

Son of a gun. It worked!!  68 years old and can still learn new tricks. Thanks Kathleen.

I thought I was going to have another slow snow clearing season. But no, this came along and we are expecting more tonight.

Easier than pushing snow, but messier

If the wind is right my face collects most of the snow.

I will have to check on full face shield or cab

While I was at it, I cleared an area for Brandy to do her thing  She is so small that her belly was 2″ down in the snow. I also cleared a path so Momma could fill the bird feeders. The lumpy thing on the right is our truck.

The feeders are in the tree

Momma baked us a treat, tomato soup spice cake ,while I was snowblowing.

Next time I’ll let her plow while I cook!

Home cooked breakfast

I said cooked, not totally prepared. We have Spartan canned buttery biscuits, Alton Brown’sSawmill Gravy recipe ,

fresh Folgers coffee.

Momma had requested a roast for dinner tonight, One without any extra spices or herbs. Yeah, right!! OK, just a little salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a small bottle of Merlot.

Starting the roast in my favorite Dutch Oven

Finished product

By cutting my dosage of leg cramp meds I recovered some energu, let’s see if we can drop some high BP meds, w/Dr’s OK.

No canning projects in queue, what can we do? I know, that dehydrator that Momma got for me. Set it up, slice 240z of button mushrooms and 16oz of Criminis to look like this.

Eight hours later they’ve turned into 2oz dried.

Using frozen dough from Schwan’s home delivery I baked a loaf of bread and the ugliest cinnamon rolls I have ever seen to welcome the new site.  And here I sit with 40lb of bread flour in my back room, and a Kitchen Aid mixer, and a bread machine, and a computer with14,987,546 recipes for no-knead bread.  Time to learn other baking methods if I want anything good to use my jam on.  Approximately 386 jars in the storage room!

  This is the first vitrectomy on the left eye after having the glaucoma drain tubes implanted. This morning Dr Ross said things are looking good
  This afternoon I discovered I can still bake a cake using one eye, and a mixer, spatula, bowls, flour , sugar, salt, vanilla, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon. applesauce, baking powder, baking soda, ground ginder and cloves. Recipe