The Preserver's Year

aligator_3

thank you for your reply Thriftlady. in the intrests of saftey have commited said produce to the bin.
aligator

catherinevegh

many thanks for your help.... I have just made the first batch of crab apple jelly... used approx a 1/4 of what we have picked so far and there is prob same again still on tree! Made 6 med size jars. I used a pillow that I scorched first with boiling water. worked well.
feeling very virtuos with my jars lined up!

Patchwork_Quilt

aligator wrote: »

thank you for your reply Thriftlady. in the intrests of saftey have commited said produce to the bin.
aligator

One of my favourite books (as you all know, I'm afraid) the Complete Guide to Home Canning and Preserving by the US Dept Agriculture has a whole section on tomatoes - whole, halved, juiced, crushed and with other things.

Hope this helps

Patchwork_Quilt

Speaking of tomatoes, prepare yourselves for something really weird. I really have tried preserving all sorts of things this year and the above book has a recipe for

Green Tomato and Apple Pie Filling

So I made some. That is, I took the idea and made some. I couldn't get on with all those quarts of this that and the other so I used

1 lb 4 oz green tomatoes, halved
1 very large cooking apple
4 oz sugar
4 oz sultanas
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp mixed spice

and simmered them with some water until they were thick, then bottled into sterilised jars etc. They should then have gone into the pressure cooker to sterilise some more but I ran out of time.

Guess what? It was really tasty. A bit like appley mincemeat. Perhaps I should have put in less sugar and more sultanas but it was an interesting first try

No more green tomato chutney. You heard it here first

Confuzzled

Patchwork_Quilt wrote: »

Speaking of tomatoes, prepare yourselves for something really weird. I really have tried preserving all sorts of things this year and the above book has a recipe for

Green Tomato and Apple Pie Filling

interesting you tried this as tomorrow i'm going to be doing my last batch of hedgerow cordial (we have less than a week left living in this town so i took an opportunity to do the last raid of the local park i forage in!)

there were hardly any rosehips left but i still have quite a few homegrown cherry tomatoes in the windowsill in various stages of ripeness. the thought occured to me that since rosehips taste rather similar to tomatoes anyway adding my tom's would be a nice way to use them up as unfortunately the texture of them isn't very nice (taste good though) so i too shall be using tomatoes in a rather unusual way

i had also considered adding in some sultana's to sweeten it up a little with less sugar since this time around it will be much heavier on the rowan berries than last time (though they were soooo juicy i wanted to eat them raw, good thing i know better!) so given what you've said about the taste i think i'll toss a good handful in to the mix

thanks for the recipe though, i shall try that out next year, i make so much chutney each year as is i can't really stomach the idea of chutney with them, though maybe i might do fried green tomatoes again, they're pretty tasty!

Chris25

Patchwork_Quilt wrote: »

Speaking of tomatoes, prepare yourselves for something really weird. I really have tried preserving all sorts of things this year and the above book has a recipe for

Green Tomato and Apple Pie Filling

Guess what? It was really tasty. A bit like appley mincemeat. Perhaps I should have put in less sugar and more sultanas but it was an interesting first try

No more green tomato chutney. You heard it here first

Our tomatoes have been rubish this year & we have loads of green ones - I might give that a try!
Ah, but then I re-read your post and saw the word 'interesting' - that covers a multitude of sins Perhaps i'll halve the recipe to try

thriftlady_2

I made five jars of quince jelly this week from the quinces on my tree. I thought I'd get a lot more tbh. Might make another batch later.

Will be making quince vodka too next week;)


BTW Chris25, I should check out the poem in your sig if I were you. I studied John Donne at college and it definitely aint by him. I don't think pumpkins were growing in cornfields in 17th century England;)

Chris25

thriftlady wrote: »

BTW Chris25, I should check out the poem in your sig if I were you. I studied John Donne at college and it definitely aint by him. I don't think pumpkins were growing in cornfields in 17th century England;)

I've shamelessly quoted it from a Waitrose mag that accredites him with writing it.:rotfl:
It's interesting, I've looked online and come up with a couple of sites that quote Donne as the author but more that show that it's from the pen of Carmen Lagos Signes, a Chilean writer. But maybe you knew that anyway.
Whoever was responsible, it's a lovely piece of verse, especially as Autumn is my favourite time of year

siggy duly altered

ceridwen

I started making some "Apple sauce" - as in stewed apple to "bottle" into Le Parfait jars (ie the clip-top ones) and got stuck at the end (not knowing the answer to an obvious question:o:o).

So - I chopped up my apples and simmered them with the water, etc (yep...including a little :eek: sugar).

The recipe then said "top with an airtight lid and heat in a water bath at 77C for 30 minutes. Tighten lid and store." - Well - I was okay with that part of the recipe when I made a previous batch of this and put it in Kilner jars - I just put both bits of the lid onto the jars before putting the filled jars into my preserving pan full of water and then, after I had finished the 30 minutes cooking, screwed-up the outer part of the lid. Job done.

But - with doing this batch in Le Parfait jars - I wasnt at all sure what to do about the rubber seal ring one fits into the lid of this type of jar. Am I correct in thinking that I'd fill the jars and put these rubber seals onto the jar lid as well and clip the lids to Stage 1 standard (as I think of it) and do that 30 minutes cooking. Then - when I take the jars out of the pan I'd "throw the latch" in effect on the clip IYSWIM.?

I presume these detachable rubber seal rings will stand up to being boiled in a water bath like that?

I presume also that I wouldnt do the final stage of clipping the lids down until the "cooking" part had finished?

.....and there was me thinking I'd do things this way for my second batch - because my Le Parfait style jars are a better size for the quantity I'm doing - having discovered that the previous batch (done in my Kilner jars) have a gap at the top of the produce inside of 3"-4" and feeling a bit "nervous" of whether its okay (ie safe) to have that large an airfilled gap IYSWIM.:rolleyes:

Pitlanepiglet

Y'see Ceridwen that's where I gave up last year and just bought jam jars, heated them up, filled them with the stewed apple and stuffed the lids on whilst it was all still hot!

A year later they are still fine!

I couldn't get to grips with the whole water bath thingie....