Hi Gang! I have canned up about 20 pints of raspberries, made 3 batches of raspberry freezer jam, canned (mostly) and frozen 12 pounds of blueberies and have got a pot of rhubarb and raspberries on the stove waiting for the hot jars to come out of the dishwasher so I can put them up as well.

I missed the apricots this year, again, but hope to can up many many quart jars of peaches, pears and applesauce.

Of course I'll also make a truckload of chutney, which seems to get eaten up very very fast......A couple teaspoons of chutney makes a plain bowl of rice a gourmet treat.......

I canned up lots of meat last year, ham, chicken and turkey, will do a little more this year, but not as much as I did last year! :)

So, tell me, what are you all canning this summer. Care to share any ideas ? What is the most popular thing you are canning? Do you give canned jams to friends for Christmas?

Is any one canning pickles? What kind? Do you use a crock? What are those crocks used for?

-- (Sis@home.zzz), July 30, 2000

Answers

sis, we're being terribly lazy this year; we ain't canning nothin'.

I had never canned anything, but learned to put up pickles for y2k. My best was a couple of jars of an English recipe. Garden veggies, mostly celery and sweet peppers, with fresh ginger and mint. It sounded so strange I just had to try it. They weren't crisp, like I normally prefer, but had a fantastic taste.

My wife puts up hard pear chutney (or relish, as we call it down here) nearly every year, but our vacation kinda interrupted it this year. I hope we have enough for winter peas and rice.

We also make our own salsa and pepper jelly, but usually make the salsa fresh when we need it, and have plenty of jelly already. BTW, jalapeno jelly is great on any meat, especially game, such as venison. (I'll trade you some for your raspberry jam)

:*)

OH yeah, last year the missus put up some cantelope jam, made with cherries and citrus and pineapple. I think I found it on the old forum. It sounds kinda wierd, but it'll make you slap your granny!

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), July 30, 2000.

Hey, we ain't cannin nothin.

BTDT last year. We both need a break.

BUT, I would really like to get the recipe for that cantalope jam that Lon mentioned. (Jalapeno jelly is just a little tooo adventurous for me.)

gene

-- gene (ekbaker@essex1.com), July 31, 2000.

Yeah, Lon, that recipe sounds fabulous, and I'd love to slap my granny.....or whatever.

Do you remember which forum or was it the mighty TB2000? Prep Forum?

-- (sis@home.zzz), August 01, 2000.

sis and gene,

The cantelope jam recipe was on the old tb2k forum, or maybe on the prep forum. If nobody links it, I'll find it and re-post. It really is great-had some this morning.

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), August 01, 2000.

Freddie just found it for you:

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CANTALOPE JAM

2 large cantalopes, peeled and cut into pieces

2 lemons, juiced

2 oranges, juiced and rinds

1 can, #2 1/2 size, pineapple tidbits, drained

sugar, the same amount as fruit

1small bottle maraschino cherries.

Combine all ingredients except the cherries. Cook over low heat until thick, about 1 1/2 hours.

Quarter cherries and add for the last 15 minutes of cooking time.

To test for doneness, take a tablespoon full from the pan and place in the freezer for a few minutes. If it is thick, it is done.

Immediately ladle into hot, sterile jars and seal.

I had a batch that failed to jell, and discovered a wonderful pancake topping. This makes a chunky jam/topping, depending on how large you cut the pieces of cantalope.

(I might add, that it seems to have a tendency not to jell solidly. Maybe cook it a little long, or add the stuff to make it jell harder. But if it is runny, use it anyway - its still great. BTW, it doesnt taste like cantalope at all - at least to me.)

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Also, this one was requested by Brooke when we visited in June. (she puts out a fairly laripin feed, too)

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KALUHA CAKE

1 regular Devils Food chocolate cake mix

1 pkg. (6 oz) instant chocolate pudding

4 eggs

2 cups sour cream

3/4 cup oil

1/3 cup Kahlua

6 oz. pkg. chocolate chips

powdered sugar

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Generously grease a Bundt pan.

Mix the first 6 ingredients well

fold in chocolate chips

bake 1 hour at 350 degrees

Cool about 10 minutes, then inert onto plate and cool

Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

NOTE: bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour and 25 minutes, when using an enamel coated Bundt pan. Also, us the large size bundt pan, or it will overflow in the oven. Use the toothpick test to see when cake is done because this is a very moist cake.

(and if any of youse want to try this cake, just come on down to the bayou, cause shes fixin one for my birthday

-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), August 01, 2000.

Too many ingredients.....

Cannning?

Shoot, it's been so dry down here ...... (Waits for tag line "How dry has it been down there?" ) ... that I haven't had to mow the lawn yet, and the leaves are starting to fall already.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 01, 2000.

I am wondering if we can can grasshoppers since they seem to be eating up everything in sight? Tomatoes, planted and eaten twice, onions, all my herbs and we may be missing a dog or two. We didn't really check too much, because we still got plenty of dogs left, but I think the grasshoppers got a couple of the smaller ones.

Anybody got a good grasshopper recipe?

-- LillyBear (homesteader145@yahoo.com), August 01, 2000.

I am mentally trying to picture a row of grasshoppers doing the can-can.........

