Does this mean we should avoid organic food? Absolutely not. The fact that the sprouts were grown organically didn’t have anything  to do with them being contaminated with e. coli.

But it just so happens that the Damsel has been preparing a post on growing your own sprouts. Very timely, eh? This is one more example of how self-reliance can be a blessing. When you grow your own, you know what you’re getting…or not getting.

Growing your own sprouts is easy and requires no fancy equipment. In fact, you can do it with just a quart jar and an old nylon stocking. And seeds, of course.

The benefits of sprouting seeds are many. They’re quite good for you, and depending on the seeds you store, can make all the difference if you had to live off your food storage for a length of time. Alfalfa sprouts, for example, are a good source of vitamin C. If you had no access to any fresh veggies, they would be a welcome item indeed.

Nutritionally, sprouted seeds go through an amazing transformation. Look what happens to mung beans:

source

Truly amazing! Consider adding seeds for sprouting to your preparedness stash. (Buy seeds packaged for this purpose rather than farmer-seed, unless you’re sure they haven’t been sprayed with nasty chemicals.)

You can buy sprouters if you like, but really, all you need is a container and some way to rinse the seeds. Stretching a piece of CLEAN nylon stocking over the top of a quart jar and then securing it with the screw band creates a cheap and perfectly serviceable sprouter.

You can sprout most any seeds, but let’s do some alfalfa to begin with. At the Damsel’s house, we like to refer to this as “hay.” Well, it is.

The Damsel inherited a strainer-thingy that fits on the top of a quart jar, so she used that. No possibility of toe-jam flavored sprouts here.

Put 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of alfalfa seed in a quart jar and cover with lukewarm water. Put the top on, whether it be a nylon or what-have-you, and slosh them around a bit. Drain the water out, and replace with fresh water, enough to cover them by a few inches. Let them sit overnight.

For the next couple of days, rinse and drain the seeds every few hours, as often as you can remember. In between, put the jar in a dark corner or cupboard, because light will make the sprouts taste bitter.

See the sprouts starting to grow?

When sprouts start to peep out, after rinsing, hold the jar sideways and shake the seeds gently so they spread out along the side of the jar. Don’t fuss. They will be clumpy. Nothing bad will happen.

Continue rinsing, draining, and shaking them so they lie along the side of the jar until the sprouts look long enough to look appropriate on a turkey and avocado sandwich. They’ll look pale, but taste fine.

If you want to green them up now that they’re grownups, you can put them in the sun for a few hours without harming their fresh, sweet taste. The Damsel’s continue to get a bit greener even while they’re sitting in the fridge.

The Damsel stores her sprouts in a ziploc bag that isn’t zipped shut, but is lightly closed. They stay good for two weeks this way.

Mmm, hay!

Making herbal vinegar is as easy as kindergarten.

It’s up to you which kind of herbs to use. What herbs do you love? Start there. The Damsel loves sage, and has a boatload of it, so there you have it.

Take fresh, washed herbs. Tear large leaves into pieces–this gets more herbal goodness into the vinegar. Fill a container (such as a glass jar) to the top. Any size jar is fine, from tiny to large–just choose according to how many herbs you have.  Smell your fingers. Mmmm.

Pour apple cider vinegar over the herbs, filling the container to the brim. Stir or poke it a bit to make sure there are no hidden air pockets, and add more vinegar if necessary.

Screw on the lid. If it’s metal, first place a sandwich baggie, or something similar, over the top and then put on the lid. Metal and vinegar just don’t get along. Divide and conquer!

Wait. In about six weeks, the vinegar is ready to use. You can strain it out into something else, or use it right from the jar you made it in. You can use it any way you’d use flavored vinegar–for salads, bread dipping, or even for making your own mayonnaise.

Pour this into one of those fancy little bottles like they sell at Hobby Lobby, and you’ve got a simple, cheap, yet classy gift.

You could even be oh-so-brave and combine different types herbs. Or even add cloves of garlic. Do you dare?

A year later, she’s here to tell you she LOVES this method now. She used the dried tomatoes all year long and she is SOLD. This way has so many advantages.

