Fall work

Getting the turkey gravy ready today, I use the NYT recipe from last year to get a head start on it: use 6 pounds of dark turkey meat (legs and thighs), brown in oven to create a nice fond (deglazed with sherry), then boil for 6 hours with carrots onions and celery. This makes a great flavorful broth to create gravy. I used to do the Cook's illustrated method, probably only a 3 or 4 hour task, but you need the bird thawed out for that and I don't want to work that hard on Thanksgiving.

Aliceon and I also worked on the woodshed. Our cut and split wood from two years ago is about 2 inches too long so we end up cutting it all in half. Al worked on that and I kept her supplied with long wood while moving this years pile into the shed. We sawed and moved about a firepalce cord into the house and about 1-1/2 full cords into the wood shed. I might mention that we added another chain saw to the arsenal, a Stihl 180 with easy start to our older 025. The easy start was a must for Aliceon and I have to say it's great. Just a slow steady pull and it kind of builds up and then spins. It's a little wierd at first as you are used to that jerk/pull of a regular saw.

Then I added 2 inches of foam to the roof of my root cellar. The cellar was already part of the house, about a 8 by 6 space next to the basement, but I've have it sealed off until this year. A bit too exposed to the ourdoors I think with freezing just about assured, so the foam shold help with that. I suppose I should have added a thermal barrier, but it is it's own little blockhouse.

Vegatable canning

I really didn't blog the canning and food preservation through the fall, but I can report on a number of the successes.

The frozen vegetables are great, we did cabbage, carrots, peppers, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, some home grown, some not.

The Ball Zesty Salsa made with Cherry Bomb peppers is wonderful, could have used a double batch as we are down 3 pints already (of 10).

The dill relish is good, but we aren't using it so fast. Probably true of all the pickled cucs.

The chow chow and Singaphore chili sauce are fine, the chili sure could have been hotter. I suppose it's the whole northern pepper growing thing. I had thought perhaps the cherry bombs were not hot enough, but they are rated quite hot on Johnny's heat scale. Searching for

Haven't tried the Cherry bombs in oil, tomatoes.

We did start canning the saurkraut today, it's been fermenting since the begining of September in the basement, I thought it was done , but when I removed the lid I could still see bubbles.

Cooking Apples

It's been a couple of days of work, but we've turned about 20 pounds of Haralson apples we got from Nancy Mount into Apple Jelly and Apple Butter. A few oops along the way, we added too much water to the jelly and then had to cook it a bit longer to reduce the water, and I slightly charred the apple butter (also I don't think I reduced it enough). Next time we'll do better. a few firsts, first time with liquid pectin, first time using a jelly bag, first time making both products.

Right now making good 'ol chicken and dumplin's using a 1997 recipe from Cooks Illustrated. We are having the kids come over for dinner so we are getting some of it ahead.