It's My 1 Year Bloggiversary! And another crazy idea . . .

I was thinking of doing something spectacular to celebrate the fact that one year ago today I wrote the first post on this blog. But I really can't think of anything, so I'm just writing a post--my 157th post.

I am amazed that I've had this much to say and still don't feel like I've covered near enough subject matter. I love that my blog has followers and readers outside of my family which I really didn't expect. I love that I've been able to learn from you all as well. I've had a lot of fun with this project this past year, and hope it's proven helpful for some of you. So thank you for making it as enjoyable as it has been and for stopping by to read my crazy adventures and leave your comments! It wouldn't be the same without you.

And just for fun, here's another crazy idea I had that I'm milling over: I took tap and ballet classes when I was a kid and loved it. I'd really like to get my girls (8 and 5) into dance class, especially tap. The only dance class in town is not really to my liking and teaches mostly "cheer" type dance. I know there's a place 20 miles away that teaches classic tap and ballet, but I really can't afford to put both my girls in their classes AND spend the time and gas money to get there and back at least once a week plus the cost of shoes, outfits, etc. So I'm dreaming up how I can use our shop as a Mom and Me tap studio for me and my girls and we'll just have class once a week or whatever by ourselves. The problem is that I really don't remember all that much about tap dance although I think it would come back pretty quick with a little instruction, so I've Netflixed a couple of DVD's on beginning tap and if I end up doing this I'll probably buy one or two of them, get a portable DVD player somewhere, light a fire in the stove in the shop once a week and have class. Just another crazy idea . . . as if I didn't have enough going on. But you know this would take care of some of my own exercise goals as well. Anybody a self taught dancer or used dance DVD's to learn to dance? I'm open for ideas. We'll see where it goes.

Canning Peaches

Well, I don't know about you, but canning season was crazy around here. Consequently, I did a lot of canning/freezing/drying and mostly remembered to take pictures, but had no time to post any of it! So this fall and winter, you just never know when a random canning post is going to appear.

Today we'll be canning peaches. Yummy. The first thing you need to do is get some peaches. There are lots of different varieties of peaches, but they come in two types: cling and freestone. If you've got a choice, you want a freestone variety. They are much easier to work with. The cling peaches are called that because the flesh "clings" to the pit, and so has to be freed by a pitting spoon or some such measure requiring a great deal more labor than just starting out with a freestone peach. A freestone peach has a pit or "stone" that comes "free" from the flesh (separates) easily. So if you're looking to plant a peach tree on your property, I'd look for a freestone variety.

After you've got some peaches, get them washed up and pretty. Now we'll skin them.

Skinning a peach is really quite easy. Get some water boiling in a pot. Dip the peaches in the boiling water for a while. The book says 30-60 seconds, but I've left them longer with no ill effects. You can tell when they're ready to come out because the color of the skin changes--the red will dull a bit--you'll see what I'm talking about when you do it.
Then take them out of the boiling water and put them immediately in cold water. I have a really cool metal basket thing (you can see the handles in the above picture) that allows me to put a basket of peaches in the water and then pull them all out and transport them to the sink. Slick. Much better than fishing one peach at a time out of the pot of boiling water, but that works too.
Now the skins should slip off the peaches easily. These are kind of mini peaches, but hey, they were free, so I'm not complaining.
If your skins do not slip off, you might have cling peaches, or your peaches may not be ripe enough. The skin of underripe peaches does not come off easily and causes a great deal of frustration! If you have underripe peaches, just wait a couple of days for them to ripen up a bit before canning and save yourself the trouble of peeling them with a knife.

After they are peeled, use the dent along the side of the peach as a guide to cut the peach in half and remove the pit.
Now you can leave them halved or cut them in slices, whichever you prefer. I like slices, but halves are faster, so I have some of both in the storage.

Put the cut peaches in a bowl containing 2 quarts of water and 2 TB FruitFresh or EverFresh or some similar product to prevent browning.

Meanwhile, get your boiling water canner, pot of lids, and syrup heating up. Syrup is a ratio thing. 1 sugar to 4 water is a light syrup, 1 sugar to 2 water is heavy. I like 1 sugar to 3 water. Use whatever you want to measure the sugar and water as long as you pour it in the pot according to the ratio.
I have a friend that skips the syrup and just puts 1/4 cup sugar in each quart jar after she's filled it with peaches and then pours boiling water over the top of it all to fill the jar. She claims it's less messy than using syrup. Might have to try that next year.