• You don’t have to peel them. Not only is it a lot less work, but there’s nutrition in them there skins.
• No fooling around with boiling water. No steamy kitchen.
• No buying bottles, lids, or other canning crap.
• No worrying about whether you canned the stuff correctly…the food poisoning terror eliminated.
• No trying to squeeze bottles onto an already bulging shelf. A huge amount of tomatoes stores in a ridiculously small space.

Don’t get the Damsel wrong. She still cans tomatoes the regular way. But she’s surprised how much she likes using dried tomatoes for making sauces. It’s so easy. You just put the dried tomatoes into the blender with water and rev it up. You can instantly adjust the thick or thinness of the sauce by putting more or less water. So you can have instant tomato paste, or sauce. Your choice.

The disadvantage is there isn’t an easy way of making anything but a smooth sauce. If you want chunks of tomatoes, use regular canned tomatoes, or you’ll need to go to the extra step of soaking and chopping the dried tomatoes…and it still might not come out just the way you are hoping. The Damsel advises experimentation with this before inviting over the boss for dinner.

The Damsel nearly always slices in rounds now…the tomatoes dry faster, and who cares how they look, when they’re just getting blended up?

Instead of using all that brain space for fretting about how her tomatoes look, she’s saving it for more important things…like what kind of dark chocolate to buy.

The Damsel was just sent this list of 50 websites with canning information. She found the list to be quite thorough. There’s even a website for canning squirrel, because it’s important to do it correctly. After all, you can’t take up your WHOLE freezer with squirrel, so you’ll need to can some. **wink

50 Canning Websites

That’s thorough. Let it be known that the Damsel works hard to make the Old School a good place to be.

When you put stuff in glass jars and seal it, it’s called “canning” or “bottling” or “putting up.” And the easiest thing to “put up,” in the Damsel’s humble opinion, is apricots. So if you’ve been cringing over there, wanting to know how but were too scared, come along. The Damsel’s here to hold your hand.

Canning does require equipment, and the dollars can add up. You might even feel it doesn’t make financial sense. But nearly everything can be bought second-hand (or borrowed, even) and can be used for years.

Here’s what you need:

• waterbath canner with rack
• jar lifter
• canning jars with rings
• canning lids
• Things most people have in their kitchens: a large pan, measuring cups, timer, sugar

Canning supplies are commonly seen at yard sales, and often if you ask around, people will give you things. You see, it takes away their guilt if they think someone will actually use the stuff.

The most expensive part about canning is the fruit. So it really helps if you have one of these:

and it REALLY helps if you have one of these:

exhibit A: Sprog #1 utilizing his tallness

Apricots are the easiest thing to can because there’s not much prep, and they’re pretty hard to mess up.

First, put seven canning jars in the dishwasher, plus seven matching lids and rings, and get them going. (Along with other dishes.) Or, of course you can wash them by hand, but if you use a dishwasher, it’s handy because it keeps them hot and sterile. Take one jar out of the dishwasher at a time as you fill it, closing the door after taking each one out, and you’re good.

But don’t stress. Grandma did fine without, and these jars will get sterilized again later on.

In a large pot, make a sugar syrup. You can make light, medium, or heavy syrup according to your taste. The Damsel has made extra-light syrup before, and although it’s safe, the fruit lost some of its color and texture because sugar is a preservative. So, now the Damsel uses a medium syrup. For medium, add 3 1/4 cups sugar to 5 cups water and heat until the sugar dissolves.

At the same time, fill the water bath canner with water and get ‘er boiling. It takes a while. Most canners have a mark that shows how full it needs to be. The water level needs to be at least a couple of inches over the tops of the jars. But, if you fill the canner really full of water, and then start submerging jars, OH NO water spilling over oh no. Once you find out how full of water the canner needs to be, take note of that level. It will be the same for any waterbath canning project.

Wash the little darlings, in a colander or right in the sink.

