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Back to the squirrel analogy, more preps for winter are happening here in the North.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, prices are going up dramatically. Everything is through the roof. One way I save money is buying in bulk and preserving the food immediately. As the forecast was for a dismal rainy weekend, I shopped like crazy the past couple of days and have spent time in the kitchen today preserving all the yumminess.
I often hit the “last day of sale” baskets at the local grocery store and scoop the organic produce, and occasionally the non-organic if I’m sure I can remove the pesticides and nastiness properly.
I’m not a huge fan of bell peppers but there are certain recipes that just aren’t good without them, like chili, for example. Today I found 6 large orange peppers for $2. They were near “death” so I immediately washed them in a baking soda and vinegar soak, then dried them off and chopped them for a trip through the dehydrator. I covet one of the really nice Excalibur units, but for now, I have a Salton, from Wal-Mart, that works perfectly well.
I’ve learned that if you sprinkle salt (with a light hand) on the veggies that they seem to dry faster. No one in our house has high blood pressure so the addition of salt is not a health issue for us. I don’t like to run the dehydrator when it isn’t totally full so I loaded up the 5th rack with sliced red onion (also bought last day of sale).
Then I pulled out my prize possession, my pressure canner. I scored some blade steaks, some organic baby carrots, organic green beans and the afore-mentioned red onions from the bargain bins. I only added some Yukon gold potatoes, grown locally, and some minced garlic, aside from my big sale score. I made 6 quarts of beef stew with this. I paid $1.25 per quart for healthy, mostly organic meals that only need to be heated up when it’s time to eat. Another bonus to canning meals like this is that this food will not be at risk if the power goes out.
I used the raw pack method to load up the jars. The meat and vegetables will cook in the pressure canner and do not need to be cooked ahead of time. By layering the ingredients, you are sure to get even amounts of all the ingredients across the batch, as opposed to one that is mostly broth and another that is mostly meat, for example.
(Pardon the loaded dish drainer behind the jars!)
Do not add flour or other thickener to your stew until you are ready to eat it, as the thickeners do not store well when canned.
In a stockpot, combine the ingredients for your liquid and bring to a boil.
Meanwhile, layer meat and vegetables into your jars in the order listed above.
Pour the hot liquid over the layered meat and vegetables.
Lid your jars and process them in your pressure-canner for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.
Optional: when you are ready to serve your stew, add 1 tbsp. of flour to half a cup of water and whisk into a paste. Stir this into your stew as you heat it up – this will make a thick, hearty gravy.
My other good score of the weekend was 4 heads of organic broccoli – HUGE ones. I cut up three of them, blanched them and spread them out on a cookie sheet to be frozen. I rarely freeze food but broccoli doesn’t can or dehydrate well in my opinion. In the event of a power outage, the broccoli from the freezer could be combined with some rice and made into a quick casserole.
My kitchen smells fabulous tonight, and the house is cozy warm from the heat of the stove and the fire burning in the living room. The dehydrator will be humming all night and the jars are cooling right beside it. It’s a scene of cozy abundance inside the rain-covered window and it reminds me that we are blessed.
