Turkey Enchilada's

two cans each green enchillda sauce, green chile's, chopped tomatoes, and tomato sauce.

Lots of turkey

Corn tortillias

three cheeses

The sauce mixed up and coming to a boil.

The sauce at a boil.

The sauce boiled and then simmered for 15 minutes with one healthy dollop of sour cream added. Skins are dipped in the sauce to soften and then filled with turkey and cheese.

Assemble enchilada's

Layer in a baking pan, cover with more sauce and some cheese.

Once a month cooking at it's finest - what else would I do with so much left over turkey???

Christmas Decorations

I was going to hang some decorations up for xmas and lo' if I can even find them! I have a lot of greenery for porch rails etc., it was supposed to be in the attic and granted we haven't drug it out in some five years or so but who knows where it's at? I found one tiny bit of greenery, not near enough to do the porch.

Off to search some more.

This weekends canning short list

First up can the remaining unsalted butter and then start in on the salted butter - in half pints.

I have five heads of green cabbage that need to be canned up as cole slaw and then if I have any time or energy left I'm going to try my hand at canning a batch of carmalized onions.

A picture of the neighbors crabapple tree, the squirrels like this tree better than ours, the neighbors crabapples are sweeter.

Pepper in a Box

I couldn't resist taking this picture of Pepper.

Cinnamon Rolls

I made homemade cinnamon rolls last night, from fresh ground wheat berries, that was half the dough batch. I also make a loaf of bread the oven decided to cooperate which is good because I've given up on my bread machine! The rolls were yummy even if I did screw up the recipe, apparently your supposed to use brown sugar with the cinnamon and butter, I used white! They still tasted heavenly.

Cranberry Applesauce

Or saucy applesauce as we like to call it, unforutnately it didn't come out nearly as chunky as we like it, frustrated with the sauce sticking to the bottom of the pan I buckled under and used the stick blender to break the sauce down even further. Well... you know what they say about good intentions right. So it's mostly very creamy sauce, it tastes wonderful and looks beautiful but...

I also fell short on the cranberries, the sauce really needed about four more pounds of cranberries to give it that tart flavor we like and so well. I have one jar that didn't seal for some reason I guess we will have to make the ultimate sacrifice and eat that jar of sauce now!!! As you can see I enjoyed a cinnamon roll with some sauce.

Lentil Chili

Lentil Chili

3/4 cup dry lentils, cleaned

2 cups chicken broth or vegetable broth or beef broth
1 (16 ounce) can crushed tomatoes

1 medium green bell pepper, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

2-3 garlic cloves, crushed

2 tablespoons chili powder

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1 (16 ounce) can tomato sauce

2 cups whole kernel corn

Combine everything (except tomato sauce and corn) in 2 1/2 quart pot and boil over high heat. Reduce to low, cover, and simmer for 25- 30 minutes. Stir in tomato sauce and corn. Simmer for 10- 15 minutes. Serve hot! Great garnished with lowfat sour cream.

The Harvest

We went to the local pumpkin farm today, the place was jammed packed with pumpkins and squash of all types.

Lid Lifter

The magnet is strong enough to pick up three or four lids at a whack.

Steam coming off of the boiling water.

Damaged lid used for demonstrating this technique - it was this or throw it away.

Dh came up with this idea it's a strong magnet attached to my tongs it does a nifty job of removing lids from the hot water w/o getting burned. He bought the magnet at Radio Shack back in the dark ages, circa 1982, for a whole fifty cents.

Canning Chili

I forgot to bring my camera to the kitchen so the in progress pics are limited this time. I made up my favorite recipe of chili x 10 and put it into hot jars, it'll be processed for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure in the All American. I under estimated on my recipe hoping for 40+ quarts but will be getting 28 quarts instead. These jars have yet to be processed.

I started with ten pounds of ground beef and 4 pounds of dried beans, 2 pounds kideny beans and 2 pounds small red beans. I used one #10 can of chopped tomatoes, one # 10 can tomato sauce, one # 10 can of pureed tomatoes, and one #10 can of Mrs. Grimes Chili with Beans. To this I added 2 very large minced Onions 2 cups minced garlic - comes in a jar at Sam's Club - spices, honey and mole. I browned my beef with the onion, garlic, and spices added. I browned all 10 pounds at once in my 23 quart BWB pan! I added the tomatoes and chili sauce to the browned ground beef etc., and simmered for about 4 hours. I turned the heat off and let it sit overnight - I was bad I left it on the stove and it was still very hot this morning at 6 am.

The beans were soaked overnight, drained this afternoon and added to the simmering pots. I divided the chili meat sauce between two BWB canners 24 cups per pot, approximately, and added the beans dividing them up equally which ended up being approximately 12 cups per canner

Chopping Green Beans

Dh's hand is next to the knife blade so you can see where it is at. The knife is longer than the width of the box. For the frozen beans a serrated bread knife works best.

End view of the box the box holds about 4 gallons of fresh beans.

To simplify this process we use a green bean board! We bought frozen beans for

our soup, they came unsnapped so dh chopped them into bite sized pieces.

Canning Potatoes

And dealing with all of that starch! There are very few things I remember from Home Ec, taken from 1981-1984 and this was one of them!

Cube your potatoes and rinse, you may have to rinse them twice, drain.

Place potatoes into a container and cover with COLD water, I used a 2 gallon bucket.

To this add 1/4 cup of vinegar.

If you use a smaller container then reduce your vinegar.

The potatoes will have a clearish look to them after soaking. I soaked mine for 4 hours but overnight yeilds the best results.

Layered Chicken Vegetable Soup

1 Cup Chopped Potato - we used Russets

Fresh Chicken Broth made from cooking the chicken hind quarters.

1/4 Cup Cooked Chicken

1 Cup chopped Carrot.

2/3 Cup. Corn

2 T. Chopped Roma Tomatoes

2/3 Cup Chopped Green Beans

A tablespoon of chopped onion is added to each jar. Dh wanted to know where the garlic was???

Each jar gets half chicken bullion cube which is placed in the jar first on the bottom.

We experimented with the layering trying to find one that was visually pleasing.

In the AA and ready to be pressure canned - 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.

Layered Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe

Wow this is very popular so here is the recipe and the next post will be pics of what we did.

The potatos, carrots, tomatoes, and onions were raw (I soaked the cubed potatoes for four hours with a bit of vinegar) The corn and green beans were frozen.

Amounts are approximations for a quart jar:

1c cubed potatoes
1c sliced/cubed carrot (depended on the diameter of the carrot most ended up cubed)
2/3c corn
2/3c green beans
1/4c cooked chicken meat
T Onion
2T chopped fresh roma tomatoes
1/2 Chicken bullion Cube

Cover with the broth you made when you cooked the chicken meat. PC 90 minutes.

I arranged it in layers so that it would be pretty!Potato, carrot, green bean, chicken, corn, tomato, onion.