KP Duty...

That's how it felt for a while yesterday. I took twenty pounds of potatoes out of the fifty pound bag to process. Peeling, rinsing, cutting up, rinsing, soaking, rinsing...Potatoes were the center of my universe for much of the day. 

Once I'd rinsed away the starch that would cloud the jars, I was ready to start filling them with all those beautiful spuds. In the end, twenty pounds of potatoes were canned into twenty four wide mouth pint jars. Three didn't seal, but I had a plan for that eventuality, too.

I made potato soup with ham. Handsome thought it was delicious, and I wasn't going to try to convince him otherwise. It was just the comfort food we needed after both of our busy days. The best part was that there was exactly one full quart of leftover soup, so we can have that for lunch in the next day or so.

I work tonight, so I'm planning to rest and stitch feathers today. I think I've accomplished enough for one week, so I'll take it easy today. I hope you have a great weekend, dear friends.

KP Duty...

 

I have a fair idea what it's like to be on KP duty in the armed forces now. Remember that fifty pound bag of potatoes I brought back from Portage last month? It's been sitting in the garage, and I was concerned about the spuds going bad out there. So, I asked Handsome to bring it inside yesterday morning and proceeded to process most of it.

I used my handy dandy Pampered Chef "apple peeler corer slicer", which Handsome calls the "potato lathe". It did a bang up job peeling pears this fall, too. I tossed the few mushy potatoes from the bag, sorting longer ones from the rest of them. Once peeled, I sliced those into french fry spears and then into cold water for four hours (minimum) to pull the starch out of them.

I also cut up the rest into 1-2" cubes for processing for baking, roasting, frying, or mashing. All these potatoes are going to be dry canned, which adds no water to the jars. Each quart gets 1/2 t. salt, 1/4 t. black pepper, and 1 T melted butter. Once the jars are prepared, they go into the pressure canner to process for 45 minutes. This is now my preferred method of preserving potatoes.

By the end of the day, I'd processed 22 pints of french fry spears. I changed the water that the cubed potatoes are sitting in, and I'll jar and process those this morning. I have two LARGE bowls of those, so I should get a nice quantity of quarts for the pantry.

With all the prepared potatoes, I still had about seven pounds to put into the basket to use as baking potatoes, saving me from running to the grocery store for a while. While the jars process today, I'll be moving a few things around in the pantry cabinets to make room for these latest jars. There's nothing I love more than looking into the pantry and seeing all the filled shelves of food we've prepared ourselves. I guess I really do have a pioneer woman deep down inside.

Nary A Needle In Sight...

Surprise! I never even picked up a needle yesterday. I got up early and decided that I would have a "quick canning session". Don't laugh, now. I began my process at 9 am and left the kitchen at 5 pm.

These beautiful, white chocolate scones were actually the last thing I made for the day. I'll be taking them with me to Portage today for the tea party Adrienne is hosting after our morning of crafting. I actually made two trays of them, knowing that Handsome and I would want to enjoy our own with morning coffee. He gave them two thumbs-up after tasting the first one.

What actually lured me into the kitchen were the English beef roasts Handsome had brought home for me to pressure can on Thursday. I began by trimming off all the fat, silver skin and gristle, leaving lovely, bite-sized marbled pieces of beef.

The method for these from my handy dandy pressure canning "bible" said that beef should be hot packed, which means that it needs to be cooked prior to filling jars. So, I browned all the beef, drained off that liquid (per the recipe), put it back in the pot with onions, garlic, some of my favorite (now discontinued) Betts Seasoning, and beef broth. Once it all came back to a boil, I packed the hot jars and popped them into the canner. These jars are the result.

One hour and 15 minutes to process, plus 30-45 minutes for the canner to depressurize and cool down, and then I could move these jars out of the canner to use for the potatoes (up next).

While the beef was processing, I peeled eight pounds of potatoes. Then Handsome helped me cut them up into 1-1/2" pieces. They also were hot packed, so I put those into a large pot with cold water, brought it up to a boil, cooking for 5 minutes, and then packed these wide-mouth pint jars. If I remember correctly, they processed for less than an hour.

I couldn't start the oven until the jars were removed from the canner, as I didn't want the heat of the oven to keep the canner from depressurizing and cooling down. While I waited, I had a cup of tea and visited with Tag, Claudette and Crystal on the porch. Tag loves being out there all day, and the cats don't mind him one bit. After I'd finished my tea, I was able to remove the jars from the canner, take the canner off the stovetop and turn on the oven.

As I was placing the scones into the oven, Handsome offered to pickup carryout Friday fish fry dinners for us. It's a Midwest thing, and every restaurant, bar that serves food, and even local gas stations that have little restaurants in them offer tasty renditions of this tradition. Ours frequently comes from a gas station down the road. They really make great meals, and their fish fries are delicious. So, I was off the hook for making dinner, and I was most grateful for it.

By the time dinner arrived, the kitchen was cleaned up, the scones had cooled so I could frost them, and we were able to sit down and eat. Handsome really is the best!

I'm on my way to Portage now, and will be there by 9 am. I may have to stop at the farmer's stands on the way home to see if there's something we need to add to the pantry (or have as part of this evening's dinner). I'll share photos of our creations on Monday. I can't wait to see what we're making this month! I'd better get on the road if I don't want to be late! Happy Saturday!