Canning Tomatoes

I've never canned tomatoes before. My mom has a fear of pressure canners and I've always been under the impression that tomatoes have to be canned in a pressure canner and therefore are difficult and dangerous. But last year during canning season, like many years during canning season, I went on a search for a tomato sauce that could be water bath canned. And I found one! But I ran out of time and never got tomatoes to give it a try.

This year, I was determined.

Let me give you a brief history to tell you where my determination came from. Many years ago Mr. Wiedz was going on and on about his mom's spaghetti sauce. How delicious it was, that it was homemade, how awesome it was! So...obviously when tomatoes came into season I asked her to help me can spaghetti sauce. Only to find out that my lovely mother in law got her spaghetti sauce from a huge can at the canned food warehouse then processed it into jars at home. My husband and his step-father just gave her all the credit for homemade spaghetti sauce.

Well, I really wanted to make spaghetti sauce. Really.

So I bought a box of tomatoes and pulled out my recipe from last year (sorry, can't find the link). Then had to turn back to the internet to find out how to turn my box of lovely tomatoes into tomato puree.

The website I found told me to slice them and boil them until reduced and put them through a food mill to get puree. So I did that. I filled the pan with just over half of my tomatoes and let them cook. And cook. And cook. Then I spent f.o.r.e.v.e.r. putting them through the mill until I managed to get 1 quart of puree.

My recipe calls for 10 quarts.

I almost gave up. But I was determined. I figured it would work to blanch, peel, cut, seed and blend the tomatoes. In one phone conversation with my friend I had 5 quarts of puree. Using far less tomatoes!

So I purchased another box, spent quite a few naptimes peeling and blending tomatoes until I had all the puree I needed. After a couple batches in my crockpot and canner I had 10 quarts of beautiful spaghetti sauce!

While I had tomatoes I pulled up Soulemama's recipe for carrot-tomato soup (I can't get a separate link for just the post about the soup. Go to her tutorial page from the tap at the top and her tomato soup is a button there) and gave that a whirl.

Roasted tomatoes. Yum!

Bubbling away onions, said roasted tomatoes, carrots, garlic, etc... Yum!

Lots of sips and ohhhing and ahhhing and two quarts of soup base in the freezer! Yum!

Peaches

That season is here again. Time to put up peaches.

This year my cousin and I went picking pears. I asked before we left for the orchard if she was going to do peaches too. She said she'd called ahead to the orchard and this years Elberta's were small and hard to find.

Oh.

After all the children were loaded I ran into my sewing/canned food pantry/catch-all-room to check my supply of peaches. Maybe I could get away with doing none this year.

One jar stood looking at me, telling me that I needed to get peaches.

So after picking (my cousin picked while I held her precious baby) 150 pounds of pears to share. She had the "help" of her 2 year old, my 3 year old, 7 year old and our 2 10 year old girls. And did I mention it was 98 degrees? Not the greatest mixture but we made it work. Anyway, after the picking was done and we were wondering around the farm stand I decided to go ahead and pick up a box of peaches. I'm still not sure how it's sitting with me not to have pictures of peach picking this year...

They were small. And not all that ripe.

I sat them out like a good canner.

After a couple of days they made the garage smell good and looked ready...here we go!

#1 asked if she could help this year...really help.

We brought them in.

Canned them up.

And shared our "bounty".

The chickens really LOVE canning season.

We got 7 jars full when the peaches were nearly gone, and whatever was left was not ripe yet. So we loaded up the canner and immediately lost one jar to breaking in the water - dang it!

So after a pleasant day spent with my #1 girl I got 6 jars to add to the shelf in the catch-all-room. We've got one jar for Christmas morning and the others will be special treats reserved for just the right times.

And today we got a peach crisp from the rest of the peaches.

Here's to a better season next year, we'll need it!

History is Alive :: African Feast

We've moved to Ancient Africa in our history work...

I'll admit that I start to look twice at the "plans" I made last summer. They sure do seem like a lot of work and mess now that I'm on this side. Sure, making 5 instruments each for an ancient African band sounded like a good idea in August. Now...not so much.

But I did go ahead with plans for our Ancient African feast. Knowing full well every mouthful would be a bit of a battle.

