Homemade Red Sauce

Okay, I stumbled on a yummy sauce this week, by accident.  I had to pull lots of tomatoes before birds would get the rest of them so some were not fully ripe yet.  I blanched, peeled and cored, and pureed them as if for tomato sauce, but then I thought I'd try something new.  I have already canned more than 40 quarts of tomato sauce this season and 19 jars of salsa, so I was in the mood for something new.  Can you say enchiladas?  Yippee!  Me too. Love em.

I love cheese enchiladas in red sauce and I had the general idea of what is in red sauce: tomatoes, cilantro, cumin, crushed red pepper, jalapeno, garlic, onion, sweet peppers, lime juice, vinegar, salt, pepper, and olive oil so I set out to refine my own recipe by adding these elements a little at a time, until I liked the flavor.  That's what I did.

RECIPE

I started with a sink full of tomatoes, mostly ripe, some yellow heirlooms snuck in too. 

I Prepared them as stated above and added the following:

4 cups onion finely chopped

12 cloves garlic finely chopped

2 red sweet peppers finely chopped

5 stalks celery finely chopped

1 bunch fresh cilantro finely chopped

3 T dried crushed red pepper

2 jalapeno finely chopped 

(optional- this may make it too hot for you so it's okay to omit jalapenos)

1/2 cup fresh lime juice

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 to 1/2 cup cumin 

(CUMIN is the VIP for flavor, but can overwhelm some palates, so use sparingly, a tablespoon at a time)

Then, simply cook this down to your preferred consistency, jar them up into properly prepared canning jars with properly prepared lids and rings, and can them in a water bath.  I used my pressure canner as a water bath canner and canned quarts for 35 minutes after heavy boiling began.

My husband LOVED this so much he begged me to marinate some long grain brown rice and black beans in it overnight for him to take for lunch today.  I boiled the rice in water, added the canned beans and the red sauce and let it set up overnight.  It really tastes great.  It just needs a few fresh homemade tortillas to fill up and go.

In spite of my little little rice and beans experiment I STILL canned up 9 quart jars of deliciousness.

WHAT ARE YOU CANNING THIS WEEK??? 

Please SHARE!


I have linked this post to my favorite blog hops:  
Homestead Revival's Barn Hop #30 

and 
Deborah Jean's Dandelion House Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop. 

What's Hopping Around Here?

This week I have been working hard in the garden.  

I've planted several winter transplants and prepped soil for several more beds.  The Hubby is working on making me a few compact conduit hoop houses for beds without cold frames, so I am hoping to extend my season in all of my garden beds.

I harvested heirloom golden concord grapes and made some into juice and tomorrow I plan to turn that into grape jelly.  I will post how I did it next week.  I will be using the Ball Blue Book recipe and instructions.

I also harvested and processed yet another tomato sauce batch.

I dehydrated more red sweet peppers and grated zucchini successfully.

I stocked up on several pounds of dried beans and put them in canning jars.

I had a mystery guest raid a few plants in the garden overnight, the tracks lead me to think it's a neighbor's loose dog.  He tore off a few tomatoes, crushed them and threw them around and tromped through the new transplant beds.  Luckily, I only lost a few seedlings this time.  I am going to have to remember to close our property gate at night.

I also spent a few hours at the school farm treating the organic crops with two different biological helpers Actinovate and Superzyme.  

The Actinovate is a good bacteria product that you can apply to the soil.  The bacteria will live in your soil and produce chemicals that inhibit fungi and stimulate plant growth.  

The Superzyme is a product made from two Trichoderma bacteria and good fungi that colonize your plant's root system (locking out bad things) and are pathogenic toward bad fungi.

The only thing we did this week for the conventional crops was to have the professor spray a foliar application of Imidacloprid (aka brand name: Bayer Advantage) to control sucking insects like white fly and aphid which are a huge problem here in Fall.  If you google the chemical you will find that it is actually a nicotinoid (it comes from the nicotiana (nicotine) plant).  It is a neurotoxin, and a non-selective insect killer (it's very toxic to honeybees) so it's not advisable to use in an area with blooming flowers because you will kill many beneficials.  The professor opted to use it now, the transplants are only a few weeks old, not blooming, not attractive to bees, so it should be safe for our field now.

Sorry my post is a bit late, but we drove up the coast to yet another fantastic family wedding yesterday.
Our family is FULL OF LOVE lately. hehe.

