Our Kitchen

We didn't get any canning done this weekend other than my carrots.  Yesterday was the annual fish & game club's chicken BBQ...Yeah!  Good food and No Cooking!! After that we prepped veggies...I cleaned beans.. Italian flats, purple, different green and scarlet runners. This scarlet runner (l)started out as a beautiful red flower and as you can see the bean pod grew!  It has a velvety texture and the pod holds 8-10 beans.  And it's not an exceptionally long example but the average size.  We'll probably husk them, run them thru the dehydrator and dry can them to use in soups. In some areas, scarlet runners are considered ornamental but they are edible.  Jeff cleaned hot peppers for dehydrating.  He set up the smaller round dehydrator in the garage and has it full of Italian Longs.  He learned the hard way not to dehydrate hot peppers in the house. (I believe onions should not be done inside either).  We have a large soup kettle full of peppers waiting to be processed.  Some will be dehydrated and others  pressure canned with onions.  We're trying to have a variety of veggies...and meats...in our pantry. And other things... Jeff found a link on line for dry canning and he put up 10 lbs of whole wheat flour in 1/2 gal mason jars.  It's done in the oven and is used to kill 'vermits' that nest in dry flour like weevils and other bugs.  The lids seal...and click...as they cool down just like in pressure canning.  With the price of flours forecast to soar due to the bad growing season this year he thought it might be worth a try.  It's easier than pressure canning but the jars are harder to find. Agway was the only place locally that carried them.  I think we'll probably do some more.

The shop around at the Brookwood School in  Cooperstown Saturday was a disappointment.  Not too many people attended and the shop's display had only a few small sales.  Oh, well, those hats I did for it will fill up my shelf space in the shop nicely...and I won't have to take much stock with me Wednesday when I work.  Still, it would have been nice if....

Found a swap package sitting on my car's front seat today for a Coffee and Chocolate Swap  from Anne in Canada.  Jeff thinks the dark roast coffee beans are nice and my mom claimed the Godiva chocolate.  I think I may use the project bag as a purse...it's to nice not to carry around every day!