Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Vegetable Stock, a nice side effect of canning corn

We recently spent a day canning. Started first thing in the morning in the garden, picking corn and shucking it. Nice activity for a lovely summer morning. Then on into the house to cut and can the corn.

The corncobs seemed like too much goodness to just put back in the compost, so we made vegetable stock. Got two big stockpots for the cobs, added a few tomatoes, some green beans, kohlrabi, onions, carrots including their greens, fresh herbs and a few dried. Used our new 21,000 BTU burner and the side burner on our grill to make the stock. Let it cook slowly over several hours, took the stock off, added more water and did it again. And again! In the end we had 26 quarts of stock. We mixed the 3 different batches together so they would all be about the same concentration.

Wonderful start to some soups this winter!

Friday, August 11, 2006

Brined Zucchini Pickless Need More Work

Well, I'm not satisfied with how the brined zucchini pickles turned out. More experimentation is needed. Some possibilities are that they were cut, not whole, and that I may not have had a strong enough brine solution. When I get a chance I'll try some more with other solutions.