Citrus canning and squash casserole

This weekend I canned two marmalades (grapefruit and orange) and one jam (cranberry orange). It's not quite as much fun as buying a bushel of fruit from the orchard or farmers market, but it provides my obsession with a nice little fix.

These were my first marmalades and they are bit more complex than jam. It is a two day process as the peels need a 12 to 18 hour soak. The first step involves boiling the peels for a few minutes. I made use of our wood stove for this process - and I used the wood stove again at the end for sterilizing the jars and the finishing hot water bath for the full jars. I'm not comfortable enough yet with either jam making or cooking with wood to trust this method for boiling the jam (it's nice to have the instant temperature adjustments of the stovetop), but maybe some day.

The cranberry-orange jam was so pretty. I used this recipe, and boiled it in a hot water bath for 15 minutes. The recipe doesn't have instructions for canning, but I did a little research and decided that it was similar enough to cranberry conserve that 15 minutes was sufficient. I like that the recipe called for honey, which is a local ingredient, instead of sugar, which is not.

The products! Orange marmalade, grapefruit marmalade and cranberry-orange jam:

Bill cooked up one of our many garden butternut squashes yesterday. I love winter squash. They are delicious and it's great that they just sit in the kitchen all winter waiting for us to eat them.

This is how the casserole looks the day after. Still delicious. But my food photography could use a bit a work...

Bill's sausagey butternut squash casserole:

1 medium butternut squash

1 lb spicy italian sausage

1 lb elbow macaroni

3 eggs

1/2 cup cream

2 cups milk

1 tablespoon thyme

bread crumbs

asiago cheese

Cut the squash in half, remove seeds and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast on a baking pan at 350 until tender.

Brown sausage. Cook macaroni to al dente.

Scoop out squash guts and mix with sausage.

In a separate bowl, mix eggs, cream and milk. Add thyme. Then add this whole mixture to sausage and squash.

Mix in macaroni, plop whole shebang in casserole dish. Top with bread crumbs and cheese. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes.

Yum.

Citrus in jars...

I've made my first marmalades! (Photos soon)

I'm participating in a 12 month can-a-long of sorts. There are 120 or so bloggers with OCD (obsessive canning disorder) who will be canning a different item each month in 2010. The January focus is citrus.

So far today, I've made two standard marmalades from the Ball Blue Book: grapefruit and orange. Marmalade is surprisingly sticky. After I clean the sticky droppings from all over the kitchen, I'll be making some Cranberry-orange jam.

I bought some key limes at the grocery store as well (you didn't think I'd get locally sourced citrus in Indiana, did you?), but can't find any recipes for canning them, so we'll be making some pie.

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!

Can Jam

Building off the success of the recent Canvolution, a group of bloggers is starting a Can Jam for 2010. Each month will focus on a fruit or veggie for canning and bloggers will share their experiences and recipes.

Clearly, I have to do this. Starts January 1.

Thanksgiving tacos

Our turkey was still frozen on Thursday, so we opted for Thanksgiving lamb tacos.

And, of course, margaritas.

The chickens, however, had a traditional pumpkin. The pumpkin is one of many from our garden which grew well due to chicken poop fertilizer.

Bill recently placed an order for 15 Narragansett turkeys to be delivered in April. The plan is to keep a few to breed, but to have a bunch of birds for Thanksgiving/Christmas, though not enough to make millions.

Apples in jars!

Today was apple day! We picked a few bags a couple of weeks ago and today turned them into curried apple chutney:

and apple maple jam (with our own maple syrup):

Bill claims that we have earned the right to survive the winter based on the amount of food we have in jars. I believe you can never have too many jams!!! I've got some pumpkin jams to make and perhaps a few more apple concoctions, but we're mostly done for the year.

This makes me quite giddy!

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.