Now, put the peaches in your jars and pour the hot syrup over them to the bottom of the neck. Free the air bubbles. There's a tool for bubble freeing, but I just use a butter knife and poke it in about 4 times around the edge of the peaches and do a little squeeze/wiggle with it to get the air out.
Wipe the rims of the jars clean, screw on your hot lids and rings and process the jars in the canner. 25 minutes for pints, 30 minutes for quarts. Pull your jars out when they're done and put them on a rack to cool. My rack is my way thrifty oven rack upside down, one side supported by an upside down plate.
Enjoy! Especially lovely to look at on the shelf and delicious over vanilla ice cream . . . :)

More Sun Oven Cooking

Last night's dinner: Ribs and rice cooked in the Sun Oven. Amazing. You need one of these. And I'm a dealer for them. Shoot me an email or use the link on the right side to order :)

Cookies in the Sun Oven

I've borrowed a Sun Oven from a sweet friend, and since it's been sunny, I've been out experimenting with it a bit. I got it out Monday, intending to cook some bread in it since I was baking bread anyway, but it had never been out of the box, and the instructions say to let it heat up and then cool down and wash the interior before baking in it (you know, to burn off the "new" fumes), so that's how Monday's baking went--all the bread just went in the regular oven.

Tuesday was nice and sunny, so I busted the sun oven back out to bake some cookies. Here it is all set up in my yard:
After 20 or so minutes, it had heated up to about 310 degrees. Really. All you skeptics out there that think it would take two hours to heat up a solar oven, it really did heat up in 20 minutes. Here's the thermometer:
And just for good measure, here's a photo of the back of the sun oven with the height adjustment leg to enable you to aim it right at the sun. EASY.
I made my husband's favorite oatmeal cookies and put a pan of them in the oven. The cooking chamber isn't extremely large. I used a smallish pan instead of my regular cookie sheets.
This cookie recipe is 350 for 10 minutes, so I checked at 10 minutes and the cookies weren't quite done (of course, since the heat level was lower than 350).
Here's how we looked at 15 minutes. Done. Actually a little overdone--they were a bit dry. Not burned, just a bit dry. I pulled the second batch out a little sooner with better results.
That's steam coming out the top of the door when I opened it. Yep, it gets that hot in the oven.
The cookies were delicious, and cooking in the sun oven was easy. I'm definitely sold. I'll be trying something else this week before I have to give the oven back. :)

Emergency Kit Giveaway

Here's a quick heads up about a giveaway my friend Lisa at The Survival Mom has going on this week. She's just redesigned her site and is celebrating with a giveaway for an emergency kit that retails for over $100! Now you know how I feel about emergency kits off the shelf--they're rarely all inclusive, but this would make a fantastic start to your 72 hour kit/bug out bag/evacuation kit or would even make a great gift for someone you know who needs some prep help! :)

Drying Corn

I planted some corn this year that was supposed to dry and be ground for cornmeal. I didn't read that it has a 110 day growing season, which we barely have here, and I didn't plant it right at the beginning of the season, so when it wasn't dry by the first hard frost, I called my extension agent who told me it was okay to leave the ears on the stalks through the frost. So I did. Then a couple of weeks later, I pulled the ears off the stalks and pulled the shucks back to expose the corn kernels which STILL were not dry. It was really cold that day, so I just tossed all the ears in the wheelbarrow and drove them to the shop where they could stay "inside". However, they weren't going to dry all piled on each other, and the shop gets pretty darn cold which is not conducive to drying corn ears. I knew the ears had to come in the house where it was warm enough for them to dry, but there's quite a few of them and my house is only so big (well, actually it's pretty darn small), and the places I'd like to have a bunch of corn hanging around are even more limited, so you know that saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention"? Well, I took some clothesline and strung it from nail to screw to nail to different nail to another screw that were already sticking out of the rafters in my furnace/freezer/storage room in sort of an ADHD spiderweb pattern. Really random--I just didn't feel like pounding my own nails in to make it all nice and neat. Then I clothespinned the ears of corn to it. Now they are happily drying in my storage room using space that I didn't have anything else in (and I thought there was no such space in my house).
Okay, that picture kind of stinks if you haven't been in my storage room--hopefully you can make it out. The corn is really dark red--it's called Bloody Butcher corn. Don't you think RED cornbread or RED corn tortillas will be fun?

The Small Town Post Office Produce Exchange

In our town, there are no mail trucks or mail delivery people. There is no "on demand parcel pickup" or vacation mail holds. There are not any mailboxes on the streets because there is no mail delivery. There is only the Post Office.

If you want to mail something, you go to the Post Office. If you want to GET your mail, you go to the Post Office. If you want to know what's going on in town, you read the bulletin boards and notices at the Post Office. If you want to chat with your friends, you go to the Post Office (around 10:00 for the older folks, or around 11:15 for those with Kindergarteners or around 3:00 for those with gradeschoolers). Just don't go between 12:00 and 1:00 because they are closed for lunch.

Now, as if all that were not service enough to our community, our post office also doubles as a produce exchange. Throughout the gardening season you can occasionally find boxes of squash, onions, carrots, etc. outside the post office that were left by gardeners with a bit of excess. This produce is there to be taken home by whoever in town wants it. It's a pretty good system. I picked up quite a few odds and ends for the dehydrator throughout the summer, and just last week scored a couple of boxes of apples. Not bad for a trip to the post office. :)