A Return to Canning

I have not canned anything since we moved to this house last April and I certainly didn't can anything in the last couple of crazy months prior to the move. The hottest time of the year is, ironically, one of the most productive times for produce that preserves best by canning. Summer fruit is ready to be turned into delicious jams and jellies, tomatoes are bursting their skins, early apple varieties are coming off the trees, peppers are turning red if ignored for even a minute, and the cucumbers are lining up on the counter.

After not canning for so long, it seemed really daunting to even consider canning anything again. But, after a trip to a U-pick orchard over the weekend, I really had no choice. Ten pounds of apples, many with blemishes and bad spots, had to be processed. I watched an entire movie in the time it took me to peel, core, and chop these apples, and my hand was cramping badly by the time I was done.

I simmered them in water to cover with some lemon juice added. When the apples were tender, I drained them, saving the apple "juice" for drinking. (This is a great tip for reducing the time it takes to cook down apple buter!) By then, on Monday night, I was not up to starting on the canning part of the project. Yesterday I was busy shopping and getting ready for my new health challenge for next month.

This morning, I woke early - 4 am - and decided I had enough time to puree the apples into sauce and can it. This was a good plan. I'd already determined that I was making half the recipe in the Ball book, which meant I could use my smaller pot (see this post). Water comes to a boil much faster, saving energy and time. The original recipe would make 4 quart jars or 8 pints. Here, however, is where my early morning math skills failed me. I prefer my applesauce in 8 oz jars. My smaller canning pot holds 4 jars...

The error did not dawn on me until the jars were halfway through the sterilization time. By then, I didn't want to have to go rustle up 4 more jars and lids, transfer everything to the bigger pot, and start the sterlizing all over. So, I filled the four small jars and while they were processing, got out the supplies to repeat the whole process. In other words, this quick canning project took twice as long as planned this morning!

Who cares? I've got 8 jars of tasty applesauce (no sugar) waiting to be put away tomorrow.

I've also got two more canning projects lined up. There are three pounds of salvaged peach pieces from damaged and not-entirely-ripe peaches sitting in the freezer waiting to be turned into yummy chutney.

And I harvested all the hot peppers from our garden with the intent to make pickled jalapeno escabeche. I want to try making this without oil. I think it will be fine from a canning safety standpoint since there is a boatload of vinegar in the recipe, but I'm undecided as yet on how to cook the peppers, carrots, and onions in a satisfying way. I can dry saute them in a hot skillet, saute them in a little water - more like steaming, or I might try just grilling them.

It's good to be canning again but just a little exhausting, too.

Planning a 10 Day Fast

No, not from food, silly! I like to eat way too much to do that.

Starting tomorrow, I'm taking a 10 day fast from most of the internet. I need a break from the social media to focus on my life off-line. I won't be posting on my blogs other than continuing to record my food and exercise on the other blog.

I will continue to do some research for specific information online but I will avoid surfing just to pass the time. I will respond to emails, and comments on the blogs, but probably only once per day instead of frequently.

I'm curious to see how freeing up the time I usually spend online will affect my productivity and general attitude. See ya'll next month!

Delicious Mexican Pizza

I recently tried a recipe for sweet pea "guacamole" which yielded a HUGE batch of dip that was tasty but not really the same as guacamole. We've had it with a few meals but still had quite a lot of it left. While I was out yesterday I almost stopped at the store to buy tortillas but then I had a flash of inspiration. Why not make a Mexican Pizza and serve it with dollops of the faux guac?

Yesterday was a big cooking day so I prepped ingredients I would need for the pizza. I grilled and sliced some green, yellow, and red peppers. I threw a few cobs of corn in the oven to roast alongside the roasting eggplant and baking brown rice. I was going to cook some beans but ran out of steam.

No worry, with a pressure cooker, cooking beans is a snap even if I forget to soak them overnight. Today, after checking for pebbles and rinsing the beans thoroughly, I put them in the pressure cooker with plenty of water to cover. Over high heat, I brought the cooker up to pressure and then let it cook for just a minute. The heat was turned off and the beans left alone for the pressure to come down naturally. This takes 30-60 minutes usually. This step is called speed soaking and replaces overnight soaking.