Split the apricots in half with your fingers, remove the pit, and place into the jar. It’s traditional to layer them, face down and overlapping. Obviously this is easier with a wide-mouth canning jar. If you have narrow ones, you can fiddle them into position with a fork, or enlist a child. You can just dump them in willy-nilly if you want. Grandma isn’t looking. The Damsel actually tried it both ways, to see if more apricots fit in the jar if they were stacked, and was surprised to find out exactly the same number of apricots fit, either way. So you decide.

Fill the jar to roughly 1/2 inch from the top. Don’t stress, you don’t need to measure.

Pour the syrup over the apricots, once again leaving 1/2 inch headspace. If it looks like there are large air bubbles, release them by sticking a knife carefully down the side of the jar. Wipe the top of the jar with a damp paper towel to remove any syrup that may have dripped.

Grandma used to always boil the lids before putting them on the jars, but the now the thought is that boiling can damage them. So now just wash them in hot water (or dishwasher.) Set on top of the jar and screw on the ring, finger tight. Don’t overtighten.

Place each jar into the waterbath as soon as they are filled. Seven jars make a batch. When you’ve got those done, wait for the water to come to a boil, and start timing 30 minutes. If for some reason the water stops boiling, you have to start the timing over, so that you have 30 minutes of continuous boil.

When the time is up, use the jar lifter to take the jars from the canner and put on a dishtowel on your counter to cool. Over the next couple of hours, you should hear “plink, plink” as the jars form a seal. After they are cool, check the seals by pressing down on the center of the lid. If it pops up and down, it has not sealed. Either put them in the fridge to eat soon, or reprocess by putting on a new lid and doing the 30-minute waterbath again. Don’t cry. It’s really common for one or two jars to not seal. It’s not your fault. It’s the Canning Demon.

Write the year on the lid with a sharpie, if you’d like. Also, it’s normal for the apricots to float to the top of the jar after they are processed.

There’s something so satisfying about seeing these jars sitting on the counter. The Damsel has been known to leave them there for days before taking them down to the cellar.

When you make jam or jelly, you need something to make it jell. Most folks use commercial pectin–a product extracted from fruit–usually powdered (although liquid pectin is available). But. BUT.

What if it was doomsday and there was no pectin in the stores? WHAT WOULD WE DO?????

The trick of making your own pectin was common knowledge in the olden days. Now, practically no one even knows it’s possible. The Damsel just learned it’s actually not that hard, especially if you have one of these trees:

If you have an apple tree you need to thin, (like described in this thinning apples post) the sacrificial baby apples can be used to make pectin. Their short lives were not in vain!

You can also use crab apples…apparently they make excellent pectin, and no one feels too sad about not getting to eat them. People have even used apple peelings.

Take your little apples, wash them, cut them in half if they are on the big side, and throw them whole into a pot.

Add water to the pot until the apples are nearly covered. Cook on medium heat for a long time. At least an hour, until the apples look sort of like bizarre lumpy applesauce, full of stems and skins and so on. Stuff no self respecting applesauce would normally have.

Stretch some cheesecloth (or a mesh strainer) over a container and let the cooked apples drip a couple of hours, or overnight. You could stir them lightly to get a few more drops, but don’t press them. That will make the pectin cloudy. It won’t hurt its jelling ability but cloudy pectin? Seriously?

After you’ve waited all you’re going to wait on the dripping, pour the liquid off into a container. You can use it right now to make jam or jelly, or it can sit in the fridge a couple of weeks till you’re ready.  Some people cook up enough to make it worth processing it in a canner. (email mhovley at gmail dot com for instructions)

Here’s how to test if your pectin is the right strength: Pour a little rubbing alcohol into a dish. Pour in a teaspoon or so of pectin. Wait one minute. Scoop the pectin with a fork.

The pectin will cling to the fork in a glob if it is “strong” enough. If it runs off the tines of the fork, put it in a pan and boil it till it reduces, let cool, and repeat the rubbing alcohol test. (The pectin needs to be cool.)

And for heaven’s sake, don’t taste the “test.” It’s rubbing alcohol, people! Does the Damsel have to tell you everything?

