Canning Green Beans

I requested and received a pressure canner for my birthday back in January for this summer so that I could can green beans.  I've never been happy with how my frozen beans turn out.  They always seem to get freezer burnt, and it's almost the same amount of work to blanch and cool and bag them as it is to can them.  Since you can only do low-acidity vegetables like green beans in a pressure canner, I was anxious to give pressure canning a try.

First I snapped all of the green beans' ends off.  You can use a knife or just snap them with your fingers.  You can leave the beans whole length, or cut them into one-inch pieces.  I think you fit more in a jar if you break them into smaller pieces, so that's what I did.  Snapping beans is somewhat rough on your hands.  I told Eric that pretty soon my hands are going to resemble that of our Amish neighbor's wife!

Rinse the beans in a colander.  Clean your jars and put the lids in a pan to heat up (but not boil).  I got the water in the pressure canner heating but was careful to not let all of the water evaporate up out of it.  My pressure canner's directions said to put 3 quarts of water in.

I then started packing green beans into the warm jars.  I put about 1/2 tsp of salt into the top of each jar and then used the funnel to pour boiling water over them 1 inch from the top. I've also learned that as long as you aren't doing too big of a batch, you can use a tea kettle to pour the water.  Much easier to handle than a full pot of boiling water.

Wipe the rims and place the lids and bands on each jar just like you do with water bath canning. 

Make sure you follow the directions that came with your pressure canner.  You basically allow the canner to heat up on medium to high heat until a steady steam comes from the vent.  You let it vent for 10 minutes, then put the pressure regulator over the vent.  This will start the process of allowing the pressure to build up in the canner.  You will see the plug pop up when pressure has filled the canner, and then the guage will start to move higher.  Allow the pressure to build to the proper pounds of pressure that the recipe calls for.  For green beans, this was 11 pounds of pressure.  It is a little tricky to keep the pounds of pressure on the right level (not too high and not too low), but you can do this with adjusting the flame of the burner.  For green beans you process for 20 minutes, then remove the canner from the stove.  Allow the pressure to go down on its own, then you can remove the pressure regulator and open the lid to remove your jars. 

I've been doing about 5-7 pint jars at a time.  It really is not difficult, and now we will have beans throughout the long winter!

Baby Food

I always think that the second child must get the short end of the stick.  Well, any child after the first.  You have more time and energy to do more for the first.

 

Let it be said that I am doing something special for Clara that I did not do for Anna.

 

I am going to make her babyfood. 

 

I'm not really sure why I thought it was so big of a job or daunting of a task when Anna was a baby.  Of course, I haven't attempted said job yet, so maybe it is going to be a lot of work.  But right now it seems like it's going to be easy.

 

Here's the plan.  I bought a kitchenaid mixer attachment which strains foods.  I've already used it a lot to make spaghetti sauce from my tomatoes.  Yummmm!

 

I am going to run large batches of veggies and fruits through it to make purees, and then freeze the puree in ice cube trays.  Each cube will be about 1 ounce of food.

 

We had a large abundance of carrots from our garden.  We actually do not happen to eat cooked carrots, and we couldn't possibly eat all of them raw (I did make some carrot cake).  So my goal was to use most of the carrots for baby food. 

 

Since Clara is still a month or two away from eating baby food, I decided to get the carrots into the freezer for now.  I can later pull them out and heat, run through my nifty kitchenaid machine, and voila! baby food to freeze! 

 

 

I washed and peeled carrots for 2 hours.  Yeah, that wasn't so much fun.

 

 

I cut the carrots into slices and blanched for 5-6 minutes.  I eventually figured out that dumping the entire pot of carrots into a strainer, and then putting the strainer right into cold water allows you to avoid having to scoop carrots out of the boiling water and into the cold water and then scooping them out again.  Ideally, I should get a large strainer that can go in my pot so that I don't have to discard the boiling water each time I blanch. 

