Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I have been busy in meat space doing people things. Here is a video of Seth’s kittens to make up for my absence:
Also, this has been a great summer for birds. I went to the fern today to take a picture of you all, and the third bird harvest had already been completed and they were gone! Grand total of 11 birbs hatched on the front porch this summer. Not bad.
Today I had to drive to the big city to drop Tammy off, and it was around lunchtime, so I stopped at a place I go to about twice a year, a little hole in the wall that sells nothing but dirty water hot dogs:
That little blue thing- that’s basically it. I have no idea what is in the rest of the house it is attached to, but that blue front is the whole place. You open the door, run right into a counter with about 4 stools and they make your dogs right there. And they are amazing.
Now when I say dirty water dogs, I mean just plain old dogs simmering in a tepid pool of gray water. And these are not artisanal dogs or any shit like that. We’re not talking all beef franks with a natural casing. We’re talking real American hot dogs made out of all the shit they can’t put into a chicken nugget or that is too low quality to make scrapple or sausage, mash it all together into a pink slime with an assload of chemicals, and throw it into something resembling a casing. If you read the label it will tell you made from chicken, turkey, pork and a list of other stuff, but they could really just write “lol animals and shit” because YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GETTING AND YOU DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
They then take the dog, put it in a sad, damp bun- you know the kind, like wonder bread but with less lust for life, the kind you see on the bottom shelf of your grocery store bread aisle that come in an eight pack and half of them have inevitably been crushed or stepped on while stocking them and the sign says “59 cents but will negotiate” in magic marker on one of those pink stars.
Once in the bun-like object, it is covered with an all “meat” chili that comes in mild, medium, or hot. I don’t know if it’s actually meat- it could be soy or something else, all I know is there is nothing as natural as a bean anywhere in it. We’ll just call it meatlike chili sauce. On top of that, if you like, and I do, they will top it with an overly creamy cole slaw. The end product looks like this:
And they are fucking fantastic. I could probably shove an entire one in my fat face and eat the whole thing in one bite, but I don’t because you gotta savor this shit. And I love them. But I only get them about every six months, because while they are amazing, in about 45 minutes, I will have the world’s worst heartburn and sometimes awful things happen later on.
But it’s totally fucking worth it.
As I mentioned last night, today was sauce day. As always, this is more for me than you all, as I will look this up next year to refresh my memory before doing it again- you all are just along for the ride. Started last night with a ton of tomatoes I had frozen over the last couple OF months (love you eemom):
They mostly thawed over night and I threw them into big pots to start the cookdown:
Now everybody will tell you different amounts of time to cook them down, I just did it for about 2 hours, constantly stirring because you simply can not let it scorch or you have ruined the entire batch. STIR, STIR, STIR. Once the pulp and everything has cooked down into a bubbly brew, run it through your food mill:
If you are like me, you probably don’t have a dozen 24 qt stock pots, I have just the one and the pot for canning, so I strained them into several smaller pots, washed the big 24 qt stock pot I originally used, then transferred everything back into that. Then I did the canning pot full of tomatoes, and after cooking down and removing all the seeds and peels, everything transferred to the 24 qt stock pot and filled it all the way to the top.
At this point, Tammy and I just took 30 minute shifts stirring as we cooked it down. I cooked it down a solid6-8 inches to let it thicken, because I didn’t want to can tomato juice. This took the bulk of the afternoon, and both of us got our workout in.
QUICK SIDEBAR- Are there any carpenters who want to make me a 24″ wooden spoon. I hate the flimsy ass wooden spoons on amazon, I need something longer than the traditional ones, and I need something small than a 4 foot cajun paddle.
While cooking down the sauce, we prepped the mason jars:
I cut some basil from the garden, washed it, and placed it in each jar. Also, in three of them, Tammy wanted to try a clove of garlic, so three of them got that and the basil.
When the sauce is finally cooked down to where you want it, grab your funnel and ladle it into each jar stopping below the neck:
Wipe off the tops of the jars with a damp cloth, and place a lid and a ring on each one (you should have the lids heated in a hot water bath so you get a good seal), and hand tighten the ring. Then place them in the canner and wait for it to get to a rolling boil, and then process it for 40 minutes. Here is your finished product:
In total, we got 17 quarts of sauce. I thought about running the sauce through the chinois after it went through the food mill, but decided I didn’t care if there were a few seeds- YMMV. I’m not trying to win the damned state fair. And remember, NONE of this is seasoned (other than the basil). That way you can just pull it out and use it and tailor the sauce to your tastes.
