Canning 2015

I picked Bartlett pears Gravenstein apples for the first time with the Portland Fruit Tree Project at a farm in Hillsboro, OR. That was a fun experience. Volunteers are allowed to take 10# of each type of fruit picked, but is an excessive amount for me to process into something tastier. Gravensteins are eating apples and might be good for cooking, but they are rather sour -- like they're a cross between a honeycrisp for size and water content and a granny smith on the sour and hard texture side.

This year I tried to can hatch chilies. If you keep them in a closed plastic bag in the refrigerator door (warmer part of the fridge), the fresh chilies keep for a few weeks. I made a really good tomato-based salsa with half as many pounds of tomatoes as last year's batch and the same amount of jalapenos; so, extra kick and less added salt. I ate a quart of it before canning.

Here's what I made this year:

6 pints spicy tomato salsa (no onion, no red jalapeno, 2 tbsp less salt)
6.5 pints Gravenstein apple sauce (slightly sour)
4 half pints organic no-sugar added applesauce, yellow delicious - homegrown apples
8 pints apple butter - red winesap apples
Four 4 oz jars green hatch chilies
2 half pints dill pickles

And for the fridge because I ran out of pint jars:

1 quart dill pickles
1 quart organic dill carrots

Stuffed Shitake Mushrooms

This is one of my mom's recipes and it came out looking and tasting quite nice.

Ready to eat: Stuffed Shitake Mushrooms

Ingredients

1 lb fresh shitake mushrooms
1/2 lb ground pork
8 large raw shrimp, peeled and de-veined
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tbsp Shaoxing red rice wine
3 stalks green onions, minced
1 tsp fresh ginger, peeled and minced

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 F.

0. Wash and remove stems from the shitake mushrooms. Reserve stems for later.

1. Chop raw shrimp into small pieces. Mix together with ground pork, green onions, ginger, cornstarch, Shaoxing rice wine, and soy sauce.

2. Fill each mushroom cap with a tablespoon of the mixture.

3. Bake for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and drizzle some olive oil on top, and return to the oven for another 3 minutes.

Stovetop Popcorn

When I think about kitchen appliances, I still don't own nor use a microwave for cooking; mostly because microwaves (and dishwashers) are energy hogs. Making popcorn this way is not any healthier than preparing that microwavable stuff. A quarter cup of coconut oil has roughly 470 calories. This recipe ratio makes about 5 quarts of popped corn.

Stovetop Popcorn: what you see is what you get

I used an 8 quart stockpot with its lid to make this. I suppose you could use Alton Brown's method and use two heavy gauge metal mixing bowls instead.

Ingredients

1/4 c organic coconut oil
2/3 c organic popping corn kernels

Directions

0. Add coconut oil and 3 corn kernels to a stockpot and cover with its lid. Heat on stove over medium-high heat until the kernels pop.

1. Remove popped corn from pot. Add remainder of corn kernels. Cover with lid. Occasionally shake the pot (side-to-side, or in a swirl motion) as the kernels are popping.

2. Turn off heat as soon as the kernels slow down to one or two pops. Use a measuring cup or shake popped corn out into a serving bowl.

Kitchen Notes:

• the popcorn has a lightly greasy feel to it (from the coconut oil)
• eaten plain, popcorn can make you feel hungrier
• there are 1-2 tablespoons of unpopped kernels leftover

Kitchen Notes: Measuring Flour

All this time I've been using the scoop+level method for measuring flour, meaning getting a cup of flour at a time from the container of flour then leveling it off with a straight edge. The alternate way, as suggested by most baking sites is to spoon the flour into the measuring cup and then level it off. And, if you are a master baker like Martha Stewart, you can just eyeball it with the scoop and shake method (no leveling off). Food Network suggests to scoop then level off dry ingredients. Local IoT app maker, Perfect Company, combines a digital scale with Bluetooth technology that walks users through guided measuring and baking steps. The rationale against the scoop+level method is that the flour gets compacted. Is an extra 20 g of flour that big of a deal?

Visually it all looks the same. Though, when weighed, it's not all the same. Today's measurements with a digital kitchen scale (100% humidity outside):

1 cup of all-purpose flour =

Sample		Scoop+Level		Spoon+Level
1		153 g		139 g
2		149 g		129 g
3		156 g		136 g

I have noticed over the years that when making cookies, I often have a lot more flour leftover in the mixing bowl; though this was more prevalent in southern California where the air is dry nearly year-round.

But, when looking at online recipes by others, the dry ingredient units vary--even from the same author.

AB		measure		suspected
sugar cookies		3 cups AP flour		volume
oatmeal cookies		16 oz old fashioned rolled oats		weight
lentil cookies		9.5 oz whole wheat pastry flour (about 2 c flour)		weight
vanilla wafers		7 oz AP flour		weight