Freezers without power

Blessings Darlings!

Lots of folks still without power here on the East Coast.  Word is that in Charles Town WV the Burger King, KFC, FOOD LION, etc have had to throw out all their frozen and refrigerated foods.  That's a heck of a lot of food!

I have full freezers here - both the freezer part of the refrigerator and the free-standing upright 14.7 cubic foot freezer.  What, you ask, would *I* do in an extended power outage during the summer?

FIRST - I'd see if I could get any dry ice.  I know that AirGas in Martinsburg sells it, but don't know their hours and have not tried to see if they are open during this since, well, I don't need the stuff.  Yes, I have emergency cash on hand to pay for that.

SECOND - I'd wrap the freezer in blankets.  I sure don't need them now!  And the freezers being so full they'd last 3 days or more with added insulation.

THIRD - I'd can the freezer contents, using a propane-powered camping stove and a case of propane I keep around JUST in case that.  Frozen fruits would have sugar and spices added and be canned as pie filling in quart jars (I'd add corn starch when making pies later).  Veggies would go in pint or quart jars - and I suppose I might not 'can' them and might make pickles of them instead.  The pickles could be water bath canned if power continues out once they are 'done'.  Boneless meats go in pint jars, bone-in go in quart jars and get pressure canned.  The pork jowl would finally get smoked! The pork shoulder would be smoked, pulled, then canned (maybe in BBQ sauce). 

The chicken livers I don't know WHAT I'd do with.  Probably make rumaki and eat them rather than try to preserve them further.

Obviously, if we had any ice cream we'd have eaten that early on.

And, of course, we DO have a generator, but in an emergency I might use that only to pump water rather than run the freezer.

Look, it's not like I've got a freezer full of microwaveable dinners or other majorly prepared foods.  It's full of 'ingredients' rather than food, as Sharon Astyk might put it.  That means that I can MAKE the raw ingredients INTO food and preserve the food. 

Canning Pumpkin

Blessings, Darlings! 

It's that time of year again - the hard squashes are in!  I'll be stocking up this week, while they are on sale at the grocer, but on Nov 1 your can probably get 'Halloween Pumpkins" for free at pumpkin patches.  Not the best tasting flesh, but great for seeds (especially the tiny ones).

I usually just keep them fresh, if you buy good quality ones they don't go bad quickly.  But I have canned them if I have a bunch and several go bad at once.

Always can cubes -  home canning puree doesn't work, you risk botulism.  You do NOT want to risk that.

Clean 'em of strings and seeds, wash 'em, cut 'em into 1 inch cubes, remove rind.  Boil for 2 minutes.  Fill jars with the cubes and the water you boiled them in, leaving 1 inch at top of jar.  Add tops/rings. 

Pressure can at 10 pounds (15 if over 1000 feet) pints for 55 minutes, quarts for 90 minutes.

Frondly, Fern

Can It.

Blessings, Darlings!

It's canning season again!  I've been doing fruit so far, but tomatoes (okay, technically a berry) and corn and beans are going to be canned soon.

It's hot and time consuming work, but not exactly intellectually demanding.  Which means I have time to do magic and to ponder things.  I'll talk about the magic in this post.

Back in the day, when I was a kid, one of the stories we were told about Benjamin Franklin was that he and his father were putting up barrels of pork (no doubt layered with salt).  Ben, who was NOT impressed by the long time spent at each meal saying grace, reported said something along the lines of "Dude, why don't we do the grace thing now, over the whole barrel, and get it over with?  We'd get our eat on faster at dinner..."

Well, I'm not taking quite that approach to the canning, but I AM invoking the blessings of the Gods on each batch I can.  Working for health. For wholeness.  For it to feed us body and soul. 

I layer flavors in my cooking (even the peaches I just canned had added cinnamon), it's time I started layering blessings in all I do.

Frondly, Fern

And the Prep Goes On.....

Word from a friend who speaks fluent astrology is that the end of July/beginning of August has the worst astrological line up he has ever seen. Not for natural disasters, but for humans doing things to other humans. He advises having food and water for a month on hand.

Well, that I've got, but it kicked me into overdrive on adding more and such.

I'd already started rotating stored water, a bit late mind you, before I heard this from him. And, my stored water supply being scant for a month, I'm enlarging it. I also figure I'll flush and fill the 55 gallon barrel mid-July.

I'm buying the heck out of all produce loss leader specials in the stores and storing them. Apples have been on sale, I've now got two half gallon jars filled with dried apples and 5 quarts of apple sauce canned. I'm drying potatoes and pineapple now. I should go drive over to the churches that had pumpkin patches for Halloween and see if they have leftover pumpkins I can take and dry.

I've been lax about exercising again, doing very little. But at least my tendonitis is clearing up!

Mom wants me to visit ASAP, but I can't do it till after Thanksgiving, and will have to figure out how to afford a plane ticket.

It's all a bit overwhelming, but I'm taking it one day and one task at a time. And I'm getting LOTS done in the mornings, thanks to the time change - I now get up an extra hour before everyone else, since I don't rise with the exterior clock I rise with my interior clock.

Oy, just remembered I have to build two more cold frames AND winterize the house. Well, back to work!

Frondly, Fern