Now, how do you use the stuff? Because every batch of pectin is a little different, and different kinds of fruit jell better, there’s no hard and fast rule. But here’s a place to start–mix 1/4 to 1/3 cup of pectin per cup of crushed fruit (or juice, if you’re making jelly). Then stir in sugar equal to the amount of pectin+fruit. Boil until it foams. Skim that stuff off, but don’t fuss.

Jam doesn’t set until it’s cool, so it’s hard to tell if things are okay. If you’d rather not wait around, scoop a little out in a spoon and hold an ice cube on its back. (Normally the Damsel doesn’t advise holding an ice cube on someone’s back. This is mean. Spoons don’t care though.)

If it’s still runny, add more sugar and pectin and reboil. Some people say adding lemon juice also helps pectin to work better. And, there’s always this rescue runny jam post, for any kind of runny jam, whether made with commercial pectin or homemade.

Now celebrate! Making your own pectin is really kickin’ it old school.

The Damsel would like to gently insist that you flash freeze your raspberry treasure. Do it this way:

1. Wash the berries. This means put them into a strainer and rinse well with cold water.

2. Let them drain a bit.

3. Spread them out in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Careful! Raspberries are very fragile!

4. Put the cookie sheet, uncovered, into the freezer. Have a lie-down or clean a bathroom. Your choice.

5. When the raspberries are hard-frozen, sweep them off the cookie sheet into ziplock bags or freezer containers. You may need to nudge them off the cookie sheet with a pancake turner or something. Put the bags or containers into the freezer until you want to eat them.

Before the Damsel learned about flash freezing, she’d just put the freshly washed berries directly into a ziplock and froze them that way. But if she wanted to use a recipe that required say, one cup of raspberries, she’d quietly cry for a minute or two, because the frozen raspberries would have become a single, solid frozen block. She’d have to thaw the whole thing or attempt to ice-pick the thing into pieces. Sometimes she just couldn’t face it.

But because you know better and flash froze them, they will stay individual. You’ll be able to take out just what you need, without having to face a discouraging frozen mass. You can use them all year long for smoothies, desserts, or just popping into your mouth.

You can use this method for practically anything little you want to freeze. This is the Damsel’s wish.

This is a funny picture, because it looks like the Damsel is tightly clutching a bunch of grapes, about to yank them off the vine. That would be a silly way to pick grapes because of smashage and droppage. Rather, she is gently holding the bunch while clipping the stem with nippers.

The Damsel likes picking grapes because it brings back warm memories of childhood, and plus, being outside on a sunny autumn day is tops. Her most favorite way to pick grapes is to go tandem with the Knight. He holds up the vines while she picks. Teamwork!

Now then. Making the stuff into juice is simple as kindergarten. There are other methods, such as stomping with bare feet, but the Damsel really, really likes this way:

This gadget is a steam juicer. The Damsel highly recommends its addition to your arsenal. Grape juice is only the beginning of what it can do, and it makes doing grape juice easy-peasy.

Simply dump the freshly picked grapes–stems and all–into the juicer’s insert, the one with holes in it. It sort of looks like a big colander. Rinse, but don’t stress. Everything is going to get very hot and sterile soon. The Damsel’s main goal is to rinse off spiders.

Now you just put the juicer together. You fill the bottom pan with water and stack the rest on top, turn on the heat, and wait. As you can see the Damsel’s juicer (called “the still”, lol) is way old. It was old when the Damsel was a kid, and it still works fine. After about two hours, you press open the clamp on the hose and juice flows out. You can drain the juice into a pitcher, or straight into a canning jar as you see here. (The Damsel has the canning jar set inside a pot, sitting on a chair, just in case it spills. She has learned through sad experience that grape juice isn’t nice to light-colored grout)

The juice is boiling hot so be careful. If you drain it straight into a canning jar, put the lid on straight away, and it will probably seal itself because of the heat. Technically you should still process the bottles in a waterbath canner for 30 minutes. A juicer-full of grapes will yield about 4 quarts of juice.

