Black Eyed Peas with Greens Soup

We had this last night, and tonight, served with pumpernickle bread.  Yummy and very satisfying during this cold snap.

Black Gold - Horse Manure

This batch was a little hotter but will be usable come fall, it's heavy with hay and straw which makes me very happy because I don't have to mix leaves into the manure.

Beans to Soak or not to Soak

I didn't soak the red beans for the Red Bean Soup but did soak them for the Black Bean Soup, the consensus is next time soak the beans! Also I will leave out the ham flavoring the next time I make Red Bean Soup. NOTE: I've heard that adding salt to the soaking beans prevents them from softening properly I don't know if this is true or not.

Tonights Menu

Black bean soup most excellent on a cold snowy day.

John's bowl of black bean soup, over corn bread.

Cranberry Applesauce over corn bread, this is royally delicious!

Black Bean Soup with fresh hot Corn Bread and Cranberry Applesauce.

Black Bean Soup - canned

Soaked black beans that have been drained and rinsed. Partially cooked pork butt roast - it's ok to partially cook as it will be pressure canned for 90 plus minutes under 10 +/- pounds of pressure which yeilds a very tender meat.

I love this old jar it unfortunately had a chip in the rip and I didn't catch that so the jar didn't seal. I guess I have no choice but to take it to my studio and store buttons and beads in it now!

Fill the jars half way with black beans. I soaked the beans for two days, draining and rinsing them once a day.

Add cubed pork to the jars, about a half cups worth more or less.

Got pork?

Top off with pork broth, I had broth left over from roasting the meat, or just warm water.

Black Bean Soup ready to be pressure canned.

We had left over pork so we canned it up in quart jars (made two quarts) and canned it along side the Black Bean Soup. In retrospect I should have put the meat into pint jars. Oh well it'll make excellent bbq pork!

Black bean soup with pork - canned at 10 pounds of pressure for 110 minutes (I forgot to shut it off in time). Canned pork (from a pork butt roast) NOTE: It is better to store your jars with the rings off, one removing them ensures that the jars are indeed sealed properly and two the rings cannot rust to the jars which is a common problem esp. in humid areas.

Corn Meal

I thought I'd experiment with grinding pop corn with my grain grinder (NOTE I'm definately will want to purchase a professional grain grinder for this endeavor) we ground yellow pop corn which needed to be ground twice and black popcorn which ended up being blue when all was said and done!

Black Raspberry Jam - Done

I tried a new method tonight instead of using the instructions to make jam, the ones that come in the pectin box, I used the BBB's strawberry jam recipe. AND the jam actually set up!!! So I'm quite happy right now especially after my last two batches of jam "failed" to set up, they'll make excellent sauce but I was aiming for jam not sauce.

Black Raspberry Jam - In Progress

In progress my jam making efforts were interrupted last night due to excessive chicken broth canning - some things always take longer than you think they will. So the berries sit in the fridge covered in sugar.

I found it rather interesting the ball blue book has several recipes for Strawberry Jam - the recommended recipe for Black Raspberry Jam is the Strawberry Jam but which one??? I went with the one on page 81 of my book which means not cooking the berries prior to processing them, the flavor is really strong.

Heaven in a Bucket!

John took me on the best date ever tonight we went berry picking! The black raspberries and gooseberries are ripe and ready to eat! I've plans for gooseberry jam and black raspberry jam tomorrow, then tomorrow night we've plans to pick two cherry trees north of town.

Black Fungus

Appears to be a lichen of some sort, here's a pic with the original packaging.