Home canning: inventory before new canning season

While I am trying to take it easy nursing my sprained ankle I decided to check out my home can food storage.  It is that time of the year that home grown vegetables and fruits from local orchards are available.  My garden didn't do so well this year so I have to rely on the farmers market and local fruit stands to get my supplies. I wanted to see what I need to add to our food storage before I jump into canning this year.

 Here are few reasons why I practice home canning.
1. I am trying to be obedient.  Our church leaders counselled us to be self reliant, grow a garden, and have a food storage.  
2. I know what goes into my food.  I try to avoid highly processed food whenever possible and growing my own food and home canning help me to do that.
3. It just tastes better.  I will never go back to store bought canned pineapples.
4. It gives me an opportunity to teach my daughters homemaking skills but more importantly I love spending time with them in the kitchen. (Now they are all grown and busy with their own life I don't get to do that very often)
5. I get a sense of accomplishment, joy and satisfaction from knowing that we have food to eat.

    

Last year I bought some pineapples for $1.00 each.  It was a really good deal and this is our last jar.  I will definitely watch out for sales like that again.  It was absolutely delicious.

This is sweet pickle relish.  I have been canning this for about 10 years.  I still have four jars left so not making them this year.

Apple sauce.  I make this for my daughter who is an extremely picky eater.  I am surprised that we still have some left because she can eat the whole jar in a few days.  I use mixed apple for this with touch of cinnamon and no sugar. 

  

 BBQ beans. Oh my goodness this is one of our family's favorite.  Very easy recipe and if you are looking for good side dish to go with your meat this is it.

 Candy carrot.  This here is the proof that I love my husband.  No one in our family eats this other than my husband.

Peaches, we love them.  We make peach milk shakes, use them in crepes, and eat them with cottage cheese.

 Pears, I canned them for the first time last year and we only used few jars so I am crossing this out from our list of thing to restock.

Salsa, we have plenty of them.  

 Spicy pickle beans,  we used to like them and I made them every year.. maybe need to take a break from it.  

These are unwanted... I think I made too much of them and flavor are bit too strong for my liking. It is about 3 years old and I don't see them getting used anytime soon.  Time to make room for other goodies.  So with a heavy heart, good bye pickled green tomatoes.


The things I learned from canning
1. Can what your family will eat.
2. Study and follow the instruction very carefully.
3. When in doubt discard the canned food, safety first.

This year I am going to make some pie fillings.  I am dreaming of warm apple pies in cold winter days.  I hope my husband agrees to this plan because he is the one who is going to make the pie crust.

  

Our perfectly terrible backpacking trip

The waterfall we saw while driving to the trail head

My husband and I love to go backpacking.  We usually take one overnight trip in a year. But this year we decided to go for a 5 day trip to the Frank Church wilderness. I am here to tell you that things don't always work our as planned. 

First problem: two days before our trip the road that we need to take to get to the trial head was closed due to a wildfire.  No problem, we decided to head over to McCall and hike to a few different lakes. 

Second problem: at the trail head when we were just about to go to sleep I found out that I brought the wrong bag and what I thought were my hiking boots were actually my dress boots.  We can fix that too. We drove about an hour to get phone service and called our daughters to meet us about an hour from our home with my boots.  Even with help from our girls it was two in the morning when we got back to the trail head.

 Third problem: the trail we were hiking was not maintained at all.  About 5 miles into our hike the trail disappeared altogether and we had to go cross country to find the trail.  While we were wandering around I sprained my ankle really bad and we decided the best thing to do was turn around and go back to the trail head. 

I had to walk about 6 miles with my sprained ankle.  It was slow going and I don't know how I did it.  Now my ankle looks like a stump attached to my foot. Even with the problems we had it was an enjoyable few days.  We were there with some wonderful people, the food was great and what little wilderness we experienced was awesome. 

  

The little creek by the trail head

All packed and ready to go.

I am a very slow  hiker

we sure enjoyed snacking on these huckleberries

We are at home watching the Olympics and instead of enjoying hiking and fishing my husband had to wait on me.  And I am sorry because this is the end of our summer fun.  Until next summer, no more hiking for me.

