I’ll be honest with you all here. I’m no applesauce expert. I once made applesauce that was really good with jonathan and gala apples, and I’ve used golden delicious also and it’s not bad, but there was more flavor with the gala/jonathan mix. In my life now, I’ve made a whole 3 batches of applesauce. […]
Storing Jars
When I’ve eaten the fantastic food (well, most of the time it’s fantastic) out of my canning jars and washed them out, it’s time to store them until I need to can something else. I like to wash the used lid and ring along with the jar and then put the clean lid UPSIDE DOWN […]
The Sick Kid Bed
Okay, a quick one tonight–it’s late and it’s been a long week. Just thought I’d share a little idea on sick kids. If I’ve got one I know is having stomach flu problems (vomiting, throwing up, whatever you want to call it) I fix up their bed like this:Lay a towel over the top section […]
The Grain of Meat
Meat has a grain. Don’t get confused and think I’m putting proteins in the grain group here. Meat is obviously not a grain, but meat has a grain like wood does. The grain is the direction the fibers of meat run. Generally the grain runs parallel to the bone, however frequently the grain goes a […]
Home Canning Meat–Bottled Meat
Bottled meat is one of my favorite ways to preserve game meat. You can also bottle non-game meats like beef, pork, chicken, and even fish. It takes a long time to make it (mostly processing time in the canner), but when you need to use it, it is already cooked and ready to throw in […]
Cuttin’ Up Elk
Well, got the elk to the house last night (already quartered) and put it all in big coolers with ice outside on the north side of the house so it would stay cold. Turned out a pretty cool day so I’m not concerned about it going bad out there. Started in on it this morning–had […]
Joys of Rural Living–the Lye Hunt
Living in the sticks has its advantages and disadvantages. The major disadvantage is that you can’t go buy just anything you want. One of the items on my preparedness list is lye. Useful for making soap. I thought surely I’d find some in “town,” so I drove the 45 miles there today and visited all […]
Bottled Butter
Also see Bottled Butter Part 2 here. Update 11/24: word from our local extension agent that bottling butter is not safe due to it not getting hot enough to kill botulism . . . guess I won’t be doing more unless I figure out another way to do it or find out otherwise. We got […]
Really Old Nasty MRE’s
I had a couple of MRE’s that were about 20 years old and needed to go so I did the noble and generous thing and shared them with some friends. MRE means Meal Ready to Eat and they were designed for the military. You used to be able to get them singly at army surplus […]
How to Gut a Trout
Over at a friend’s house for bottling butter today and she had a couple of trout she’d been given that were at least 2 days old in her refrigerator. Now, 2 day old trout is okay, but these had not been gutted when they were caught so weren’t any good, but we had a little […]