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Post by Granny Smith on Jul 1, 2010 9:14:28 GMT -5
I'm having a really stupid question..... I don't understand the question. What do you mean by "what are you putting up?" I always thought it had something to do with "cleaning up, or putting the stuff up" Doris, I can understand your confusion. I go to a forum from Australia (I think) and they use a lot of phrases I'm not familiar with. That's one meaning of the phrase, but another meaning is to can, dehydrate, freeze, or otherwise preserve food. I dried a whole bunch last year and forgot to use them! Think they're still good? Sure they are! Unless they get wet or mold, from not being thoroughly dried or improper storage, dehydrated foods don't go bad. I've heard of them being usable after a couple thousand years (dried foods from the pyramids) The blueberries finally got done. They took 3 days, turning them off at night, but that's a day faster than the other methods I've tried and they turned out much better.
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Post by Valerie on Jul 2, 2010 9:05:46 GMT -5
I checked my blueberries yesterday; no mold, no bad smell, and the one I tasted was good. Yeah! Now, what do I do with them? The only stored blueberries I've used in anything were frozen and I just dumped them in.
I cut a bunch of basil the other day, to use in the Lemon Basil Frozen Yogurt, but my yogurt was still frozen from when I put it in the freezer when the fridge wasn't working, so I put the basil in the fridge to wait. Then it froze in the fridge and turned black. I'm sure the flavor is still there, it would just look scary in frozen yogurt now, so I'm putting it in the dehydrator because when it goes in a sauce I won't care what color it is.
I know what I just wrote sounds crazy about the yogurt and all, but it's like this. To make the frozen yogurt, you first drain the whey out, like making yogurt cheese, then you mix stuff with it and freeze it. When I bought the thing of yogurt my fridge wasn't working right, so I stuck it in the freezer so it wouldn't go bad (I didn't have time at that part of the week to make the frozen yogurt. Oh shoot, this is getting worse!) After I fixed the fridge, I took the yogurt out of the freezer, back to the fridge, to thaw so I can drain it. But I'm still tweaking the fridge temp because things are still freezing in the fridge so it (the yogurt) hasn't really thawed yet. Ok I'm stopping now.
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Post by Granny Smith on Jul 2, 2010 15:12:30 GMT -5
Valerie, I just toss the dry blueberries into whatever I'm making (muffins or pancakes, usually), but my sister said that hers didn't rehydrate enough doing that. So, I told her to soak them in whatever liquid she was using first (for breakfast stuff, you could even do it overnight, in the fridge if it's milk or something that might spoil)
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Post by carla on Jul 2, 2010 16:30:19 GMT -5
If it's not raining tomorrow, I'll be picking English peas to freeze. I need to pick more sugar snap peas as well. I'll probably have a gallon or two of those to pick.
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Post by Granny Smith on Jul 5, 2010 18:47:58 GMT -5
I made a batch of blueberry jam today. It was supposed to make 6 glasses, but I got 7. The kids picked blackberries and I froze those. I ended up with 4 quarts.
We still have a lot of green blueberries. I'm hoping to get enough to make one more batch of jam and to freeze a couple of quarts.
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Post by meemo on Jul 5, 2010 19:58:45 GMT -5
I started to say I was starting round 2 but at this point I'm not really sure what round I'm on. I got the peppers cut for pickling and my computer wouldnt run all day. I did a bunch of stuff and something fixed it late this afternoon. Not a clue what did it. Who cares. I hadnt bothered to write the pickled pepper recipe down so I'm just getting them goin. I have 6 qts of blackberries to can tonight and relish to grind up. I was wondering what I was goin to do with the pile of peppers left when my neighbor gave me a sack of huge (too huge to eat) cukes. Perfect for grinding up into relish. The fellow I've befriended at the veggie mkt called and ask if I wanted another box of onions. Glory hallelujah. Now we will have relish. The relish has to sit over night so all I have to do before bedtime is get it ground up. Sometimes its good to look quaint and be a chatty old lady. This fellow and his grown daughter sold at the farmers mkt that closed. I found them by accident and its been wonderful. He calls me when he has what he knows I buy. So now I have an extra box of small new potatoes to can. We've been eating some of the most delicious sweet corn I think we've had since we moved here. He had purple hull peas tday too so we had them for supper with sweet corn and hoecakes and boiled new potatoes.
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doris
Line Cook
Posts: 447
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Post by doris on Jul 6, 2010 4:18:48 GMT -5
I'm having a really stupid question..... I don't understand the question. What do you mean by "what are you putting up?" I always thought it had something to do with "cleaning up, or putting the stuff up" Doris, I can understand your confusion. I go to a forum from Australia (I think) and they use a lot of phrases I'm not familiar with. That's one meaning of the phrase, but another meaning is to can, dehydrate, freeze, or otherwise preserve food. I dried a whole bunch last year and forgot to use them! Think they're still good? Sure they are! Unless they get wet or mold, from not being thoroughly dried or improper storage, dehydrated foods don't go bad. I've heard of them being usable after a couple thousand years (dried foods from the pyramids) The blueberries finally got done. They took 3 days, turning them off at night, but that's a day faster than the other methods I've tried and they turned out much better. thank you for the explanation.... I appreciate that .
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Post by Valerie on Jul 6, 2010 10:17:46 GMT -5
My mama gave me her dehydrator a week or so ago, and the 2 packs of jerky cure and 2 packs of jerky seasoning that came with it were still in the box. So I mixed 'em with the required 2 lb of lean ground beef, and they are now making my whole house smell absolutely wonderful. (They're drying now.)
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Post by Granny Smith on Jul 6, 2010 10:53:40 GMT -5
Valerie, my kids would be so jealous! They love jerky!
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Post by Valerie on Jul 6, 2010 15:27:02 GMT -5
I do too! Especially made with ground meat. A lot of homemade jerky is really hard.
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Post by carla on Jul 6, 2010 22:25:51 GMT -5
Dillon picked our of English peas and I shelled them for 4 hours. Gotta process them and freeze them tonight before I go to bed.
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Post by Granny Smith on Jul 7, 2010 10:44:10 GMT -5
I have a couple of trays of bee balm blossoms in the dehydrator. I meant to do them yesterday and waited for the dew to dry off them. By then it was too hot to pick them. I went out early today and got them. After I brought them in, it occurred to me that it was dumb to wait for the dew to dry since I had to wash them anyway! Boom, boom. (ain't it great to be crazy?)
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Post by carla on Jul 7, 2010 10:49:15 GMT -5
Only got 3 quarts of peas after all that work... disappointing but at least I know where they came from.
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Post by meemo on Jul 11, 2010 9:54:13 GMT -5
I canned 7qts of squash last night. Theres 3 more qts in the fridge to can. I've got to wash a bucket of blackberries to turn into jam and a box of over ripe peaches to make pie filling.
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Post by susan on Jul 11, 2010 10:04:16 GMT -5
I think what I pick today of blackberries will be the last, so hopefully I'll be making jelly and preserves tomorrow. Daughter Christy asked if I'm going to make blackberry cobbler filling. I hadn't thought of that, so I may try it with some. Right now I've got 10 1/2 quart freezer bags of frozen berries. I also have a bag of frozen strawberries that I bought and a bottle of grape juice to make jelly. I want to get away from all the commercial one's that have high fructose corn syrup in them.
Susan
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