Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

I'm posting this for a friend of a friend, and to remind myself of all the summer canning I haven't done this year because my friends and I are all too busy. I've still got some of this - I think I'm going to have to find ways to start using it up.

For a nice sauce to go with meat, and a great way to use up tomatoes, this is a perfect recipe. It's not exactly [info]everydaycooking, but I'll be using the results as part of my everyday cooking all winter long!

20 large tomatoes (or 40 small ones - we estimated about 4 litres/quarts of tomatoes pre-prep)
8 medium peaches
4 pears
4 apples
6 large onions
2 red peppers
2 green peppers
4 cups white sugar
1 qrt cider vinegar (equivalent to one litre)
2 tbsp pickling salt
2 tbsp pickling spice

Peel and chop fruits and vegetables. (If you're planning to enter the sauce in a fall fair to win prizes, take care to chop everything to a uniform consistency; if you don't care, run most of it through the food processor and leave a few larger chunks of apples, pears, and peppers.) Add the cider vinegar, sugar, and salt. Tie the pickling spice into a small muslin or cheesecloth bag and suspend this in the sauce while it cooks. Cook it at a simmer for at least an hour, probably closer to two, until you get the consistency you want; it's designed as a sauce for meat, so a bit soupy is okay, but you want drips through the slotted spoon rather than torrents. Stir frequently during cooking - this is sweet and can burn. Fill sterile jars and heat process for twenty minutes in a boiling-water canner. (That means sterilize the jars, fill them, use rims and seals, and boil the filled jars with water that comes over the top of them, for twenty minutes. If you've never canned before, get a friend or family member who has to make this recipe with you.) For us, this recipe made six and a half litres, or 13 pints, though that will depend a bit on how much you boil it down; your mileage may vary. It's a great giveaway recipe, too - it looks very Christmas-sy.

My favourite way to use this: cut up some chicken, throw it in a frying pan with a bit of this sauce, add some stir-fry veggies, cook until the chicken is done, and serve over rice. It's good on pork and beef, too - if you can make it work in a tomato sauce or a sweet-and-sour sauce, it'll taste good.

Grace à catarzyna:

Morning Hot Cereal Mix

· ½ cup oatmeal

· ½ cup Cream of Wheat cereal

· ½ cup Red River or multigrain hot cereal mix – I use Quaker Simple Harvest Oatmeal maple brown sugar with pecans.

· ½ cup wheat germ

· ½ cup oat bran

· 1/2 cup raisins

· ½ cup mixed dried fruit: cranberries, cherries and blueberries

· ½ cup slivered almonds

· ¼ cup protein powder (optional) - I use vanilla protein powder that has 26 grams of protein/scoop

Mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight container to keep for weeks. I store mine in a wide-mouth Ball-Mason quart canning jar.

To make breakfast use ½ cup of the dried mixture and 1 cup water to make 1 cup of cooked cereal.

Stovetop Directions:

Mix and heat on medium-high until boiling. Continue cooking on low heat mixture thickens and has a porridge-like consistency.

Microwave Directions:

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really have time to cook on the stovetop in the morning when I am working. I make mine in the microwave in a covered Pyrex casserole dish. Microwave for 3 minutes be cautious and stop microwave to stir if it appears that it might boil over.

Stir, then microwave for another minute until mixture thickens and has a porridge-like consistency. I use 1-2 tsps of turbinado or raw sugar to sweeten.