Chili Sauce Day

 My house currently smells like (to me) abundance, contentment, love, goodness, harvest, autumn, and the happy parts of childhood.

Yes, it's chili sauce day. I have posted about this before. This concoction is not a hot, spicy type of condiment. It is more like a cinnamon spice sweet / tomato-y slightly thick sauce that pairs perfectly with sausage or roast pork or roast chicken thighs. 

Clean jars awaiting their contents.

It is a perfect way to use up some tomatoes and it does not require a lot of ingredients. I will share my mother's recipe for those who are interested:

Ingredients being brought up to a boil.

After boiling down for about an hour.

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Maureen's Chili Sauce

Ingredients for a small batch (can easily be doubled):

-9 good sized tomatoes

-1 large yellow onion

-1 tbsp salt

-1/2 cup white vinegar

-2 cups white sugar

1/4 tsp allspice (or more if desired)

1 tsp cinnamon

Drop clean tomatoes into a boiling water bath for a minute or so, then place in cold water so they can be cored and peeled. I also de-seed some of them as I'm doing this. Chop roughly.

Chop onion into medium to small pieces.

Put all ingredients into a large pot (like a small soup /stock pot) and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat to a low boil/ brisk simmer and occasionally stir for aprx. 2 hours (you want a lot of the liquid to boil away and for it to be somewhat "thick")

Ladle into 1/2 pint, or 1 pint jars - process in boiling water bath for 20 minutes.

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I double the recipe and it makes aprx. 9 1/2 pint jars. I like to give these away to family members. 

I do realize that I am canning on perhaps the hottest day that we have had since July. But that's all part of the process. These beautiful early September days are when all the good things happen. I might also do yet another batch of zucchini muffins (chocolate chip this time), to stick in a large freezer bag and freeze for later. 

(Yes, I made these while I was waiting for the sauce to boil down.)

This last one is for Joanne, whose tea towels are still as perfect as the day I received them as a gift!

It made 6 half pints and 2 full pints.

On a whole other note, and yes, this is where we get personal, I've been dealing with digestive issues for five, yes five, weeks. I'm not going to go into detail, but whatever you guess is probably correct. And if you are from Ontario, you know that I can't see my doctor for 4 weeks (at the time I tried to make the appointment). I stopped taking supplements that were somewhat new to me, as I thought perhaps that was what was causing my gut angst. I stopped coffee and the minimal amount of alcohol that I was consuming. Parasites, etc. were ruled out. To not avail, I decided to take matters in my own hands while waiting the weeks and weeks to see my actual doctor (I did get to see a nurse practitioner who ordered the tests to rule out creepy crawlies, but that's all she did).

I researched (because I'm good at researching and learning and applying and all that) the low FODMAP diet and the elimination diet. So as of six days ago I am religiously following this elimination diet (basically eliminates all foods in five categories that are known to cause intestinal distress). After you follow this for at least two weeks, or more, if you are seeing that your symptoms have significantly calmed down, then you move onto the reintroduction phase. It's all laid out and easy for me to follow and I'm keeping meticulous notes. In fact, my digestive issues have already 90% settled down. I am now VERY curious to determine what the heck it was that put me in the place I was in for 5 weeks. 

My question to you, dear readers, is have you ever "suddenly" developed a sensitivity to something that was never an issue before, but now absolutely is? I know it happens. I know people can develop hay fever having never had problems before. I know allergies can occur for no particular reason ( or for reasons that people suspect but will be called out on if uttered publicly). I wonder if some of my medications to suppress estrogen and progesterone, or my bone-builder infusions (Zometa) (all a result of my breast cancer this past year) have contributed? (No, I did not have chemo). My sister, for those who regularly read, almost died last year and was in the ICU and for a while, it was unknown what the actual cause was until finally a targeted allergy test determined that she is now deathly allergic to ibuprofen!! Yup, good old Advil that people take for their aches and pains all the time! She had never, ever had problems before. 

So please chime in if you've discovered you suddenly can't consume dairy, or wheat, or onions (lord, I already miss onions and garlic, which I have to currently eliminate), or whatever. Also, tell me if you are canning anything right now. We homesteaders need to stick together! 

Thursday, September 17, 2020

 My garden has ghosts at one end. It is supposed to be very cold tonight, so I've brought out the old sheets that I keep for just this purpose and have draped them over my tomatoes, closing them up here and there with clothespins. They are all tucked in, in case of frost.

After work, I picked all of my ripe / semi ripe tomatoes, pulled the rest of my beets, and dug up some of my potatoes (I doubt it would be a super hard frost already), and then did the ghost maneuver. I threw a few starting-to-rot tomatoes to the hens who ran and attacked them.

Here are the tomatoes I picked the day before:

Today there was a giant tomato! Daughter took the picture for me. We often talk about something being "as big as your head". Excuse my dirty-from-the- garden hands in the next picture. Trust me, at work, I use hand sanitizer ALL DAY LONG.