As always, the dogs were a giant help:
And because Tammy is a Rosie Whisperer, here is a closeup of Rosie ACTUALLY LOOKING AT THE DAMNED CAMERA:
Spent the day running around- picked up Tammy, dropped off medicine for his dogs and visited his cats, hit Lowe’s for some paint for the front porch, came home, then headed to the Bridgeville Farmer’s market to get some things, then to Chico Fiesta for dinner, and now back home to prep for tomorrow. First up, Samantha and Charlie helped us pick out paint:
Tomorrow we deal with this:
That’s 16 gallon bags of tomatoes that will turn into sauce tomorrow. Curious to see how it turns out.
I’ll post some kitten pics tomorrow, but for now I am pooped.
So Seth was able to contact the rescue people, and they gave him a trap, which she ignored last night because he had fed the hell out of her, but this morning he put some chicken in it, came back a bit later, and had captured her. She and her kittens are now crated upstairs in his house:
There are also FIVE kittens and not three. Seth reports that the mother is not, in fact, feral, and has had human contact because now that she and the kittens are safe, she has been coming up to Seth and letting him pet her. Seth is already in love and it would not surprise me if he keeps the momma and several of the kittens. His working philosophy is you don’t go out and get cats, you just keep the ones that show up to you. He’s been dying to have a cat around since Speak and Whisper both died, so we are hoping things work out with his dog Boghan.
He also has given them amazing names already- he has named them “white feet” and “grey feet” and “white stripe” as featured here:
OMG WOULD YOU LOOK AT THOSE PINK TOES!
At any rate, I was giving him shit about the names and he just said they were temporary, and we both agreed that my stupid ass would have named them Gary and Fred and Agnes and never been able to tell them apart, so maybe short term descriptive names are for the best.
In other news, I went to the strip district in Pittsburgh to get some things for my dad and to pick up some olive oil (It’s cheaper for me to drive 30 miles to pick up a gallon of imported olive oil at 25 bucks than it is for me to drive 5 miles and get half that in whatever shit Bertolli is passing off as olive oil), and on the way home I stopped by a farm and orchard I had never been to called Simmons Farm. I had no intention of buying anything but then discovered that they were basically GIVING away bruised peaches for 35 bucks a bushel. That’s an absurd price. So, of course I bought them.
When I got home I discovered that much to my surprise, what they were passing off as bruised peaches are really just mostly oddly shapen or ugly peaches. Some were misshapen, some had some bruises, many were smaller than average (so I assume those fell prematurely when they were picking other ones and they just threw them in the shitty peach bin), etc. All told, there were only about 20 peaches that had portions of them that were unusable. I carved those up and threw the bad parts over the fence for the deer that come by every night and put the good parts in an 8 qt cambro and refrigerated them until tomorrow, and I will make jam with them. When the others ripen, I will can them. I might try to dehydrate some, too, for snacking.
Send money to my paypal account and buy stock in mason jars, I have a problem. In all seriousness, though, 35 dollars for a bushel is just ridiculous. Prepared, that’s like 300 bucks worth of product, and my parents want some more, my sister will want some, etc. And I like the activity and the thought of saving all that money and using something that might have been thrown away.
*** Update ***
Speaking of bruised peaches, my friend had his dog Zero fixed, and the vet told him to ice his sack five times a day for 20 minutes. I’ve never had to do this so I have no idea if the vet was just messing with him, but it’s happening and this picture is equal parts sweet and hysterical:
My Brother’s Kittens Update and Bruised PeachesPost + Comments (36)
Again, I am writing this basically for me so I have a refresher what I did for next year. If you see something I am doing wrong, correct me!
Easy day today- pickles and sun dried tomatoes. Sun dried tomatoes first. I actually started drying yesterday, and that was a mistake. I thought six hours would be enough, and it was not, so next year I am going to start first thing in the morning. I have a Nesco dehydrator I bought a few years back to make jerky and I never used it and it just languished in the basement, so I brought it up and used it. First step was to select big round beefsteak tomatoes so I could have thick, wide slices. I washed the tomatoes, and cut them in about 3/4 inch strips (and next time I may even do wider!) and placed them on the dehydrator- I set it at 135 degrees, let it go six hours, and it was not done, but I was ready for bed, so I put them in the fridge. Took them out first thing this morning, and let them go. I checked every hour or so near the end, and felt for any moisture, and on slices that had none, I took them out. Continue this until finished.
The next step is a quick vinegar bath.
Throw one in the red wine vinegar, flip it so both sides get wet, shake it off, and throw it into a container with olive oil on the bottom. As you add tomatoes, add oil to keep them covered until you are done. I threw in a little basil from the garden:
I’ll transfer these to glass containers when I am done making them this year. I should note that a lot of people get rid of the seeds and I do not know why. I don’t have diverticulitis so YOLO.
