...anywhooo, the Man helped me and we peeled all of the apples - and since these apples have not been sprayed we used the peelings to make another batch of apple jelly - for Christmas gifts - and we decided to make a batch of plain applesauce - as I had already done a run of my favorite crockpot apple butter earlier...
...I was surprised at how pink the applesauce was too - we've got several good pints of sauce in the freezer now...
...and I got to wondering about how do you know how much food to preserve - I know my Mom and MIL both used to can copious amounts of garden produce - but did they sit down and figure - we'll have green beans 3 times a week so we'll need 156 quarts - or did they just put up all they had...
...I guess I put up everything that I can and then sort of try to plan our meals around what we have in the freezer/canned - what do you do???
Interesting, my grandmother preserved in jars (canned) fruit and she preserved eggs (in water glass) and made a lot of jam, chutneys and pickles.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that she preserved what she could get hold of cheaply or pick for free.
I spent much of my time with her and ate a lot of bread and jam (as did most other people in the 50's).
We also had a lot of pickles and chutneys, with meals made just before her pension day, because they were rather stodgy, We also had them with Monday's cold meat and bubble and squeak. It would be rare to find many people here in Britain who did not share that particular Monday meal!
I tend to can everything I have (until I'm tired of it) and then figure out how to use it: we need to eat at least 1 can on fruit a week, 1 can of green beans, we have no chance of eating all the pickles... etc. :)
ReplyDeleteMy canning goal this week: apple butter!
Applesauce looks yummy. We have really barreled through the little that I froze this fall, should have made more!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to give cranberry marmalade a try this week ;)
yeah, i think they "put up" stuff until they ran out of jars and/or freezer space. i don't recall throwing any away, so it must have all worked out in the end every year. i'm sure we ate more of the items that were plentiful than we would have if we were purchasing them in the grocery store. i suppose i do that even now - i would probably never buy as many peppers in the grocery as i am given!! but i eat all of them anyway. it just makes sense, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteoh, and i loved seeing maureen's comment about "bubble and squeak" - i actually knew what that was because it was in this month's reader's digest!!
have fun with your fruits & veggies! love, k
There's no planning for me. I cook it up and worry about what to do with it later. There will always be a stray container in the freezer late in the season that will bring you joy when you find it because you thought you'd run out already.
ReplyDeleteI haven't been neglecting you (though it seems like it) I've just been really busy and trying to take some time out too.
How funny - the definition of 'bubble and squeak' in Readers Digest!
ReplyDeleteI bet that most youngsters in the UK wouldn't know what it was now, life is so very different.
Monday was wash day - and not the way it is today, it took the whole day! So, dinner (usually at what we now call 'lunchtime' would be leftover cold meat from Sunday's joint and 'bubble and squeak', the leftover vegetables mixed together and fried.
My Grandma and my Aunty could make them really crispy and crunchy. They were cooked in plenty of lard!
The 'dripping' from the meat was eaten on toast or bread, lightly sprinkled with salt - so delicious and also popular with most people at the time.
Extra potatoes and vegetables were cooked on Sunday. The vegetable was very often cabbage, but not always.
All this fat and stodge and yet we were all thin, fit and healthy!