Orange Spaghetti Sauce

Here is a sample size of the heirloom orange tomatoes.

Place them in boiling water for a minute or two, then place them in ice water to stop cooking and the skins will peel off easily.

Here is about 10 quarts of chopped tomatoes ready to cook.  The recipe calls for 12 quarts.

A sample of the orange bell peppers to go with the orange tomatoes.

I didn't have two more quarts of tomatoes like I needed, so I added the two quarts of juice and pulp I extracted from our orange cherry tomatoes.

Since this is supposed to cook until a lot of the juice is evaporated and thickened which couldn't happen with the juice I added; I added about 1 cup (didn't measure, but guessing) of Ultra Gel to thicken it.

We had this spaghetti sauce on Spaghetti Squash.

You can go HERE for the original recipe.

Canning Pictures 9-6-14

Canning Sept 6, 2014

Today was a very productive day.  Canned 28 quarts of peaches, 6 quarts of whole cherry tomatoes, and 7 quarts of tomato soup.  The next day I canned 12 more quarts of tomato soup.  Two quarts didn't seal.  Quite a few quarts lost liquid.  I used the reusable canning lids and apparently I wasn't putting them on tight enough.  We had a canner going on the stove and one on the barbecue grill outside.  We also had three dehydrators of apples going for the entire weekend.

Fruit Leather, Tomato Leather, Dried Cabbage and Herbs

I went to my mom's house for two weeks and we canned apricots and made apricot jam.

Apricot Jam - I can't give you an exact recipe, but we halved and pitted apricots and put them in a pot to cook.  I mashed them with a potato masher (one with holes not metal loops) and kept mashing and cooking until they were broken into pieces and soft.  Then added sugar to taste.  It is not as sweet as store bought jam and not as sweet as the recipe that uses pectin.  I used Ultra Gel to thicken it. Also made some with Splenda.  The jam is a thinner than normal, but we wanted it that way.

Ultra Gel is a perfect thickener for canning.  I buy it by the case and keep it here for others to buy from me.  It is made in Boise, ID and I can get it without paying the shipping cost.  Contact me if you want some.

We make lots of fruit leather.  We used apricots with applesauce and apricots with strawberries.

Mom had strawberries in her freezer that need to be uses, so I tried mixing apricots and strawberries.
We added Agave to sweeten it. Use any liquid sweetener as desired.  Do not use granulated sweetener.  It will become brittle.  Put the fruit and sweetener in a blender and puree. Taste and add fruit and sweetener as desired.

 This one had more strawberries.

 This one had more apricots.

Pour the puree onto a very very lightly greased fruit leather sheet.  I use a nonstick spray.  I give it a couple of quick sprays and use a paper towel to spread the spray around the entire sheet and absorb any extra.  Too much spray will make the fruit leather feel greasy and none will make it stick to the fruit leather sheet.

This is the apricot and applesauce mixture, but I wanted to show how using a cake decorating spatula is perfect for spreading the puree.

These were dried at about 125 degrees for 6 to 8 hours until they were no longer wet, but were pliable and slightly tacky.

After they are dry I fold them in half and cut at the fold line.

Lay each half on a sheet of plastic wrap and roll it up.  If you don't put it on plastic it will end up stuck together into a fruit leather log.

I store them in a plastic zip lock bag.  I also label and date the bag.

This is some tomatoes that we peeled and pureed.  They were not paste tomatoes. It was very juicy. I ended up with 5 or maybe 6 trays of puree.  Dry until crisp.  This was sprayed with nonstick spray the same as the fruit leather.
None of these became completely crisp.  They are still slightly pliable after hours of drying.  They seem to get to a certain dryness and don't change even with many more hours of drying.  I don't know it the nonstick spray made a difference or not.  Mom took them off of the fruit leather trays and put them directly onto the drying racks and no change.  She is going to dry putting them in the oven on the lowest setting to see what happens.
Talked to mom the next day and the tomato leather didn't crisp up even after an hour in the oven.  I will do some more experimenting with tomato leather next year.

 After drying an hour or two this is what it looked like.

Here I cut the tomatoes into several pieces and used my fingers to scrape out seeds and juice.  There is a lot less seeds and the pulp is a lot thicker.  I got 3 1/2 trays of puree this way.

Mom had cabbage that we needed to do something with too.  Sauerkraut takes too long, so we decided to dry some. Cut it by hand and remove the core.  Cut into strips.

We tried the food processor first and this is what we got.  That was okay, because we wanted coleslaw too.  We just had to make it sooner than planned.

Put the strips on the dehydrator.  There were dried at 130 degrees until crisp.  I pulled what I could apart, but the way it curls into itself I couldn't pull it apart much, so I just separated it as I could as it dried.

Here what I ended up with. This will be used in soups this winter.  I must say that I liked eating the dry strips.

I also picked sage leaves to try.  Wash them and remove the stems.  Place on the dehydrator and dry until crisp.  They dried at 130 degrees.  They were curled in on themselves when done.

This is what I got from three trays of leaves.

Recipes Using Dehydrated Produce and Home Canned Food

My favorite way to preserve vegetables is to dehydrate them.
I have been working on converting our favorite recipes to recipes that use home canned and dehydrated foods.  I will be posting them on http://simplifyitexemplifyitrecipes.blogspot.com/. Currently there are only Survival Bars and Chocolate Waffles, but more will be there soon.

Dried Apricots

Last year my mom dried apricots.  Apricots are sulfured to keep them from turning dark.  Sulfuring them at home was not the same.  They tasted awful.
Drying them with nothing on them is as bad as home dried bananas in my opinion.
Cutting them in half, removing the pit and covering them with apricot flavored jello worked the best.
After about 6 to 8 months the apricots turned dark, but tasted good still.  I will help mom make more this year and take pictures and post them.

No More Dehydrated Hash Brown Potatoes, Making Frozen Fruit Bars.

The dehydrated hash brown potatoes were a hit around here for the adults.  They are a pain to make, but so easy to use.  Well worth the time and energy.

The dried apples are the favorite food for the little children around here.  There are a lot of apples this year, so I will be making more.

I took the strawberries that were frozen last year and the year before and pureed them with coconut water.  Then added a little sweetener and made frozen fruit bars and poured the extra into ice cube trays.  Only one child tried one so far.  She didn't like it.  I have been putting the ones from the ice cube trays into protein drinks and love it.
I didn't measure anything.  I figured the consistency didn't matter since it would be frozen.  All I cared about was that it didn't taste like coconut and was sweet enough that the kids would eat it, but not too sweet to become fruit flavored sugar.