Trip to the Oregon coast

I love water; any bodies of water.   I love rain, streams, creeks, waterfalls, rivers, lakes and the ocean.  I feel at home when I am near by the water. If I lived in the Avatar world I am pretty sure I would belong to the water tribe.

Our family loves taking a trip to the Oregon coast for a few reasons.  It takes about 12 hours by car, including lunch breaks and a little sight seeing on our way.  We love long drives; we use it as time to reconnect as a family.  As our children get older and busy with jobs and schools we don't see them often as we would like to.  We love sea foods and it is hard to get good fresh sea food where we live. So, yes, we do travel for food.  We love not having a schedule so we can relax and enjoy each others company.     


This is the view from the Vista House.  We took the historic highway along the Columbia Gorge to enjoy the waterfalls.  At the end of the historic highway there is a cute little town called Troutdale and they have a really good Italian restaurant.  Did I say we travel for food?  

After our lunch stop we drove through Portland.  The traffic was so bad It was more like crawling than driving.  But I was able to take a picture of the Portland temple while we were stuck in the traffic so that made it all better.
  

We had a really good dinner by the ocean and while we were driving we saw this light house.  This was the first time I actually saw a light house at work so that was very cool.  

The next morning we went on a hike to the beach. It was about 5 miles round trip.  The trees were beautiful and green, plenty of wild flowers.  But when we got there all we could see was a sand hill in front of the ocean.  We were a little bit disappointed but it was still a lovey hike.

Time to play.  The water was cold and it was a little windy but that didn't stop us.

We saw about 5 whales hanging out by the tide pools.  It was a very successful, unexpected whale watching.  A few years ago we went on a whale watching boat with a local company and only thing we saw was a black shadow for a few seconds.  They said it was a whale but I wasn't sure if it actually was.

It is always fun to check out the tide pools.

Sunset.  It was so cold and windy we had to wait in the car while waiting for the sunset.  In the end we send Mike and Rhiannon (our photographer) out to take some picture for us.
She did an amazing job.

Weekend Camping

We took our daughter and her friend camping over the weekend.  Her friend Ana had never been camping before.  How can that be true? After all we live in Idaho where camping and hiking are normal family activities over the summer.  I am pretty sure most people have some sort of camping story to share.  Boy scout camp, girl scout camp, church camp, or family reunion, there are always plenty of opportunities to go camping.  It was that way with our family, anyway, but somehow Ana never had that.

I found out that there are different kinds/ideas of camping that depend on where you are from or how you grew up.  For example, our sister-in-law used to think anything without room-service is camping (since then she has been reconditioned to the Idaho way of camping). I also found out from a friend who moved to Idaho from New Jersey that camping means sleeping in a tent.  It doesn't matter where, in your back yard or in a resort that comes with room-service, as long as you sleep in a tent, then it is camping. 

So I thought I will share how we do camping in our family. This was a very easy (beginner) camping trip.  My daughter picked this campground, and it had water pumps, outhouses, and waste service.  It was about 30 minutes by car to a store and where we can get signal for our phones.  A perfect place for the first time camper. 

  
We cooked dinner over the camp fire.  We call it a "Tin foil dinner". I know some people call it a "Hobo dinner".  We had steamed salmon with vegetables and some home made bread toasted on the grill. And s'mores for dessert.

  

Nobody was awake enough to take a picture, but for breakfast we had chocolate chip pancakes with bacon, onion, and summer squash cooked over the fire. 

For lunch before we took down the camp we had chicken stir fry with vegetables and baby carrots with hummus.  Ana has a diet restriction so she survived on a lot of steamed broccoli, home made bread, carrots, hummus, and crackers. 

There were plenty of wild flowers to enjoy around the camp ground and on our hike to the nearby hot springs.

We went on a little hike.  There was a great view of the river and the hot springs. 

There are about a dozen small hot pools in the area.  Temperatures range from very hot to lukewarm.  It gets cooler as it gets closer to the river.

This one was my favorite. Under this pretty water fall there is a big enough space for five or six people to soak in the natural hot spring.

When it gets too hot from sitting in the hot pool you can always go by the river to cool off.

Ana had so much fun that she asked us to take her camping again.  Maybe we can take her backpacking next time and show her the real wilderness of Idaho