Our African feast included fried plantains and chicken with figs. I was right about the battle. If you don't know our family personally you don't know that the Wiedz household is the pickiest you'll ever meet!

We started with a pretty hard line about finishing the meal. I then covertly communicated to Mr. Wiedz across the table that my hope was for the meal to be fun and lighthearted. I didn't really want everyone to sulk through forcing themselves because they'd be in trouble. So we readjusted our expectations. Everyone tried a bite of a fig (pretty good actually) and one plantain (some of the really little guys got away with a bite as mama thought they were pretty gross) and chicken until we were full (the chicken was really pretty normal).

There are a few more recipes in our history activity book that I intend on making...broadening our horizons and all.

Rowing Week 4 : Ask Mr. Bear

I wasn't too sure about this book. Coming right after Play with Me, which is also filled with animals I was little "done" with animal books. Having WAY too ambitious of plans for any of the other books I have from the library to "row" I went ahead. To say that we just did a little here and there would be an understatement. We did a little...

But the boys didn't really seem to notice. I was even thinking about doing another week just to get in a few more ideas that I'd had but when I took the book out on Friday I sensed a little "ugh" from #3 so we'll move on.

This is a sweet book though about a boy wanting to get his mother a birthday present. He asks his farm animal friends for help, each offer him a suggestion then go with him in the search when what they offer isn't right.

Physical :

I tried to get each of the boys to get down and act out each of the action verbs used when Danny and the animals go on their search. My boys were not interested in skipping, running, or galloping across the room.

Lapbook/Scrapbook Activity :

I printed each of the animal's coloring sheet/handwriting practice sheets from first-school and made a packet of each page in order the animals are in the book. (Animals I couldn't find handwriting tracers for I made my own)

I also printed a lapbook activity from homeschool share that matched the animal with their gift but that one held no interested and was bagged.

Science/Home Studies :

When making my menu for the week I was trying to figure out snacks for all the littles (seriously, they are eating me out of house and home...I think they spend much of their day telling me how hungry they are and I spend much of my day in the kitchen making them food - sigh, it's getting old). I thought some homemade bread would be a nice treat. And what would be better than homemade butter to top that bread? Oh...wait...the cow offers milk and cream...we could make butter...read the book first...we have cream...thank you Mrs. Cow...now shake!

This was probably the highlight of my week. I bought baby food in jars (instead of the handy plastic containers) and handed out heavy cream poured into four jars (I used a smallish spaghetti sauce jar that was set to go to recycling). I turned on Elizabeth Mitchell on pandora.com and we danced and shook and danced and peeked in our jars and danced. We had a blast...and we made butter! Delicious on our homemade bread!

"Rowing" Ask Mr. Bear was really good. I'm glad we did it. Though I could see how it would be even better in the spring when you could go to a farm and possibly see a lamb being born or something. I also meant to make the boys some pillow forms to stuff, the goose suggests feathers for a pillow and while I wasn't going to do feathers, a pillow could have been good. Ah, well. Another week done anyway.

Links :

Homeschool Share - Ask Mr. Bear lapbook

First School

Making butter - this link was helpful via angrychicken and googling homemade butter in baby food jars resulted in a lot of links, I used tips from this one.

I'm thinking next week we'll take a break from true "rowing" but I think some of the ideas from homeschool creation's gingerbread baby's pack look good and I'm thinking that I may be able to concentrate with the big kids with some of the things we've been struggling with (can anyone say factor trees, prime numbers, multiplication and prepositions) by working them into a book or two. Concentrating on what we're struggling with but in a fun way we're not used to.

Now Go!...

Awhile back I made up this series of titles...

The intention was to report on our homeschool adventure as we started out this year. I've gotten a little sidetracked...

Get Ready! hasn't been written yet, the plan is a post about actually getting the curriculum ideas and plan worked out.

Get Set! is posted about "School Prep Weekend 2010".

Go! is also posted about our trial week.

Or Not! as we left for a discount vacation after Labor Day.

And here we are, at Now Go! I'd written myself a note that this post was to be about really doing school and how it was going. I can't really report on how's it's going because it's just the first day.