 

I got over 20 quarts of carrots.  I am hoping it makes a decent batch or two of baby food.  I feel good about saving some money and hopefully having excellent nutrition for my little peanut.  She had better like carrots!



A Happy Mess

Here are some recent ways that my life is a happy mess:

1.  Baking with a 2 year old is MESSY.  I still have grated carrots on my kitchen floor from yesteday's carrot cake cupcake baking session.
2.  Pink Eye Can Happen to You!  Yes, I caught pink eye.  I have no idea from where, but the kiddos didn't get it!  I am luckily on the mend...
3.  Diaper Bag Messes.  I picked up my girls from my mother in law's house the other day.  She told me that she cleaned out the bottom of my diaper bag.  I was extremely grateful, but also slightly embarressed because I know how dirty it was.  Think broken cheerios, leaked milk, squished fruit snacks, and crushed crayons messy.  Thanks Mom!
4.  No Shoes?  I have lost Anna's gym shoes, which I'm not sure would even fit her right now.  She has been wearing sandles all summer, which are great because she can take them off and on herself.  This morning the temp dropped to 45 degrees, so she rocked the socks and sandles look.  I really need to get to the mall and get the poor girl some warm kicks!
5.  Mixed DVD's.  Anna knows how to open the tv stand and remove dvds from their cases.  She even sometimes successfully accomplishes loading said dvds into the dvd player.  Usually she calls me over to help her, but not before she has gotten into many of the dvd cases, moved the discs from case to case, and scratched a few up.  Life is a box of chocolates- or a dvd case in my house- you never know what you're going to get!
6.  P.J.'s every day.  More often than not, Clara goes to the sitter's with her pajamas on.  On a baby, who cares, right?  It cuts down on laundry for sure, and it's a lot less work in the morning to not have to pick an outfit out.  I spent what seems like hours dressing Anna in the cutest things.  Poor Clara! 

Anna's First Sleepover

Anna had her first sleepover this past weekend.  Her cousin, Abby, came to spend the night.  Abby, who is 4, wanted to spend the night at our house before she started pre-school this week.  So on Friday night Abby arrived at dinner time.  The girls had a blast playing before bedtime and taking a bath together.  Anna mimics everything her older cousin does, which is pretty cute.  At bedtime, they settled down in Anna's twin-sized bed.  Abby had to get up once to use the potty and to get a drink of water, but once they fell asleep they slept well.  Until Abby woke up at 5:30am when the rooster started crowing.  She isn't used to the farm sounds like we are, and once up, neither one could settle back to sleep.

 

They watched cartoons at the crack of dawn and shared peanut-butter cheerios.  Once they shook off their drowsiness, they played hard all morning.  Lots of giggles.  It was a lot of fun and I feel like this was one of those "first" occasions to remember.



A Corn Binder

 

If you don't know my husband, he's an old fashioned kind of guy.  He likes old wooden clogs from Sweden, hangs original framed paintings of his ancestors on our walls, and sometimes pulls out his great-grandfather's pipe just to have it between his teeth (not to smoke). He also has two great big Belgian draft horses named Jerry and Digger that he occasionally uses for field work.

 

The dog, Sadie, likes to make sure everyone is behaving.  She sat in front of Jerry and Digger just in case they decided to take off.



 

These boys are gentle giants.  I feel fairly comfortable letting Anna be around them.  You can never be too careful, though.  One kick could knock you out.

 

After Eric's first pass at our two rows of corn in our garden, he had to pause to figure out why it wasn't tying the bundles of corn.  The corn runs through the binder and at intervals it is supposed to make a bundle and tie a string around it.  It was bundling, but wasn't releasing any string.  Anna watched her dad work, but was eventually impatient for a ride.

 

So Eric took Anna for a little ride and did the last row.  We now have several bundles of corn, which he leaned up into 3 "shocks" of corn stalks.

 

Afterward, we relaxed in the barn.  Anna and Daddy had their drinks of choice- pepsi and milk.  Anna says, "cheers, Daddy."