Canning - How To Can Homemade Basil Tomato Sauce

Every year we plant a large garden which always includes a few rows of tomatoes. We enjoy canning our own homemade tomato sauce to use throughout the winter and spring season when tomatoes are no longer in-season here in Pennsylvania.

Canning your own sauce is not difficult and you will need your basic home canning supplies such as: a water bath canner, quart-sized canning jars with rings and seals, funnel, ladle and a jar lifter. If you don't own these supplies, you can purchase them in a complete kit at your local kitchen shop or via a reputable online kitchen store that carries home canning supplies.

In the following recipe, I used fresh basil and parsley that I grew in my garden, however...you can certainly use dried herbs if that is what you have on hand. You will want to start out with ripe to very ripe (but not blemished) red tomatoes.

To Blanch Tomatoes: Bring a large stock pot with water to a full boil. Place a few tomatoes into the water for 60 seconds. Using a pair of tongs or your ladle, remove tomatoes and place in cold water for 5 minutes. You should now be able to easily peel off the skins.

Basil Tomato Sauce Recipe

3 tablespoons olive oil
3 onions, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
25 large fresh tomatoes
2 teaspoons table salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon beef bouillon

Measure out and add your olive oil to a large nonstick stock pot. Over medium heat, stir in the minced onions and garlic and saute them in the oil for 1 minute. Stir in the chopped basil and chopped parsley. Turn heat down to low.

Blanch and remove the skins from your tomatoes and process them in a juicer or food processor to make tomato juice. Add this juice to your stock pot and then add in the rest of the ingredients, stirring after each addition with a nonstick silicone spatula.

Turn the heat up to medium and cover your pot. Simmer the mixture for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, stirring every 10 to 15 minutes.

Once sauce is done cooking, ladle it into clean and hot jars, being careful to leave a 1/2" head space from the top of the jar. Using a clean cotton towel, wipe the rim clean and add your seal and ring to the jar. Process your jars all at one time in your water bath canner for 45 minutes. Remove jars from the canner and let cool to room temperature. This sauce will keep for up to 1 year if your jars sealed properly.

Homemade Canning - Know What Foods You're Preserving - Because Knowing Is Half The Battle!

Food preservation is an art that allows you to store food without any loss to its quality, edibility and nutritional value. There are a number of food preservation methods, which prevent the growth of any bacteria, yeasts or fungi on the foods. Other than maintaining nutritional value, food preservation keeps the texture and flavor of the item being preserved intact. In history there have been some old methods of food preservation, which drastically altered the character of items being preserved. Common ways for preserving food at home are dehydrating, canning, freezing and pickling.

Home canning is a way of preserving food in an easy and cheap way. With prices of canned food increasing, many people are considering canning food at home. By following a home canning recipe you can enjoy so many things from canned apple butter to zucchini. There are different home canning methods that you can adopt like pressure, water bath and open kettle methods. Without having to invest on any expensive equipment, you can easily do the canning at home. There are many home canning cookbooks as well to help you prepare a mouth-watering dish that everybody in the family is going to enjoy.

The Process of Dry Aging Steaks

BySteve D White

When it comes to steak, there are two types of aging. You can opt for dry aging or wet aging. Unlike dry aging where you need to let the meat dry for over 20 days, the process of wet aging lasts for 7 days and all you need to do it put the steak into a sealed plastic bag and let it age in its very own juice. The benefits of dry aging steaks are connected to the meat's texture. The moisture within the muscle needs time to evaporate in order to provide the meat a smoother taste. People like this type of meat because it tastes better when it's cooked on the grill or added into certain food recipes.

Because most of the enzymes within the meat are breaking down, the steak will be naturally tenderized. The process of dry aging steak is as follows. Take a piece of beef and rinse it with a lot of cold water. Afterwards, you'll need to take some dish towels to dry the meat and let it drain for a couple of minutes. In the meantime, you can prepare the fridge. Make sure you place the wire rack and pan on the bottom self. Thus you'll know for sure that the meat will be positioned on the coldest part of your refrigerator.

After you've prepared everything you'll have to take the steak and wrap it into a large dish towel. Take a thermometer and make sure you measure the overall temperature. It's recommended to keep the temperature warmer than 36

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Fried Chili Chicken: Recipes to Die For!

When it comes to delicious meals, you can have healthy too! Today more than ever, delicious foods are geared at providing healthy benefits in a scrumptious dish that will be a favorite for years to come. Fried chili chicken is a delicious blend of healthy chicken spiced to perfect without the unnecessary additions of added fat or sugar.