We called today the first day of school. I even had the kids dress in newish clothes (no "back-to-school" shopping this year) and stand on the front porch for first day pictures. #1 rolled her eyes at me :)

My trial week did exactly what I was looking for; gave us some much needed routine to our end of summer boredom and showed me where my schedule needed to be reworked. Our Bible time was planned to be 15 minutes...now is just 5 minutes of "reading" on our own, but now includes 5 minutes of reading a daily Proverb together and praying through the ACTS acronym together.

Today, as I knew if the Lord had led us differently I would have been putting the kids on the bus, we started our day in the Word together as a family. Did it go perfectly? Nope. All of the kids' eyes glassed over as I read Proverbs 13. #4 scaled the couches and his siblings as we talked about Thanksgiving and Supplication. But we did it and we will continue to do it until the "get it". That "from the fruit of his lips a man enjoys good things, but the unfaithful have a craving for violence" (Proverbs 13:2). And they know that the Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication they give the Lord is the foundation to talking to Him as a friend.

The school day ended just like any first day of school too...

Pie and Science

A couple of weeks ago on our walk through the "farm" the boys and I noticed the blackberry patch. I was unsure our new place would have the same blackberry opportunities our old house had. At the old house, blackberries were plentiful and right out our door all along the driveway. The kids spent many a summer afternoon at the old house in the driveway picking berries. These were memories I was afraid we were going to have to do without this year so imagine my excitement when we found them all!

The other issue: in my book it isn't summer until there is a blackberry pie.

My plan during our school day is for #3 and #4 to have some "activity" time with mom. Yesterday we started making pie crust. But baby woke up or whatever #2 was doing wasn't working anymore, something happened to end our crust making. We picked it up today and the stars must have aligned because not only did we finish the crust but the entire pie!

#4 started asking as soon as Mr. Wiedz pulled into the driveway if it was time for pie. Everyone was excited!

We also had a fun science lesson today at the florist work barn. Dyeing sunflowers! The lovely florist-neighbors gave me a bouquet of beautiful sunflowers on Sunday. When I was cutting them and putting them in water I noticed that half of them were dyed red. Not only beautiful but a great science lesson to have ready made with a field trip to the barn. We saw racks full of tubs of dye filled with sunflowers. The kids thought it was great...although the boys thought the apples and the plums in the trees were just as good!

#1's report on our little science field trip.

#5 got a taste of ice cream too...he loved it!

"What will you do with them?!"

A dear friend commented, "What will you do with them?!" upon hearing about my successful blueberry picking adventure.

My answer is: freeze them!

But each time those words come out of my mouth I am met with groans and gasps. My family LOVES fresh blueberries and each person has probably eaten their weight in the small blue orbs. Mr. Wiedz grabs a handful anytime he's near the kitchen.

I pulled chairs to the sink and let #3 and #4 help me clean and bag some of the berries. They thought it was great fun.

We did have blueberry pancakes for dinner last night, though not a great success. And I hear Mindy has some great blueberry recipes.

As for now, I have 4 gallon ziploc-bags full of frozen berries in the freezer! Bring on January!

Cookies

This post is quite late.

I figured that Valentine's Day (I told you this was late) just needed sugar cookies.

The kids and I got out the trusty Betty Crocker Cooky Book and mixed up a batch.

The kids were excited to be cooking and the cookies were as delicious as I was hoping. I decorated some and delivered them to the neighbors and took all the burned ones to my parents.

Letting go!

#1 helped me make some baked goods last week. Since she's such "a big kid now" and "can do it herself" I let her measure and stir without assistance. Though it took everything I had not to do it myself or correct her.

What's a little flour? It was a nice time together and we had enough flour for the bread, the cake and the counter (and the floor)!

Cooking was also a good way to get some reading in, practice measuring and work on fractions.

3 Little Loaves

With no Mr. Wiedz at home this week and no K today I was worried the kids and I would go crazy. I started out the morning with a baking project.

Each of #1, #2, and #3 got their own bowl and own ingredients (I measured everything out for them, of course) and they mixed and floured and kneaded. #1 even helped #3 get his dough kneaded so it wasn't all sticky...a great helping sissy, she is!

They drizzled a little oil in their bowls, sat the dough in and turned it over so it was coated, covered the bowl with a towel and sat them on the stove to raise.