Pickles were easy, too.
Sterilize your jars in the canner with a splash of vinegar to keep from getting hard water spots. Dump all your cukes into the sink, and wash them thoroughly. While they are soaking, start making your pickling juice. I used a couple cups of distilled white vinegar, water, some pickling spices, some black peppercorns, some dried chilis, salt, and brought it to a boil on the stove.
While that was coming to a boil, I cut a tiny sliver off the ends of the pickles after washing them. I stuffed them into all the jars, poured the hot brine in, threw in a sprig of dill in each, put my lids and rings on, and gave them a 20 minute process. I did that for six of them. For two of them, I let the pickling brine cool to room temp, and then poured the juice in, put lids on them, and just put them in the fridge. I’ll eat those and they will stay crisper without cooking them. Pickles keep forever uncooked, but I just don’t have room in my fridge for eight quarts of pickles. The finished product:
I hadn’t planned to do more than 2 quarts, but I was at the farmers market at closing time and the lady just wanted to get rid of them so she gave me a peck for five bucks. Also, this is the first year I have had any success growing dill- it always flowers on me- the trick is to just keep it in the shade, so mine is growing in a planter on the front porch on a portion that gets only a couple hours of morning sun every day.
Easy day today- only about 90 minutes in the kitchen total.
In the Kitchen With John- Pickles and Sun Dried TomatoesPost + Comments (61)
21 qts of peaches, 11 qts of sauerkraut, 15 jars of jelly, and the two qts of stock Tammy made which we can now save for a special soup where it will really shine.
The peach jelly is really the wild card here- I have never made jelly before because I don’t much care for it (I like jams and preserves more). I used the right amounts of sugar and pectin, but it still seemed runny after canning. Hope it sets up or Tammy is going to be drinking a SHITLOAD of peach margaritas.
I’m tired and need to drink a gallon of water, so I will post the pics of the process tomorrow if I have time. I have a lot of work in the garden to do tomorrow.
Hey all, spent the morning canning peaches, and though I would write this up for both me and you. That way, if any of you want to give it a go, you can try what I have learned from my dad and from reading and watching videos, and also I will have this to read next year before I do it again so I don’t forget anything and ruin any product.
Obviously the first thing is to source your peaches. I got mine on Monday, and I placed them all stem side down on my counter to ripen.
They told me the name of the peach but I will be damned if I can remember. At any rate, the peaches are ripe, so today was the day or I would start to have spoilage and then get fruit flies I would NEVER BE ABLE TO GET RID OF. So I filled my canner with hot water and a little vinegar and started sterilizing jars, filled up my 24 qt stock pot halfway to scald the peaches, put all the rings and lids in a pot to bring to a simmer, created a simple syrup in another stock pot, cleared off my workspace, sharpened my knives, fill the sink with ice and water, and fill another large pot with cold water and an appropriate ratio of fruitfresh produce powder. Here’s a picture of the simple syrup:
I like a light simple syrup made with something other than sugar because these peaches are super sweet already, but a little sweetener helps round it out a bit. I also made more than I did the last time, because I really like drinking the ice cold syrup, and since it is no extra calories because I am not using sugar, I will fill the jars just a little bit less so I can enjoy that delicious peachy nectar.
So I have all four burners rocking, the sink is prepped, and now it is time to get down to business. Take every peach, and make a circular incision across the top of the peach in line with the natural seam of the peach. Then make another incision across the top to quarter the peach. It should look something like this:
When you have a bowl of them done, throw them in the not quite boiling water for a minute to scald them:
A lot of people wash their peaches before doing this, but I see no point- this can be accomplished at the same time as scalding. If that grosses you out, fine, wash your damned peaches first and don’t eat mine. As you can see, after a minute,the peaches change color a little and you see a lot of the fuzz come off.
This is a very important stage for quality control- CAREFULLY ladle them out into the ice bath. The peach is a delicate fruit to begin with, and you have made it mushy by near boiling it, so if you are rough you will lose a lot of fruit and have an ugly product. Go ahead and do this with a bunch of fruit, then go back to quartering and repeat the process until you have a sink full of chilled fruit:
You will read some people who will say you don’t have to have an ice bath and it is not important, I think that is nonsense. I didn’t use enough ice the last time, and my results were not as good as today. The ice bath immediately firms the peach back up and makes it easier to twist the fruit with your palms to get rid of the pit. If you just use water, it will not get the same level of firmness back and be a mushy mess to work with. The last time I stored ice from the freezer for a few days, and it just wasn’t enough, so this morning I went and got a 22lb of ice from the general store.