Once the pressure was released, I drained and rinsed the beans and then covered them with fresh water. Repeated bringing them up to pressure but this time I let them cook for 5 minutes. The pressure was allowed to come down naturally again. That's it. The beans were all done.

Tonight, it was a fairly simple matter to put the pizza together. I'd defrosted my pizza crust earlier in the day. For quick and easy healthy pizzas, I order whole wheat Kabuli pizza crusts by the case (which I split with a friend) from the Dallas Gourmet Bakery. (Call them to place an order.) Their crusts are ready to use, just like a Boboli crust but made with whole wheat flour, no added oil, and no cheese. And they're cheaper!

I like to parbake the crust for 5 minutes before adding the sauce and toppings. While that was baking, I blended together my beans, salsa, and spices, using the recipe from Soul Searching Vegan, except I substituted local, organic red chile powder for the paprika and my own cooked pinto beans for the black beans.

I spread this over the pizza crust. Then I sprinkled on chopped onion, the corn kernels cut from the roasted ears, the grilled peppers, and the dehydrated spicy zucchini I made last week. We skip the cheese.

The pizza baked in just 10 minutes and came out smelling yummy.

The sweet pea guacamole was spooned on each slice and added a nice touch, although the pizza is also good without it.

Dinner was delicious, filling, and quite healthy. Other than the crust and the salsa, everything on the pizza was grown locally and organically.

Bike Heaven is Flat

Today we took our bikes to a park with blessedly flat roads. I would love to take my bike there every day to do my riding but I can't justify driving my bike somewhere like that. It was not a special trip today as we were already heading to the farmers market not too far from the park.

The joy of being able to coast along and leisurely pedal on flat roads was indescribable! As I mentioned in my Summer Update early last week, every single road in my area has hills - small rolling ones or big quad-killing ones. While this is great for getting an extra-hard workout, I'd like to also log more miles than is possible when all my energy is burned up trying to climb the hills.

There's one bugger that is so hard for me right now that I have to stop about two-thirds of the way up to let my pounding heart slow down enough to finish the climb. I used to just walk my bike up the last bit of the hill after having to stop but then figured out that a rest would allow me to get back on and bike the rest of the way up. It's far less embarrassing to do that than to walk the bike!

I think my policy on riding my bike in flat-road heaven will be that it's allowable if I am going to be very near the park anyway for other errands. And before you suggest that maybe I should just bike to the park, let me note that the hill getting home from there makes the ones by me look like little bumps in the road.

When people think of Arizona, I'll bet most of them think of long flat expanses of cactus-filled desert. Surprisingly, in and around Tucson, it is not flat in the least. First of all, there is a mountain range on the north side of town so much of the development in Tucson is actually in foothills and the areas south of that - full of rolling hills. More municipalities and county land wrap around the mountain range to the west and north, again resulting in rolling hills even some distance from the actual mountains. With intense summer rains, arroyos (washes) have been dug out by water draining from the higher places to lower ground. The end result for roads: big dips for big arroyos and little to medium dips for smaller ones.

Hm, this makes me wonder if the terrain is an attractive feature for the professional bicycling teams that come to train here in the winter. Obviously the mild winter weather is a factor but now I'm wondering if having long roads with lots of terrain changes is also desirable to them. Plenty of bike lanes and shoulders many places through Tucson and the county help, too, I'm sure.

In any case, my legs, lungs, and heart were all thrilled to pieces to get to relax and enjoy the ride this morning instead of feeling like they might burst!

Local Purslane Salad

I've been sad lately that lettuce is not in season because the hot summer months are the perfect time for vegetable salads and low-cal salads are perfect for my weightloss efforts. At the organic garden where I volunteer, the only salad greens this time of year are arugula, amaranth, and purslane (aka verdolagas). The arugula is very limited so I usually don't get any. I cannot stand amaranth. I've tried and just don't like it. I usually am not crazy about purslane either.

