good morning

Good Morning.

Here's a few clips of what our mornings have been like here recently.













Mornings.  I have always been a morning person, first one up, first one singing, first one eating.  This year has been a bit more stressful for me as I get 4 of our 5 kids off to school, have I told you how much I love Mondays?  They are the best!  Once they leave, I take a deep breath and begin to plan how to make the most of my day.

Off to my day!

canning apple jelly ~ 2nd batch

10 apples went into the Breville this afternoon, juice was cooked with 5 cups of sugar and almost 2 boxes of pectin.  My vote is that 5 cups of sugar has a better taste than the 7 I made earlier in the week, just like I thought ~ intuitive cooking!  This was a really really good batch!  I realized as I stood by the pot stirring that  the pot had a familiar aroma and that it was essentially apple cider made into jelly.  Yum, next on the agenda will be apple cider with mulling spices from Williams-Sonoma.  Hopefully there will be a chill in the air again soon!

Apples to apple jelly ~ a quick course

Autumn is here isn't it?!  Where has the time gone.  Wasn't it just last week when we were in birthday mode around here?  We have three September birthdays which makes the month of going back to school, that much more fun and hectic.  As I opened our last jar of apple jelly from my pantry recently, made two years ago, I knew what we were going to do with our apples this year.  Make more jelly!



I looked back through my blog and realized I have never explained how I make apple jelly.  There is a quick post about it here, but no mention of how I made it.  So today we are.  I've done it two different ways.  The old way was to peel and cut the apples and boil them, drain the juice (you need 6 cups of juice), then add 1/4 cup of sugar with a pack of Sure-jell pectin, bring to a boil, then add the remainder of the sugar (about 6.75 cups).





This year I came up with a new way.  I first juiced the raw apples with my Breville Juicer (lots of instagram photos floating around of that brilliant machine!).  All the apples in that pic rendered 6 cups of juice.  What I love about juicing the apples, is that it is pure apple juice, not watered down from cooking the applies, and its quick, no peeling involved!  The juice then goes into a pot, brought to a boil, then the same process of 1/4 cup of sugar and box of Sure-Jell pectin is added.  Once that comes to a boil, I added the 6 3/4 cups of sugar (7 in all).  After checking the gel consistency, I ended up adding almost the whole second box of pectin to get it the way I like my jelly, not too firm, and not runny.  Then I scooped it into sterilized jars, and sealed them.  This batch tasted a tad too sweet for me, so I'm making another batch using 5 cups of sugar to see if I like it better.  Either way, they will both be delicious, fresh from the farm to my kitchen to be stored and opened and enjoyed for many seasons to come.



{The two jars with white tops went straight into the fridge to be eaten this week with my family, they are not properly sealed for storage.}

eating local ::

Eating local has become more important to us over the years.  There is nothing like eating local when it means "backyard" local; "backyard - garden wish we had our own farm"- local, or "this is the best we can do and are making the most of it"- local.  You get my drift I'm sure, my heart is fondly desiring more acreage in our future.  But for now in making the most of what we have, we expanded our garden this year.



Daniel has done an amazing job this year tending to our garden.  The most I could do this year is help organize seeds and make row markers.  New this year to our garden has been potatoes, turnips, radishes, beets, carrots.  We expanded our corn, have less tomatoes, but our squash are doing well for once.  It has taken us a few years to learn where there is more sun and where spots are less fertile,  which crops do better on which row and on and on.  I even played around a little this year with planting by the moon.  I wanted to do a post on it earlier this Spring, but it just got too complicated.  So far it has served us well.  I like to think of gardening as a school of nature.

This is the time of the gardening season, where I get to go out and freshly pick our dinner each afternoon.  I prefer to pick and eat as we need the food each day, while my husband on the other hand loves to "surprise" me by harvesting a whole row at one time to preserve.  A few weeks ago, a lot got wasted because we weren't prepared for the amount of work it takes to preserve that much food (it was turnip greens).  As I said, successful gardening is a learned process.  Next year, I will be ready and prepared for that type of cooking and preserving, but for now, I'm learning as much as I can and am enjoying what is and what is left to come.  It only gets better each year.

today ::

Today . . . there will be cleaning, cooking, and nesting.

making jam ::

This year we made not one, but two rounds of jam. What else to do with 20 lbs of strawberries besides eating and juicing them, right?

First recipe was inspired by Meg's post from her jam making a few weeks back. It came from "Canning for a New Generation", what a great book, with lots of tips for new canners as well as seasoned canners. When I saw that there was a recipe for a Strawberry and Lavendar Jam, I was sold! I just so happened to have fresh lavendar blooms right outside my kitchen waiting for me to make this recipe. {I also love how the book is divided into seasons which is perfect for garden planning!}

Next up was my standby Strawberry Jam recipe which we've come to enjoy making and eating each year!

Somehow, our Strawberry Jam doesn't stay around long!

from the farm to the table ~

Yesterday I spent all day in the kitchen canning apple jelly and baking apple pie.

Being the first time ever making apple jelly, I had a little trouble, but it came out just right in the end.

After setting the jars on the kitchen table, the warmest glow came through the jars as the sunlight hit them through the window. What a nice reminder of what Fall gives us . . .

. . . and a nice apple pie just in time for dessert after dinner. This recipe requires about 4-5 hours of sitting to cool, it's so hard to wait but definately worth it in the end~!

Happy Fall to you!