Then they played...well...and together! I can't even keep up with everything they did. There was dress up and blocks and a nest or two. I was able to get laundry going, relax a little and take care of some items on my LONG and never ending to-do list.

Back to the bread.

The kids punched down their dough and shaped the dough for their pans. They were really into the punching. Each of them commented on how perfect their bread would be because they were doing the best job ever making it!

Of course the bread had to raise again. And the kids played again. And we had lunch. Then the bread could go into the oven.

During quiet time the bread was finished and smelled great! #1 came out of her room and asked what was smelling so good!

Good job, kids!

Doing some baking...

I really do like to cook and bake. At family functions with Mr. Wiedz' family everyone always tells me to go relax..."you've been in the kitchen all day". But I'm quick to tell them how much I'm enjoying myself and with all the kids occupied by attentive aunts and uncles I'm happy as a clam.

A few months ago I found a link to a wonderful blog written by Rachael Anne. Each day she posts a "small thing" to help create sanctuary in our homes. Mostly I've just been reading along...her insights into her "small things" are just a great as the "small things" themselves. I especially love the scripture verses she picks each month and did indeed post this month's on my fridge.

This month I've tried some of the "small things". And this week was to cook something from scratch. I don't use too many mixes and the like...they tend to be more expensive then just having raw ingredients so loved the encouragement to get in the kitchen. Plus I took it a little further and let the boys bake with me.

We looked online for a recipe for a from scratch cake. We didn't have any baking powder so we had to keep looking until we found one that used baking soda instead. We did find one, called "day before pay cake". It also called for chopped apples which was a nice touch. Makes me think it is a little healthy snack and we have a lot of great apples right now.
So, the boys and I set off to make it while #4 was down for a nap. They took turns pouring in ingredients and stirring. And each of them got to lick some of the spoons or bowls (#4 woke up just before we were done so got to join in on the licking).
We had fun. And the cake turned out pretty good...really good that afternoon for after-school snack with ice cream. And also good the next morning with coffee.

canning: day 4

It was one of those days I don't feel like I got much accomplished. For the canning numbers 7 quarts of peaches. The peaches still are not ripe. In my attempt to have space in my dining room I laid out all the peaches on the hot tub lid out on the back porch. Well, that's a lesson learned for me. Being outside is slowing down their ripening and being in the direct sun is making their skin turn to leather. Not good. Mr. Wiedz brought in the remaining peaches and we tried laying them out on a card table until the other reason I put them on the hot tub became apparent, #4 could reach them and we could foresee the big mess. I moved them again to a high counter. They are now out of every one's reach and hopefully they will ripen and I'll be finished with these cursed things tomorrow. I also got 2 quarts and 5 pints of applesauce done. Tomorrow I plan on doing another 7 pints and then being done with that.

When I was telling a friend about not feeling like I'd gotten much done I also told her about the blackberry pie I made for dessert. She said that was something...Mr. Wiedz agreed!
I got the recipe here. It was great and easy. I did follow the tip in the comments by adding more berries and butter dotted on top of the berries before the top crust. Mr. Wiedz and #3 and #4 picked the berries for me this morning. Mr. Wiedz was glad he did and the boys did a good job of only eating the berries they picked instead of all the berries as they were being picked...we don't usually come back from the blackberries with so many in the bowl.What a sweet end to a long but sweet week.

Cowboy Cookies

I have a little tradition. I make the same cookies every year for the first day of school after school snack. They are "cowboy cookies", my grandmother's reciepe.

Years ago, I think after I'd had a kid or two, I asked my Grandmother N for her receipe for cowboy cookies. I remember these cookies at her house. We didn't visit grandparents N but every couple of years so I'm not sure why these cookies stand out in my memories but they do. I thought they must be something really fun and special because 1) I hadn't heard of them anywhere else and 2) they were something in my mind as being special.

So Grandmother N wrote out the receipe, I just love her handwritten reciepe card. I received it in the mail along with what I'm sure was a very nice note. I looked over the receipe, anticipating how special these cookies were going to be.

They are oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

I was a little disappointed at the time. My balloon of "special cookies grandma used to make" was popped. Now, I just remember wanting a special cookie receipe from my grandmother and chuckle as I make what I hope my kids will remember as amazing "cowboy cookies".