Do you remember my accidental/mystery acorn squash in my compost pile? Here is the final result!

Right now, on a school night, I'm making another batch of my mom's chili sauce. It is very simple and we sampled a bit with sausages last night. It was the way I remember it. Here is the recipe if you want to ever give it a try.

Maureen's Chili Sauce (small batch)

9 tomatoes (skinned and roughly cut up)

1 onion, chopped

1 tbsp salt

1/2 cup vinegar (just white vinegar is fine)

2 cups white sugar

1/4 tsp allspice

1 tsp cinnamon

Put all ingredients into a large heavy-based pot, bring to a boil, reduce heat and let it gently boil down for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours (it will reduce to about half and thicken slightly and turn a bit darker). Stir fairly often so it doesn't scorch and stick to the pan.

Process in boiling water bath for about 15 to 20 minutes. Makes about 6 pint jars.

Fruits of my Labour

 Today was a busy day - it was time to do some preserving and freezing. I didn't want my garden produce to go to waste, even though I would rather not be attached to my kitchen all day, but that is what the day involved.

I was up by about 6:30 because that's what my body is used to now, and husband was also snoring up a storm after having cut the lawn yesterday. After a big mug of coffee and opening up the chickens, I went out and picked the remaining beans, both green and purple. I already had some in the crisper that I had picked a couple of days ago, so I did the whole washing, trimming, blanching routine and ended up with two medium sized freezer bags of beans. You'd think it would have resulted in a greater amount, but it will still be good to be able to reach into the freezer in January and pull out one of those bags.

I think the green and purple look nice together. After they are blanched, they are all green. 

I spread my beans out on towel after blanching to dry before they get bagged and frozen.

Next on the list was pickled beets. This is the first time in a VERY long time that I've been able to successfully grow beets. I think it was a combination of adding lots of my own compost to the soil and laying out soaker hoses and using them frequently throughout the summer.

I grew cylindrical beets. They ended up growing up, out of the soil. I didn't make a lot of pickled beets because I think only husband really likes them. Maybe daughter's boyfriend as well. I prefer beets boiled with some butter, salt and pepper. 

Three pints and two half pints of pickled beets. Those stickers from previous years (when the jars had strawberry jam in them) do NOT come off easily. I washed those jars in the dishwasher and processed them in boiling water, and the stickers still held. I ended up just writing on the jar lids instead.

You may recall that one of the successes in my garden was a little hot pepper plant that son brought home. You may also recall that they were deadly hot. Well, son was feeling a little bad that they would potentially go to waste and was hoping I could do something with them. He and his sister enjoy Frank's red hot sauce and sriracha sauce in different kinds of food, so I thought, why not try to make a hot sauce? I looked up some recipes and realized it's not difficult and I had the necessary ingredients. 

Those are the little devils I used today. There are still just as many out on the plant! I grabbed some plastic gloves from husband's shop and got to work trimming them and scraping out the seeds. I've heard that a lot of the heat is in the seeds. I'm pretty sure there's still heat in the rest of the pepper, as I managed to clean out my sinuses by breathing too deeply while they were boiling in their vinegar bath. I might have been able to strip the finish off the kitchen cupboards if I let it boil long enough. Anyway, after whizzing it up in the blender, I poured it into two small jars and sealed them. I don't want to be the one to try it. 

Next on the list was making my mother's chili sauce. This is not a hot chili sauce. It is tomato based and perfect with sausages. I got the recipe from my mom many, many years ago. It just makes a small batch, but it's important to slowly boil quite a bit of the liquid away so you end up with a thicker sauce that has a nice dark reddish brown colour. I think it turned out perfectly and it used tomatoes from my garden. 

I re-use my old jar rings. They really show their age! 

I couldn't even find labels for my canning jars this year, so I just wrote on the lids with a Sharpie marker. 

After supper, there was still one more thing I wanted to make: orchard fruit chili sauce. I've made this a few times, but haven't made it in about three years. Again, my tomatoes were part of it, but it includes so many great flavours that just marry together into a very pretty sauce: tomatoes, onions, peaches, plums, pears, red bell pepper, green pepper, celery. 

I love all the colours it starts out with. 

There are some of the orchard fruit chili sauce jars cooling off on the kitchen window sill. (Note to self: don't take pictures in front of windows in the evening!Can you see my reflection?)

I love the look of jars lining a shelf. It makes you feel like you are ready for any disaster - snow storm, power outage, pandemic (oh hey... ) I still have more tomatoes coming. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't have a frost any time soon. Even if I can just can some tomatoes, that would be great, but I do want to try to make Maggie's tomato relish. (The Farmer's Wife Day by Day)

What kind of preserving did you do this year?