Ball jar geekery

Yesterday, Bill and I had a little cabin fever and decided to go on a hot date to Goodwill. I love Goodwill. A lot. Previous purchases include two lamps and an awesome dresser. This time, I just got a single Ball jar. It cost a dollar...plus 7 cents tax.


It's blue! The color comes from the Lake Michigan sand used in the glass as well as the amount of oxygen in the furnaces when it was made. Ball jars were "famously" blue until 1937, and I presume the color was an important part of their brand, as their home canning guide has been called the Blue Book since 1909, even though recent editions have not been blue.

Thanks to the help of the interwebs, we've dated our jar to 1913-1914. The Ball logo on this jar was used from 1910 to 1923:

The offset "Perfect" (due to the reworking of old molds for a new purpose) was used in 1913-1914 - it was centered in 1915.

There are markings on the bottom - 4 and H. These are mold numbers which identify the machine and mold that made the jar.

It's also round, as Ball jars were until 1942. The current rounded square shape was said to be more efficient by a WWII war board.


I am completely enamored with my old jar. Like my roman oil lamp, I could spend hours wondering about its functional history. There is something magical to me about the basic tools of the past. This old jar could have preserved the contents of a victory garden. The woman who initially filled it didn't have the right to vote. What did the jar hold during the Depression?

Bill likes to think it was squirrel brains.

I won't be using it for canning myself. It's a little grotey for food and the rim has been chipped, which means a seal would be unreliable.


I'm thinking that during its time with me, this jar will hold mostly wildflowers. Hopefully, it will be part of a little collection of neat old jars.

One of my current Ball jars is holding my second batch of homemade yogurt. It is delicious, as expected. I used this recipe with the powdered milk. Yum! We have just a tiny bit of yogurt left from a local diary and Bill refuses to eat it...I guess it will be the culture for our next batch!

What's in the tin?

We have a Charles Chips can which is filled with something yummy. Any guesses?

Want a hint?

How about a peak?

It's homemade hot chocolate mix. We've already made two batches this year. It's one of the easiest, most delightful treats to make. We use Alton Brown's recipe. Bill usually triples it and that lasts 2-3 months.

I think you should try it! The hardest part is finding cocoa, so I'll give you a hint - Penzey's. There. Now you have no excuse. This is amazing, yummy stuff. And have you read the ingredients in manufactured cocoa mix? Last I checked it included many chemicals including partially hydrogenated oils, which you don't ever need to eat.

Also - yes - put just a little bit of cayenne in the mix. You won't taste it, I promise. Cayenne just makes chocolate more chocolatey, as wine makes tomatoes more tomatoey and as balsamic vinegar makes strawberries more strawberry...y.

Up next - I'm going to make something other people tell me is easy and delightful: homemade yogurt.

Mexican Midgets

Horrible name.

Ridiculously yummy tomato.

Berries Blue

We got 10 pounds of Indiana blueberries last weekend.

Ten.

Pounds.

Bill made some dutch oven blueberry cobbler over a fire (pictured with homemade vanilla ice cream):

I made jam, natch. One is blueberry lime from the Ball Blue Book. It is my first pectin jam of the season, and the first jam to set. I still need a bit of practice on finding the gelling point. Up till now, I've made a lot of really yummy syrup that will slide right off of toast. The other is blueberry peach (recipe below). It also hit the gelling point. I don't know if that's because blueberries and/or peaches are naturally high in pectin and therefore better at setting, or if I've learned patience.

Can you tell which is lime and which is peach? No? Me either. Which is why we always label jams.

I also made blueberry pie ice cream. It's vanilla ice cream with graham crackers layered with blueberry sauce. Yum. I'd make this again, but I would modify the blueberry sauce a bit to cook more water out of the berries. After only 7-10 minutes of boiling, most of the berries are still intact and freeze into little berry ice cubes. I think a longer cook, or even using some jam, would mitigate this.

Also, I might have to make my own graham crackers. We have a "no transfats in the house" rule, and it turns out nearly all graham crackers are made with partially hydrogenated oils. Except the organic ones. Which taste like cardboard.

After all this, plus freezing a bunch of berries and tons of munching, we've still got some left in the fridge.

10 pounds is a lot of blueberries....

Blueberry Peach Jam
3 peaches, skinned and cut into small pieces (~2 cups)
3 cups blueberries
3.25 cups of sugar
squeeze of lemon juice

Combine into pot, boil to jelling point. Fill hot jars, process 15 minutes in boiling water bath.

Radishes!!

Tonight we harvested some radishes.

Nearly 5 pounds of radishes.

I had trouble carrying them all in from the garden.

We've got three types. French Breakfast are the oblong red and white ones. They are pretty mild, and apparently grow well even in the heat of summer. We've been eating them for the past few weeks and they are nearly done. The roundish red and white ones are Sparkler Radishes and they were the bulk of this evening's harvest. The typical cherry belles are just starting to be ready to pick.

We've been keeping a garden journal to note our plantings, harvests and plant milestones such as sprouting, flowering and fruit production.

Bill and I had different ideas of how to organize the journal, so we compromised. In the beginning is a chronological list of happenings (for Bill).