Pit all of the fruit, put it on the cutting board, and then get down to peeling and putting the fruit in the water bath with fruit fresh powder:
As you can see, I keep all the skins and just throw the pits back into the ice bath to deal with later. At this point, if you are doing a lot of fruit, every time the water bath fills up, fill a couple of your sterilized jars, move them aside and cover them with something (I use kitchen towels) so no fruit flies or anything else can get in them. This is also an important time to use your pairing knife to get rid of imperfections on the fruit slices (just throw them in with the peels- we’ll use it later). Just continue doing this until you have all your jars filled:
At this point, take your simple syrup off the burner (you can also turn off the boiling water for scalding- just look over the deck before you dump it because you don’t want to boil Steve who may be lounging below) and put it on a trivet. Slowly ladle the simple syrup into the jar, and fill it to the neck line. You don’t want to overfill. Do this for all of them. At this point, I put a little squeeze of lemon in each jar, and for half of them I put a teaspoon of good vanilla extract in half the jars. You can use an actual vanilla bean, but I am not spending that kind of money for something that is going to only marginally improve what is already amazing.
You then want to tap every jar on the counter and use a spatula to make sure there no air bubbles (there shouldn’t really be with the simple syrup in there) and then with a clean moist dish towel, gently wipe the lid of every jar. Grab your pot full of lids and rings, and use the magnet to put a lid on each one. Gently screw the ring on to hand tightness.
Place your jars in the water bath canner with an inch of water covering them, and bring it to a boil:
Once it comes to a boil, set a timer for thirty minutes. I’m not using the pressure cooker for these because there is no need to do so.
And that is that. While everything is rotating through the bath, I am packing the sauerkraut that I cleaned up (I’ll post that process later) and boiling down the peels for jelly:
DON’T THROW OUT YOUR PEELS!
*Obviously there are lots of ways to do this- this is how I am doing it. And no, you don’t have to be an insane crazy person and do this a bushel at a time. If you want less, just buy fewer peaches. I like doing it, though, like the price when you do it in bulk, and want to share with friends and family.
In the Kitchen With John- Canning PeachesPost + Comments (69)
I HAVE VERY EXCITING NEWS.
I went to water the ferns on the front porch and a momma bird flew out of one and I had not seen a bird in there all summer and I took the plant down looked and there was a nest and a baby hatchling. It is SUPER new as in no feathers so I am going to wait a week and maybe I will get some pics.
Also, I have not motivation to write about politics, but I did love Buttigieg last night pointing out something that needs to be said more often:
“It is time to stop worrying about what the Republicans will say. If we embrace a far-left agenda, they’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists,” Buttigieg said, earning applause from those in attendance.
Barack Obama, were he white, would have been a liberal Republican in many regards thirty years ago. And you saw how he was treated.
After Obama was elected, it was determined that the previous administration, whose crimes were at the time consider unprecedented, should not be investigated and prosecuted. And I agreed with it- Obama wanted a fresh start and didn’t want to poison the well. Then the Republicans shit in the well, poured lsd and and jet fuel in it. And now we are faced with an even more lawless administration.
The Republicans, seeing that they never get punished for their misdeeds, went full ahead on their crazy crime spree, and now are appointing one of their own to prosecute the lawkeepers:
Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.), President Trump’s pick to serve as the next director of national intelligence, has made his name in Congress as one of the GOP’s most dogged critics of perceived anti-Trump bias at the FBI and in the special counsel’s investigation of his alleged Russia ties.
Ratcliffe, who was first elected to the House in 2014, sits on the powerful House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, both of which are investigating President Trump for suspected financial crimes, foreign collusion and obstruction of justice. It is from that perch that Ratcliffe last week steered one of the more memorable Republican exchanges with former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III during public hearings, accusing him of violating “every principle in the most sacred of traditions” of prosecutors by writing “180 pages about decisions that weren’t reached, about potential crimes that weren’t charged or decided.”
The next time a Democrat is in power, full speed ahead and some motherfuckers need to go to jail. You can start with soft targets like Wilbur Ross if the decrepit fucker is still wheezing. Not only take the gloves off, but throw them away or these ruthless motherfuckers in the Republican mob will just keep on keeping on.
And, of course, ITMFA.
Sooooo… I finished dinner, carved the chicken and picked off all the meat and put it in the fridge for chicken salad, and then threw the bones in the stock pot and started cooking it down into stock. Then I can make some chicken lentil soup tomorrow.
And as I was doing it, I started to think- can I can soup instead of freezing it? And I googled it, and you can and it is quite east. So basically, send mason jars and lids, please, so I can continue with my new addiction.
