Pumpkin Butter Recipe is Great for Home Canning

Great Pumpkin Butter Recipe, save this one for the fall and beyond, it's great for home canning!

3 1/2 cups cooked or canned pumpkin
1 1/2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
1 package liquid fruit pectin
4  cups sugar
1/4 cup of water (if needed)

I mixed everything but the pectin in a large pot and brought to a boil.
I cooked several minutes and added most of the water.   I then added the pouch of
pectin and stirred.  The was thick but not too thick, it poured.
I ladeled into pint jars and the PRESSURE CANNED the jars at 11 PSI for 15 minutes.
I also took extra time bringing the canner up to heat and vented just a bit longer than I usually do.  I keep reading how unsafe is to BWB. 

I did this weeks ago and just opened a jar and it is great.  The pressure canning did not affect the taste.  It is thick.  It was not thick when I took it out of the canner.  Time thickened it.

View the Original article

Sausage Patties

Does anyone still have a great recipe for canning Sausage Patties? It's such a lost art! If you do please share, until then this perfectly fine recipe will do...

I am going to have my grandkids off and on all summer. I had seen in the yahoo boards a method to can sausage and decided to try it. I got a roll of Jimmy Dean sausage (on sale) and cut into patties using a canning lid as my guide, lightly fried the patties on med-high until brown on both sides (they shrink a bit), but not cooked through. I then packed into the jars with the small amount of grease left
in the pan and pressure cooked for 75 minutes (pints) at 11 lbs pressure. I opened and they are good. I am now going to do more, lightly stir frying some for sausage crumbles and making more patties. I used a wide mouth jar for this. I will wait for a huge sale before doing in bulk.

View the Original article

Turkey Cassoulet Soup by the Jar

What could be better than Turkey Cassoulet Soup - unless it's Turkey Cassoulet Soup with bacon and sausage!

Per jar...

1 cup chopped cooked turkey
1/2 cup dry white beans (rinsed)
1/2 cup sliced sausage (any kind)
2 slices bacon (cooked and crumbled)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 tsp garlic chopped or powdered or to taste
1 tablespoon tomato paste
salt pepper to taste

add chicken broth to the fill line and cook 90 minutes quarts at 11 lbs pressure or for your altitude.

I love this soup, I did not use sausage because I was out of it and did not want to go to the store. My Mom took me to Sweet Tomatoes and I had this soup, came home and tried to recreate it. Next time I will add the sausage and a bit more dry beans. I love the texture of the beans, not soggy and fully cooked. A great way to use leftovers, which is why I did this recipe by the jar.

View the Original article

Buzzed

How sweet they’ve been, the first days of Spring. Though March played with our sense of seasonal order, growling out like a temperamental lion, we harvested twenty pounds of honey this week; a sap of sweet, slow, amber translucence.

View the Original article

Beautiful Vegetables and Fruits

Luscious Red Tommy Tomatoes

Vegetables and Fruits can be seen as works of art. Not in an Andy Warhol way but as examples of nature's bounty and craftsmanship. There is nothing like a kitchen full of summer's harvest. The reds of  tomatoes, the yellows of squash, the purple of grapes, the greens of peppers. All the different colors of vegetables and fruits make a wonderful and inspiring palate.

No wonder vegetables and fruits have been the inspiration of so many artists throughout the centuries.

Yellow and Red Peppers

Here are some bright red and yellow peppers.






















Corn comes in abundant colors. It is used as decoration and is often the subject, or medium, of art.

Multi-colored Corn!

Strawberries at the market

Squash in all shapes and colors

Squash has many varieties, it's hard to believe they are all in the same plant family.

Colorful Veggies

Vegetables come in so many different shapes and colors. One can practically see all the vitamins and anti-oxidants jumping out from this picture.

Vegetables at the produce section

Check out all the different hues of green in these peppers:

Assorted Green, but Hot! peppers

Eggplants are a type of squash...  with many purple hues.

Purple eggplants

Next time you're eating vegetables, take a moment to enjoy their beauty... bon appetit!

Vegetable cornucopia

Knockout Rose Tree

August 13th, 2011

For many many years roses were hybridized for fragrance, or hybridized for color, or for size. Things like hardiness and disease resistance were not as much of a concern. It is only recently that gardeners in general started worrying more about these more functional attributes. The “Knock Out” brand of rose is one such newer line that professes to be hardy and disease resistant.
I’ve been hearing about these for years, but never bought one. Then I got an offer from Brighter Blooms for a free plant (one of the benefits of being a garden blogger, you get swag). In particular they had a rose tree, and that really appealed to me.
A standard form plant is one in which a bush or weeping style plant has been either pruned, or more likely grafted, onto a standard (a trunk). Almost all weeping cherry trees sold are in fact standard form grafts, where a normal cherry is grown to the desired height, a weeping bud is grafted on, and then once it is established any regular cherry growth is pruned off.
So a rose tree isn’t a rose that genetically grows like a tree, it is just a rose shrub of one type of rose that has been grafted onto a strong trunk-like cane of another rose.
In anycase, to me the benefit of a standard form rose tree, was that it was easy to find room for it. I stuck it between two very large hardy hibiscus plants. The standard form provides height which provides separation. Had it been a normal shrub rose it would have been crowded by the hibiscus, it would have needed more room. In fact, if it had been a normal shrub, I would not have had room in my garden for it, anywhere. I’m really low on space, but the standard form allowed me to sneak it in there.


View the Original article

Red Hot Poker – Something not to grow, and bunnies.

background: url(http://www.gardeningblog.net/wp-content/plugins/review-site/images/star-empty.gif) no-repeat;width: 12px;height: 12px;display: block;float: left;

View the Original article