Grape juice is the easiest canning project. No peeling, slicing, blanching, or standing for hours hunched over a sink. And with a steam juicer, your feet stay non purple. Win-win.

The only thing the Damsel likes about beets is that they are sort of purple. Even so, she pickles the little devils for the rest of the weirdos in the family.

It’s pretty easy. Starting from scratch, by which she means beets that have been freshly pulled out of the garden, you wash them, hack off the tops leaving a couple of inches, and leave the root intact. If the beets are young, save the greens for eating…just steam them like spinach. The Damsel likes to use little beets–golf ball size or so–but you can cut large ones into quarters if you need to. (If you use canned beets, skip to the part about making a vinegar-spice mixture)

Put the beets in a pot with a bunch of water. Pour in a glug of vinegar (it’s said it preserves their color) and cook for about 30 minutes, until fork tender.

Now trim off both the stem end and root end, and sort of rub the thing between your fingers under running water. The skin should slip off. Purple beet liquid will abound. Don’t get it on your new shirt from American Eagle. People actually use beet as a natural dye, so it’s tricky to get out. (Bleach works.)

For about 3 quarts of beets, measure 3 1/2 cups of vinegar into a pot. (Same pot as before if you want–just rinse it out) You can half or double the recipe if you need. And no, it’s not necessary to have tortilla strips right there handy but sometimes it helps.

Throw in two cinnamon sticks, feeling fancy and gourmet as you do so.

And a tablespoon of whole allspice. The Damsel has used powdered allspice, but the fancy-gourmet feeling was significantly less. Now 2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, 1 1/2 cups water and oh, yeah,  the beets. Let simmer for 5 minutes or so.

Scoop the beets into a container such as a canning jar. If you have large pieces, put them in first, then fill in with smaller ones, so more will fit.

Pour in the vinegar-spice cooking liquid until the beets are submerged. You can throw away the cinnamon sticks, but the whole allspice can go right in with the beets. Fancy! Cover and wait a day or so before eating. Keep them in the fridge unless you want to process them in a canner by waterbathing for 30 minutes.

This is a very cool two-quart canning jar, like you don’t see around much anymore. The Damsel loves this jar, even if it has pickled beets in it.

For some reason, the Knight in Shining Armor must have a bite of pickled beet along with every bite of pork. He thinks he got hooked on this habit in Denmark when he was a missionary there. But how does that explain the sprogs liking them too? The Damsel feels so alone.

He mailed the Damsel a big, heavy box. To her surprise, inside was two GINORMOUS sunflower heads. He’d grown them himself. She pictured they’d be lighter, but with their payload of seeds, they were quite heavy.

Bro-in-law asked for a tutorial on how to harvest and roast the seeds, and he asked so nicely that the Damsel could not refuse.

A sunflower head is ready to cut when the back is yellow and the seeds come out readily. Rub your hand across its face to loosen the dried petals and “debris” before starting in on the seeds.

Now sit yourself down and start picking seeds. Sometimes they’ll come out by rubbing your fingers across them; others may need a little more coaxing. This is a perfect job for a couple of sprog. Sort through and pick out bug-eaten or otherwise unappetizing-looking seeds, but don’t obsess.

The Damsel always wondered why nuts “salted, roasted in the shell” could be salty inside. She learned this is accomplished by soaking the little darlings in salt water.

Mix about 1/4 cup salt per quart of water. The Damsel needed 2 quarts for this prodigious crop of seeds. Stir till dissolved.

Pour the seeds into the salt water. The Damsel was concerned because the seeds floated, and she would have felt better about things if they were submerged. She stirred them a few times, but next time she might put a weighted plate on top of the seeds to hold them under water. Leave for 24 hours.

So many of these old school thingies require waiting. The Damsel hates waiting.

Drain the seeds and rinse briefly, then pat dry with a clean dishcloth. Spread the seeds in a single layer on a rimmed cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, stirring every ten minutes. The Damsel was required to do two batches, but she survived.

She also has come to realize that being a sunflower seed sheller would be a tedious job. Please tell her there is a machine for that.