Instead of depending on additives that enhance the flavor of the meal, this is one meal that takes simple ingredients and makes them into one dish easy to fix and enjoyed by everyone. Take a closer look at why this is a favorite in my house!

Fried Chili Chicken

Ingredients:

2 tbsp flour
¼ tsp cayenne
1 tsp chili powder
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp dried oregano
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp salt
4 chicken breasts, cubed
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cups chicken broth
¼ cup chili powder
1 tbsp hot New Mexico chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin

Homemade Canning - Where's the Beef? Canning Your Meat, Poultry, and More!

Why limit your home canning to produce? Scoop up a great seasonal deal on meat, poultry, or fish and experience the ease of meal preparation with canned meat. The best part is you know what is in the jar, there are no added flavors, no undisclosed spices, and no MSG.

The Art of Mince Meat

Mincemeat is really an overlooked delicacy and method of preserving meat our ancestors came up with. Originally, it was a mix of lean beef, suet, apples, citrus fruits, raisins, brandy or hard cider, and various spices. There is no need to stick with older recipes that call for a long list of ingredients that are exotic by today's standards. Unless your family has a taste for old-fashioned mincemeat, feel free to come up with your own version.

Simply use a roast beef recipe and cook as directed. Add such spices as garlic, onions, savory, marjoram, salt and pepper or use your favorite blend. When the meat can easily be pulled apart and chopped, allow it to cool and then chop it up. It will then be ready to slip into the freshly boiled and cooled jars and slipped into a homemade canning device.

Roast carrots, whole onion, garlic cloves, and potatoes or other vegetables like cauliflower and chop them up with the meat. Drain excess broth before canning the meat and vegetable mixture. Can the broth separately. Now you have jars of ready-to-go beef broth and jars of meat that are perfect for sandwiches or one-dish meals that are perfectly seasoned.

Unintended Consequences And The Standard American Diet

In India, the government offered a bounty on rats. The intention was to eradicate a noxious pest. One unanticipated result was the establishment of rat farms, where rats were bred and harvested for the bounty. In Florida, a worker at a dog kennel noticed lots of snakes on the premises. He systematically killed them all. Then the rat population increased dramatically.

These are examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences, which states that any human action—whether or not it produces the desired result—is likely to produce an entirely different result (possibly in conflict with the original intention.) Typically, such results are completely unexpected. Often, they are just as completely undesired.

Let's review some of the changes which the Standard American Diet has pioneered: American food has been stripped of virtually all of its essential nutrients. Sugar and fat seem to be the major ingredients in virtually every American food. (About 45 percent of the caloric value of our diet comes from fat, and we use about 100 pounds of sugar per person per year.) Our consumption of hydrogenated fat is the highest in the world. We have virtually eliminated vegetables from our diet. We have drastically reduced the variety of foodstuffs we eat. We no longer rotate our diet with the change of the seasons. We consume about six pounds of synthetic food additives per person per year. Our widespread use of denatured flours, refined sugars, devitalized fats and oils, and synthetic food additives has been in effect for about one hundred years. Speaking in individual terms, this is a long time. In terms of the human race, it is a very short time. These dietary changes are quite radical when compared to human dietary tradition. And they don't seem to be good for you, either. As the American diet has changed, so has our health. Americans now lead the world in obesity, diabetes and heart disease. In fact, consumption of the Standard American Diet constitutes a chronic metabolic insult. Ours is the only civilization in history which has single-handedly managed to break its food.

How did this come to pass? We did it ourselves. There doesn't seem to have been any kind of evil conspiracy, or divine intervention. It just kind of happened, as the result of many un-coordinated, short-sighted decisions—made with the very best of intentions by people who were only trying to improve the lot of suffering humanity.

Here is a timeline of this nutritional revolution:

1755: William Cullen produces ice by causing water to evaporate in a vacuum container.
1765: Spallanzani suggests preserving by means of hermetic sealing.
1795: Francois Appert designs preserving jar for food.
1802: Thomas Moore invents the refrigerator.
1802: World's first successful beet sugar factory begins operation.
1805: First important shipment of ice from New England is made by Frederick Tudor.
1810: Francois Appert wins prize for developing practical canning process.
1810: First tin can is patented.
1811: Work started on the National Road.
1812: British sailors eating canned soups and meat.
1818: Peter Durand introduces the tin can in America.
1819: Canning firms operating in New York City.
1820: William Underwood opens a canning factory in Boston.
1820: More than 9000 miles of surfaced roads in the United States.
1825: Thomas Kensett patents tin-plated cans.
Before 1830: Flour sieved through bolting cloth.
1834: Jacob Perkins invents first mechanical refrigerator.
1839: Glass bottles yield to tin cans.
1840: 4,500 miles of canals carry U.S. goods.
1843: Norman Rillieux patents his multiple-effect evaporator for sugar cane.
1853: National Road turned over to the states.
1855: Patent issued in England for dried milk.
1856: Gail Borden receives patent for condensed milk process.
1858: John L. Mason perfects the mason jar.
1860: More than 88,000 miles of surfaced roads in the United States.
1861: T.S. Mort builds first machine-chilled cold storage unit.
1861: 3,500 steamboats operating on western rivers.
Civil War: Both armies use canning to supply troops.
Civil War: northern plains begin using hard spring wheat.
1862: Beginning of transition from subsistence to commercial farming.
1864: First salmon cannery in the United States.
1864: Louis Pasteur invents pasteurization (for wine).
1865: Thaddeus Lowe invents ice machine.
1865: Patent for dried eggs issued.
1866: America's first refrigerated railroad car is built in Detroit.
1869: Hippolyte Mege-Mouries develops oleomargarine.
1870: Karl von Linde uses ammonia as refrigerant, begins its manufacture.
1870's: Introduction of roller milling for wheat.
1874: H. Solomon introduces pressure-cooking methods for canning foods.
1874: Refrigerator cars are used regularly to ship meat from Midwest stockyards to the east.
1874: Margarine introduced to the United States.
1877: Joel Tiffany patents a successful refrigerator car.
1877: Frozen mutton shipped from Argentina to France.
1878: Gustav de Laval invents the centrifugal cream separator.
1878: Full-scale egg dehydrating plant in operation.
1879: 40 tons of frozen mutton shipped from Australia to London.
1880: Canned fruits and meats first appear in stores.
Late 1880's: Mechanically refrigerated cars running on railroads.
1890: The Babcock test makes dairymen honest.
1892: First cans of pineapples.
1895: Lewis B. Halsey begins commercial production of pasteurized milk.
1897: American Sugar Company is formed.
1900: Dairy products a full-fledged industry.
1903: The great corporation is the basic unit of American industry.
1910: Steel-roller flour milling is commonplace.
1915: Ford produces his millionth car.
1919: 265,000 miles of railroad lines in America.
About 1920: Mechanical refrigerators for homes appear.
1920's: Solvent extraction replaces expeller-pressed process for oils.
1927: Airplanes first used to dust crops with insecticides.
1930: Thomas Midgley invents Freon.
1930's-now: Small farms yield to giant food companies.
1930's: The first packages of frozen food, developed by Clarence Birdseye, appear on the shelves of 10 grocery stores in Springfield, Mass.
Post-WWII: Restructured foods.
1990's: Recombinant DNA biologically engineered foods.

In June, 2002 the Journal of the American Medical Association recommended that every American use a daily multi-nutrient supplement to address the issue of deficient diets. What makes this unusual is the fact that mainstream medicine has fought tooth and nail with the forces of vitamin and mineral supplementation for decades. Previously, supplementation had been characterized by them as a mostly harmless waste of money.

Perhaps there may be some hope, after all.

When Eating Try Choosing Healthy

Vegetables, fruits, and grains are normally low in fat and have no cholesterol. Most are great sources of dietary fiber, complex carbs, and vitamins. The American Heart Association recommends that you eat foods that are high in complex carbs and fiber.

Below are some tips for making healthy food choices:

- Coconut is high in saturated fat, while olives are high in monounsaturated fats and calories. You should use these items sparingly to avoid getting too many calories from fat.

- When vegetable grains are cooked, saturated fat or cholesterol is often added. For example, egg yolks may be added to bread or even pasta.

- Processed, canned, or preserved vegetables may also contain added sodium. With some people, too much sodium (salt) may lead to high blood pressure. There are some food companies that are actually canning vegetables with less salt. You can look for these in the market area or choose fresh and even frozen vegetables.

- Nuts and seeds tend to be high in calories and fat, although a majority of the fat is polyunsaturated or monounsaturated. There are some varieties, macadamie nuts for example, that are also high in saturated fat.

Foods that are high in soluble fiber are a great choice as well. Examples include oat bran, oatmeal, beans, peas, rice bran, barley, and even apple pulp.

Whenever you are looking for healthy food choices, always make sure you read the nutrition label or information about the food. You can then determine what the food contains and how healthy it truly is for your body. By taking your time and making your healthy food choices wisely, you'll have a lifetime to enjoy the foods that will take care of you.