This week, however, I took a bite of leftover purslane at the end of the day and loved it. It was like a switch had been flipped and the tangy moist flavor was exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, that bite was just about all that was left and it was too late to go harvest any more. Not to worry, I'd noticed some in my own yard (along with tons of icky amaranth).

Now you might say, "Ew, she's going to eat weeds from her yard where the dogs are?" Yep. However, I know where my dogs pee and they do not pee on these weeds. The yard is fenced so no coyotes or stray cats are peeing on them either. Just to be sure, though, I washed them really, really thoroughly. Then I stripped the leaves from the fleshy stems and set them aside while I prepared the rest of the salad ingredients.

The remaining vegetables all came from the organic garden (not mine) and included bell pepper, zucchini, cucumber, tomato, corn, and onion. They don't have any cilantro currently but I did have some from (gasp) the grocery store. I shredded the zucchini, cut the cucumber and onion in thin slices, and chopped the previously grilled green and red bell pepper. I boiled the corn just until tender and cut the kernels off the cob. I added them with the cilantro and purslane leaves, and then gently tossed the whole thing with chopped tomatoes and salt & pepper. The tomatoes were juicy enough that no dressing was needed plus the purslane added a tangy flavor.

It was a very pretty and tasty salad, and more filling than I anticipated.

Watermelon Season

Lately I've been coming home with watermelon halves - huge halves - from the organic garden where I volunteer. Watermelons are one of those fruits that really make you appreciate eating in season. It's so delicious to bite into a nice crisp juicy bite of cold watermelon during the heat of summer, and about the time you think you can't stand another bite of melon, they're gone for another year.

I've been liquidizing my watermelon lately. No, I don't mean that I'm selling pieces of it off at LOW, LOW PRICES! Rather, I mean that I'm blending it up into tasty drinks. So far, I've made a tasty smoothie and agua fresca.

But, I'm getting the fruity meat ahead of the rind here. The first thing I had to do was turn the great big halves into ready-to-blend watermelon cubes.

All the rind was cut off and tossed in the sink until I had a chance to take it out to the compost bin. I'm not making any of the watermelon rind pickles this year and so far have not felt compelled to make watermelon relish either. I don't have chickens so this just had to go directly to compost. Hm, I wonder if the four deer that wandered through the other day might have liked nibbling on it.

Then the meat of the melon needed to be seeded. Don't discard those seeds! Save them to roast and add flavor to beans.

The recipe for the smoothie I made came from a fun little book called "Great American Smoothies." The Blue Dragon recipe called for watermelon juice but I just tossed in the watermelon cubes figuring more fiber is better anyway. It was blended up with blueberries and banana along with some Kashi nuggets (think Grape-nuts), yielding a very tasty and filling drink.

Yesterday, I wanted a simpler drink so I made agua fresca ("fresh water"). You can find plenty of recipes online. Mine resulted from reading a number of recipes and choosing the amounts and ingredients I liked.

Watermelon Agua Fresca
3 cups chopped and seeded watermelon
1 cup ice water
a dozen fresh mint leaves
2 tbs - 1/4 cup sugar (to taste)
Juice from 1/2 lime

Place everything in the blender and process until liquefied. Serve over ice with a couple of mint leaves for garnish. Serves two.

Summer Update

There has not been much of interest happening around here so the blog has just been languishing in the heat along with Chile. I am hesitant to complain about our hot summer given that much of the country has experienced temperatures akin to our usual summer ones this year but have the humidity added in for extra misery. It seems hotter and more humid here for us this year as well, and our electric bill has risen as a result.

Actually several factors are at work regarding the electric usage. The biggest impact comes from the removal of a covered porch that spanned the entire front of our home. It was not our idea to remove it, rather required by overly officious zoning code enforcement. By 3 pm, the hot afternoon sun is shining strongly on the front of the house, heating it up like a solar oven. Even the dogs abandon their window seats to get out of the heat, although they both get whiny if I try to close the blinds all the way to block more of the sun.

