Garden Update - Sunday 8/8/10

Been awhile again (suprised?) since last garden update.

We have beans to eat, and cherry tomatoes, a couple green peppers with bunch more that should come at once.

Nyssa snippin beans

Potato plants got so big, but not sure how many potatoes I will really get. My sisters has early potatoes only down at the very base of the plant. So this might require some more knowledge for next year. Although we thought we had read basically what to do and heard the same from a church friend. Time will tell.

Our Dill has gotten nice and large with big flower heads, now that we have no more pickles to make. . . 

. . .yes no more pickles since our plant is now pffftt! Although we got I believe 24 jars canned this year, not bad.

Cherry Tomatoes

Jalapeños 

Our Serrano peppers however got too late of a start from seed to produce anything this year  (the plants are only 6 inches or so)

Then yesterday we found a little surprise (not the good kind) in our garden. . .

 

SICK!  Tomato Hornworm

Creepster! Those little decoy eyes are so amazing/creeps me out at the same time. Funny thing is we found this guy (girl?) yesterday, and today when I stopped at my sisters after work we found on on her tomatillos. Before I even had a chance to tell her about ours. Crazy. . .and gross.

That's all for now!

Garden Update - Thursday 7/22/10

Haven't had a garden update in awhile so. . .

So far we have pickled 17 Jars of Dill Pickles

Potato plants doing pretty well now that I stopped over-watering them. Two started to wither up and when I moved the straw away the stem down farther on one plant was very wet looking and broke completely off.

Pole beans growing nicely.

Flowering Pole Beans

If you look hit the picture and look at it larger you will see our Dill grew up very well, have medium sized flower heads right now.  Our first green pepper rotted up as seems to be the case with first fruits, but the other two seem to be ok so far. Cherry Tomato plant is loaded with little green tomatoes. And Jalapeños are just about to start producing.

What to do with your Homemade Iced Coffee - Iced Caramel Coffee

Step 1: Put some ice in glass.

Optional: Add just a bit of Simple Syrup to glass to sweeten (Caramel Syrup is usually sweet enough for me but you can buy sugar-free also)

Step 2: Shoot some Caramel Syrup into glass (3 pumps if you have one)

Step 3: Fill about 3/4 of glass with your Iced Coffee <--see how to make Iced Coffee

Step 4: Add Creamer, Half & Half till desired strength is reached and stir.

For a frappuccino sort of deal; make up the drink, freeze, then add more cream while blenderizing it!

Frapp recipe could use some change probably but worked for me so far

How I make Homemade Iced Coffee - Cold Brewed Coffee

Iced Coffee is Great! Why? Because it has Coffee in it!

I make it using the ' Cold Brewed ' method

I used this , this time.

But I really like this, Peets Coffee - Major Dickason's Blend.



You want to use a ratio of 4:1 - 4 Cups water to 1 Cup Coarsely ground coffee so make sure you have a big enough pitcher, jar, container of some kind to hold it all. (Although when I took these pictures I didn't have the right amount of water in yet, realized it after the second stirring.)

Stir it up good then let it sit awhile in the Fridge. When you come back you will likely see this. . .

Grounds mostly on top in some sort of crusty head.

So give it another good stir and after you do it should look more like this. . .

With more of a foamy head and all the grounds floating around in suspension or on the bottom, not the top.

I've heard that you should let it sit (in the Fridge) for a minimum of 3-4 hours.
I always seem to go at least 12 because I end up putting it together in the evening.
Also the STRONGER the better! :)

The next step is sort of trial and error just seeing what works best for what tools you have.

You can separate the grounds from the coffee with,

a mesh filter - 

a paper filter,

a paper towel?

your hands?

you get the idea

I haven't perfected this yet so I end up using a colander over a pan so I can set either my mesh filter, paper filter, paper towel, (not hands) into it to hold whichever in place while I pour the coffee into it.

You will have to change a few times whichever element you choose, this is why the mesh filter is kinda nice because you can just bang the grounds out in the trash, but on the other hand paper filters cost a couple bucks for about a million so. . .figure out whatever you like best.

After you have separated the coffee from the grounds filter it one more time through a clean filter to remove just that little bit more of "stuff".

Thats it!

Put it in fridge and enjoy your Homemade Iced Coffee!

Pickling - How we make Dill Pickles

In our first pickling attempt we started with 16 cucumbers and ended up making 6 - Quart size wide mouth jars of Dill Pickle Spears.

5 days later we had 9 cucumbers and canned 4 - Quart jars of Dill Pickle Slices with some extra slices that weren't enough for a whole jar.

Here is the Recipe we used courtesy of my sister. . .

Dill Pickles
--Dianna Brewer
2009

Soak cucumbers in ice bath (min 2 hrs/max 8 hrs)
Boil jars and lids to sterilize, Keep hot until ready to fill, Keep lids & bands hot too.
Brine: 6 cups water, 2 cups white vinegar, 1/3 cup pickling salt } Bring to boil

Fill jars in this order:
In bottom of jar put 2 pieces garlic clove, 1--1 ½ heads of dill (the flower)
Then fill jar with cucumber slices or wedges
Next add 1 piece of garlic clove and a big sprig of dill (the greens)
Pour hot brine to fill w/in ½ inch of top
Wipe rim of jar, then set on hot lids, and put on rings fingertip tight.
Boil jars, covered in water for 10 min, remove, and allow to cool on a towel on the counter. Push down gently on lids when completely cooled to be sure they are sealed (not sealed=popping,flexing)

 16 Cucumbers

 Ice Bath

Pouring in Brine

A few things we did, noticed, learned. . .

We used normal tongs to pick the jars out of the boiling water. This felt a little dangerous because of how short the tongs were. Using my sisters special Jar grabbing tongs didn't really work either because we had the jars on their sides. I think the best bet is if you have a big enough pot and the jars standing on end so you can use the specialty tongs to grab them from the top down. It seems it will be worth it to buy the jar tongs, a rack and canning pot that the rack will Actually fit in and a lid magnet. We didn't really need the wide mouth funnel that we bought as we just used a 1 cup measuring cup and scooped the water out of the pot right into the jars.

The only thing we did Not do was boiling the jars after they were filled. In the future, if I get a pair of the tongs for picking out the jars and a rack to set them vertical in the pot, we might boil them for a few minutes. I feel that 10 minutes is just way too much cooking on the cucumbers. I guess time will tell if we erred in this choice. It is supposed to ensure that any bacteria is completely gone from the canning process so that your food will last longer on the shelf. Anyways our lids are definitely sealed so that's good!

We found that only about 2 1/2 of our cucumbers were fitting in these quart jars. Now if we picked them smaller we would fit more obviously, but would also have smaller spears. So which would be better?

The quantity of brine listed in the recipe was enough for about 3 1/2 Quart jars because I remember making 1 1/2 batches of it which would be:  9 cups water, 3 cups white vinegar.


Something we won't know till 2 months from now when we can try the pickles; the recipe calls out for 3 pcs of garlic per jar. Well my sister used Pint jars in her recipe and we used Quart. So we are thinking we should have used more garlic and dill. But we didn't buy enough to use more at the time. So it will have to do.

Another thing we will probably do with some of the next jars we will be canning is adding some peppercorn, and or spicy peppers of some sort to create more flavors of pickles. I will probably have to look up some recipe ideas for this so I don't make them too blazing hot or not hot enough! Anyone have ideas Please let me know!



Nyssa made some nice labels for our pickles!