My favorite little cousin Raymond married the woman of his dreams in this quaint country church in the mountains and we could not be happier for him.  May they have many great years together.

To all my blog friends reading this post- may you have a blessed week and THANK YOU for reading.

This post has been linked up to two of my favorite BLOG HOPS- Deborah Jean's Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop,  Homestead Revival's Preparedness Challenge #27 & Homestead Barn Hop #29!

YOU can link up to those blogs below.

NEW READERS-  Please follow this link by clicking HERE to read more Preparedness Challenge blog posts at Homestead Revival.


Link up to Deborah Jean's Dandelion House Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop HERE!

Homestead Revival's Homestead Barn Hop #29 LINK HERE!

What's Hopping?

LINK UP HERE!

Things have been very busy around this lil homestead for about eight weeks.

The garden has been generous this summer and I've spent many hours this week canning and dehydrating.  

I've made two more batches of tomato sauce and 19 jars of mild salsa utilizing Laurie of Common Sense Homesteading's recipe.  

I tweak it a bit, I add more garlic, cilantro, and cumin, but the rest is her recipe.  It tastes better than any other canned salsa recipe I have found.  YUM!

I am back in school, FARM SCHOOL that is.  Last Friday was Farm lab day.  We planted 11,000 seedlings at the school farm.  We planted half of the field organic, and half of it conventional.  Throughout the semester we will treat the organic field using only organic methods and the conventional field will get commercial conventional methods.  I will report lessons learned

 My son's wedding took place a week ago and I am now the proud Mama of Jon and his lovely bride Samantha.  I've always wanted a daughter, now I have one. Yippee.

I've been reworking my raised garden beds as plants peter out.  So far, I have vine beans, lima beans, snow peas, arugula, garlic, carrots, daikon, romaine, green and red leaf lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage in.  Still have lots to do, but so many summer plants are still putting out acceptable levels of veggies so I hate to remove them.  I have 16 tomato plants that are giving me lots of tomatoes to can every three or four days.  I have lima, fava, and red runner beans giving me dried beans for next season.  I have eggplants, jalapeno, cucumbers, yellow squash, huckleberry, and zucchini still blossoming and fruiting. 

I learn something important this week.  Always research and confirm species before trying any wild plant.  I found what looked to be a volunteer huckleberry inside my greenhouse.  Safety conscious me, I did my research and discovered that it was black nightshade, poisonous vegetation and green berries.  I also discovered that another volunteer near the front door is more poisonous pokeberry.  Moral to the story- check everything out BEFORE trying it.  

 Black Nightshade

Chickalita Huckleberry

Next job- picking, juicing, and canning golden concord grapes and black currants.  Have a great week everybody.

Canning Time again...

"Every suburban and country household should plant and nurture a garden and raise small fruits; then during the summer from the products of his effort the bulk of the food for the family be provided and all surplus should be carefully preserved for future use.  The economic conditions of the age demand this."
     Janet M. Hill, August 1, 1915
    Canning, Preserving, and Jelly Making

                              
This year I have been blessed with a garden that is very productive. In spite of Mother Nature and late May  freezing. sleet, and ice, most plants weathered a curious spring and I am starting to reap huge rewards.  There is only one problem.  So many rewards.  I am up to my knees in fresh produce and although I have been serving it up at most every meal and sharing it with friends and family, the near full moon is maximizing growth speed and daily I am facing quarter to half bushels of zucchini, yellow squash, peas, and root veggies.  So here I sit, cookbook open, looking for My Grandma's bread and butter zucchini pickles recipe.

I came across an interesting site that stopped me in my tracks.  I only can for a few weeks/months each year so I get a bit rusty and I am a little OCD so I like to review every step before each batch.  Well, I just signed up for the online course Preserving Food at Home- A Self Study through the National Center for Home Food Preservation at The University of Georgia.  I have NEVER pressure canned before and this course includes instruction in that method.  Here's a link:  https://spock.fcs.uga.edu/ext/food/nchfp_elc/

For those of you that do not want to take this short course in a few days, you can review the process step by step on the website NOW for FREE!  Here's the links.

CANNING- http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_home.html

FREEZING- http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze.html

DRYING- http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/dry.html

CURING/SMOKING- http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/cure_smoke.html

FERMENTATION- http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can6a_ferment.html

PICKLING- http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can6b_pickle.html

JAM & JELLY- http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can7_jam_jelly.html

STORING- http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/store.html