Let's see how it would look if each has six legs, but then the legs in back are longer than those if front......

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 01, 2000.

oooooo that sounds soooooooo yummy Lon! Thanks for getting that for us. I think I might make some of that this week, while I am waiting for the peaches and pears to come in.

I didn't can tons of stuff last year (except dry pack) so I still have the zest for canning. I also discovered that we LOVE home canned fruit in the winter (rather than eating fresh fruit from foreign countries)and that a couple quarts of homemade chicken soup is a good thing to take over to friends who are sick..... It's also nice "convenience food" for folks like me who can't handle the MSG in all the store-bought convenience food........

We're gonna go out and buy some more gorilla racks for the canned stuff..... we need more shelving.........

-- (sis@thekitchen.zzz), August 01, 2000.

Birthday??? And which birthday might this be? :-)

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 01, 2000.

Eight peach trees. One peach.

Ten rows non-hybrid corn. I may have made half my seed back.

Two cherry trees. NO cherries.

6 rows beets. NO beets.

10 rows beans, various varieties. NO beans.

6 hills watermelons. NO watermelons.

18 hills squash. NO squash.

2 rows sunflowers. Lots of flowers, no seeds yet.

6 rows lettuce. Ruined in the rain, then dried in the heat. Didn't have the grace to go to seed.

6 rows of spinach. Dead before reaching minimum eating size.

72 tomato plants. Several tomatoes. Then they all died from a white fungus at the base of the stem.

Am I still happy? You bet! There must be something fundamentally wrong with my body chemistry...

-- helen (home@home.home), August 01, 2000.

Helen, If it's any consolation, the only fruits mentioned that I am canning, that I grew, were the raspberries and the rhubarb. All the other stuff I can up are bought, preferably from the farmers who grew it, but more usually, the fruit stand or grocery store.

I am so sorry to hear about how bad things went in your garden this year! What strange and wierd weather!

Hey Lon, happy birthday to you, dear man. I hope you have/had a good one this year, and many more!

-- (sis@home.zzz), August 01, 2000.

So buying a can of green beans at Kroger doesn't count as canning?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 02, 2000.

Sis, thanks! That helps to know. I'd been thinking about doing that and didn't want anyone to know.

Robert, that's only canning if you bonk someone with it.

-- helen (home@home.home), August 02, 2000.

So that means I could write a "Kroger Canning CookBonk"?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 02, 2000.

Thanks, sis. (you noticed how smoothly I worked it into the thread about my birthday? Pretty cool, huh?)

And Gayla, THIS birthday is the one after the one I had LAST year. (smart aleck)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled nonsense. I believe Robert was in the can at Krogers............

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), August 02, 2000.

:-P

(For those of you unfamiliar with emoticons, that is me sticking out my tongue at the birthday boy!) :-)

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 02, 2000.

Gayla, Lon's so excited about this birthday that he's starting to hint a whole week in advance :-) It must be a big one or something... now me, I'm still just a babe-in-arms, thanks to SOBob's good fairy.

Speaking of SOBob, has anyone seen our count lately?? Maybe he needs a rash of letters to let him know we've been missing him... I think he's buffgun@hotmail, isn't he? :-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), August 02, 2000.

For those of you who may be new, I'm just having some fun with Lon! His birthday is August 8th, and he'll be 51. :-)

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 03, 2000.

Actually, he'll be Lon. If he were 51, he'd be a number. Unless he'd rather be Cooking Canned CookBonks At Kroger.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 03, 2000.

How about cooking up some goodies from banned books? That sounds more fun to me........just hit your favorite FTP site!

-- (sis@home.zzz), August 03, 2000.

Banded cooking? - Sounds okay with me. Never liked cooking in the first place.......

Or do you mean like a Beatle's CookBonk or a Rolling StoneSoup CookBonk?

Seems rather unappetizing: canned bugs and a wheat rock-in-roll with butter.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 04, 2000.

For a trip down 'memory lane'... Lon's 'Half Century' thread

(The pictures aren't still visible, but the music still plays) :-)

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 07, 2000.

Fer cryin out loud, Gayla, did you have to go and do that!? I just about had a couple of the young girls around here gettin interested, and you gotta go an tell em I got one foot in the grave, and the other on a bananna peel.

BTW, since I got the new iMac, I can hear the music this time. Me and Kit got up and DANCED!

Thanks for remembering, you know I love ya.

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If wishes were fishes,

Id catch you a few

And serve them on moon dishes

With strawberries and dew.

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-- Lon Frank (lgal@exp.net), August 07, 2000.

One more day, Lon... *then* you step on the banana peel ;-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), August 07, 2000.

MMMMMMMMM! Thanks mucho for the Kaluha Cake recipe. I just made some, and it's great! At this rate, it won't last until mid-week.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), August 13, 2000.

I found a great method to keep your cabinets full of goodies this winter. Well, to start off you'll need a large bucket of pig nuts. After you have soaked them in bleach for a month or so you put them in the ultra sealer shrink rap 2000. Once you have them properly canned (according to Grandmas methods) You just pop the top a year latrer and...Oh Stars what wonderful jam.

-- Jack Jonhns (cannonballs@aol.com), July 06, 2002.