It pisses off all the right people, and I get a ton of people who always say something when they see my subversive stickers. Beercan chicken for dinner:
Chicken came from a buddy down the road- was moist as hell. Grilled the corn in the husk and picked the tomatoes while it all cooked. As I noted on the twitter machine, I am eating 5-8 tomatoes a day now and still freezing a ton. Some summers I get sores on the inside of my mouth from eating too many. Totally worth it, though.
Truck Fump!
Remember the other day I went to the orchard and got a bunch of peaches? These peaches, to be exact:
Well, I turned them stem side down, laid them all out, and let time do it’s job for a couple days, and today I processed them all. Lemme tell you- a bushel of peaches is a project. First you have to sort them (perfectly good, a few mushy parts, half rotten). Then you gotta wash them. Then you gotta quarter them while leaving them on the pit, and scald them for a minute. Then an ice bath. Then when in the ice path, you gotta slow get the four quarters separated from the pit without ruining the fruit (the skins come off in the process). The videos I watched had these ladies with tiny hands who were able to just massage them with their palms and they would come apart. I have bear claws, so it was a little harder.
I then put all the really good quartered peaches in sterilized jars. The not so good ones but still edible I threw in a pot for jam, the skins and the pits went into a separate pot for jelly. While I was adding a simple syrup to the jars for canning, I cooked down the jam peaches, got the canner up to a boil, and started cooking down the peels for jelly. For half the canned peaches, I used just a raw sugar. For the other half, I used a monkfruit extract so I can give a bunch to dad to take to South Carolina over winter and have with his cottage cheese in the morning. He doesn’t know this, and it is going to be a surprise, so don’t tell him. If you are worried he will see it in this post and ruin the surprise, don’t worry- he does not read this blog because “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO USE SUCH FOUL LANGUAGE YOU HAVE A BETTER VOCABULARY THAT THAT AND WHY ALL THE VULGAR IMAGERY AREN’T YOU ASHAMED TO WRITE LIKE THAT WE RAISED YOU BETTER WHAT IF MY FRIENDS DO A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR JOHN COLE AND FIND YOU AND THINK IT IS ME!”
At any rate, the whole thing took about 6-7 hours, and here are the results:
27 quarts of canned peaches
12 jars of peach jam
and not showing, about 8 jars of peach jelly
I ran out of steam and didn’t feel like filtering the jelly through cheesecloth a half dozen times tonight, so it is in the fridge and I will do it tomorrow.
All in all, it was a fun project. Two of the canned peaches did not seal, so I put them in the fridge and will have some tomorrow. If the prices drop, I think I might get another bushel and make more to give away to friends for the holiday. All told, this was about 80 bucks worth of produce, jars, and sugar, and I think I turned it into over 300 dollars worth of value.
I also quartered three more gallon bags full of tomatoes and put them in the freezer. I’m up to about 8 gallons of tomatoes and maybe 1/3 through the season. Sauce and salsa day is going to be a long one when I do it.
In Case You Ever Wondered What A Bushel of Peaches Looks Like ProcessedPost + Comments (107)
Today was (and still is) a beautiful day- 70 degrees, breezy, blue skies, especially since the last few days it has been hotter than the surface of the sun. The orchard called me (I had left my number) and they had a bushel of peaches ready for me, so I grabbed Breyana (my traveling partner) and off we went. We first mad a pit stop at a diner in Washington, Pa, called the Doghouse Diner, which is a nice little greasy spoon kinda place. I had two eggs over easy, some corned beef hash, and some hash browns, and Breyana ate an Italian sub bigger than her head:
We then ventured forth to the orchard/farm store, and I picked up my peaches, and a bunch of stuff for neighbors (corn, cabbage, etc.). Guess what I am doing tomorrow:
And just as a reminder for those of you who live out west or in urban hellholes, here is a reminder of what it looks like to live in a rain forest and it is green and lush (and will stay this way until October):
If you embiggen the photo, you will notice that the sunflowers back by the shed are now approaching 7-8′ tall. And the willow tree has doubled in size since last year. Also, check out these cherry tomatoes from the garden- they look fake they are so beautiful!
Finally, a bonus Rosie picture:
Mueller should tell him to pound salt:
Justice Department officials have communicated to Robert Mueller that the department expects him to limit his congressional testimony this week to the public findings of his 448-page report, according to one current and one former U.S. official familiar with the preparations.
In extensive discussions since the former special counsel was subpoenaed to testify on June 25, department officials have emphasized that they consider any evidence he gathered throughout the course of his investigation to be “presumptively privileged” and shielded from public disclosure.
In the future, the reports showing the lengths McConnell and Barr went to protect this man are going to be mind-boggling.