Last year, I also had put cardboard lined with Reflectix in the windows we didn't need to see out of during the day. This helped quite a bit, even though it looked a bit low-rent. Unfortunately, I discovered that it was responsible for warping and discoloring one of the blinds (which I had not yet replaced) so we determined this was not the best choice for dealing with the heat.

I have also not been using the solar ovens as much as I'd like this summer. One reason is that although we've received little rain - not even two inches yet - it's been frequently overcast and windy. In fact, the wind this spring was horrible, blowing right past March all the way into June.  The frequent cloud cover is annoying when it doesn't produce the needed rain, especially since the humidity is also higher without the usual relief of an afternoon monsoon shower.

My hope over the winter months, after we've caught up on the huge list of projects put off until the cooler outside fall temperatures, is to sew up some insulated window shades of some sort. A local friend told me about her homemade Roman shades that are making a huge difference in keeping the heat out, but I simply haven't had time to travel to her home (an hour away) to study what she did and figure out how to replicate them with my remedial sewing skills.


Much of my current focus continues to remain on improving my health by eating right and exercising. It is so easy to slip into unhealthy eating habits and blow off the exercise when my schedule gets busy. I have to keep bringing my focus back to this as a priority in my life right now. The desire for good results from the follow-up cholesterol blood work at the end of this month is helping keep me on the straight and narrow, though. The desire to, once and for all, rid myself of all my excess weight is also a motivator, but not as strong because the journey will be long. I like shorter projects with a concrete deadline, so I can move on to the next project.

Well, weight loss and good health is not like that. It requires a constant commitment to buying, preparing, and eating the right foods as well as a regular exercise routine that isn't set aside as soon as other commitments appear. This past month included more non-health related commitments, as well as some stress, and the resulting lack of focus on my health is evident. Shifting my exercise routine from the gym to home has also been slower than anticipated, meaning less workouts.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I dusted off my bike and have been riding it about four to five times per week. I am still riding the kinds of distances that I hoped to be riding by now and it's not because I am lazy or lack the time. The problem is there are no flat stretches where I live. None. Every single road has either slight inclines (or declines), rolling hills, or big-ass hills that kick my butt. One knee is still not capable of climbing hills the way I could a few years ago so my rides are limited right now. My cardiovascular system is getting a workout on the hills, though, and I can feel the muscles in my legs and rear growing stronger, aided by strength-training workouts once or twice a week for them.

It's tempting to toss the bike in the back of the vehicle and drive it somewhere with flat roads or bike trails, but I just can't bring myself to burn the gas to do that. After all, part of the reason I want to get more fit is to be able to bike for more errands instead of driving. Driving to bike in this context then just seems, oh, I don't know, maybe stupid...


Surely I can report good news about the garden, though, right? Wrong. The aforementioned heat and lack of rain is taking its toll on our small garden. By mid-morning, the squash leaves are all hanging like limp flags, and the afternoon heat just cooks the female flowers.

The only squash doing well is a volunteer mutant weird one that looks like a cross between an acorn squash and a zucchini.

The rind is ridged and tough but the inside looks like zucchini. We're not crazy about the taste but the dogs seem to like it grated and sprinkled on their food.

The patty pan squash and a small round yellow summer squash are producing a little bit.

They are tasty grilled or simply boiled. My sweetie prefers the yellow ones while I prefer the green ones. Nice how these things work out, isn't it?

The tomato plants all look stressed and production has dropped dramatically with the high temperatures. Again, the heat just cooks the flowers, specifically the pollen from what I've heard. I need to harvest the few eggplants and peppers that have been on the plants for far too long and still never grew to the size they should have. In other words, we don't have a particularly vigorous garden going this year. We are looking at ways to improve our success next year and thinking it may involve lots of shade cloth and a lot more mulch.


I hope that wherever you are, you are experiencing a cooler and more pleasant summer than I am, and that your garden is overwhelming you with its bounty.