In the back is a page for each type of crop (for me). An alphabetical table of contents helps figure out which veggies are on which pages. We (...I) enter some info twice, but I think both organizational schemes have purpose. In future years we can easily see what activities should take place in any given week, and we have easily locatable, crop-specific milestones to refer to. We'll probably get 2-3 years per journal.

I feel like George Washington. It's pretty cool.

Popcorn dreams

This is me moments before a life-changing handful of popcorn.

We had gone to the Traders Point Farmers market early this fateful day primarily to acquire local, healthy pork for sausage-making. Turns out that wealthy hippies like their pork pre-sausaged, so we struck out. We did meet a popcorn man and spoke with him at length about real popcorn and the amazing number of people who only eat it out of a microwave. He gave us a tip on using coconut oil instead of canola for popping and we bought some of his popcorn.

What a find, we thought! Local, organic - easy to prepare - snack to feel good about. We decided to pop it that evening. On a whim, Bill pulled out our homegrown popcorn which had failed to pop at all earlier this winter. It was massive FAIL. It was tons of finger-blistering work removing the kernels from the ears and then we had to wait ages for it to dry. This was likely a project we wouldn't complete again.

But then! Then! Our homegrown popcorn popped like gangbusters! So we opted for a side-by-side taste test with the organic corn we bought earlier in the day. The popcorn man (who also teaches a beekeeping class) had given us a sample of his product at the market and it was deelish. If our popcorn was half as good, we would feel victorious.

We grabbed a handful of our very pretty yellow and red popcorn. Anticipation grew as we popped a few kernels in our mouths. All the work...would it be worth it??

O.M.G. Our little baby homegrown popcorn was ahmazing. Light, airy, crunchy. And, was that a hit of nuttyness? Could our lovely farm and soil have added a touch of terrior in our humble snack?

Yeah. It was good enough to describe it in terms usually reserved for wine. As Bill and I fought over the remaining kernels, the farmer's market popcorn - organically and lovingly grown - wimpered a little from its bowl. I don't think I'll ever be able to eat other popcorn again.

So much for the easy to prepare snack.

winter shortcakes

It is winter here.

See:

But we have been enjoying desserts of summer! It started with the peach shortcake from the cover of the Ball Blue Book of Home Canning. These are honey spiced peaches canned in July.

We've gobbled jars and jars of this stuff. Today was my first attempt at different fruits. In September I canned pears (peeled and cut in half) and whole plums. They were both hot packed in syrup. I heated them on the stove top, adding candied ginger to the pears and a little crushed all spice to the plums (which I pitted and cut into quarters).

Serve on homemade shortcake with hand-whipped cream. Yum!

Plums, pears and baking

We picked up half-bushels of pears and plums at the orchard this week. Unfortunately, neither is locally grown. The last time we got peaches we asked about their origin (as we didn't see any peach trees in the orchard) and learned they truck some fruit in. The fruit is delicious, however. A few pears ended up in apple-pear crisp and the plums have been made into butter, jam and chutney. We canned some of both fruits for winter baking.

This is the most amazing thing to happen to homemade jam since yogurt. Jammy shortbread stuff:

The recipe was shared with a canning group on Ravelry. It makes perfect use of one jar of jam (or can be doubled). Our first batch was with peach/cherry jam and it was ahmazing. Yeah, it takes two sticks of butter but just eat it. Trust me. Nom.

Shortbread Jam Squares

1 c. soft butter

1 c. sugar

1 egg

2 c. flour

3/4 cup pecans, chopped (optional)

1 half pint jar of jam or preserves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine butter and sugar in a large bowl. Beat on law scraping bowl often. Add egg and flour. Beat until crumbly. Stir in nuts if using. Separate 1 cup of the batter and set aside. Press the remaining dough into the bottom of a 9 inch square pan. Spread preserves to within 1/2 inch of the edges. Crumble the reserved dough over the preserves. Bake 40 - 50 minutes until light brown. Cool completely before cutting.

Local dinner

Thrusday night we had a lovely mostly local dinner of Farmers Market lamb steak and garden green beans (uncooked). 

 

The wine was not at all local (but it was good, which Indiana wine is not). 

 

Homemade bread with ginger-spiked peach butter that we made from local peaches for dessert.

 

Sugar approved as well - the sheep had lots of fatty edges, which were a nice treat for the dog. 

 

Today - we can more peaches! We bought a half-bushel (our second of the season) at the local orchard with plans to make honey-spiced peaches and more peach butter. 

First Harvest

 

This blurry picture represents a transition of our garden from "place to get snack" to a productive source of food for a time that is not now. 

The radishes will be eaten this week, for sure. I was thinking of getting a brownie from Starbucks to compliment my lunch tomorrow, but instead, I'll have some radishes.

The peas (sugar and snow) have been put in the freezer to be used in stir fry and other dishes. I am not really a fan of cooked veggies, personally, but I believe that being a responsible eater means making a few sacrafices. It is dandy to live in a time when I can get a "3,000 mile" Ceasar salad every day of the week, but if I want to live in what I consider a more environmentally responsible and self-sufficent manner, I'm going to have to eat some damn cooked peas.   

Beans, lettuce and oats are on track to be the next harvest. 

Homegrown snacks

Yum!