A Rainy Day And Night

Along with Autumn comes those days here in the midwest that are so common with this time of year. Those overcast, cool and rainy days. It's not really cold just a cold drizzle makes it seem that way. It's a good day to hunker down and get things done inside as much as possible. The temperature is supposed to dip into the 40's tonight with cooler weather predicted within the week. O Wise One and I are working on harvesting pumpkins and apples this week also. Rather than turn on any heat in the house I decided to do some much needed canning chores that all generate heat inside. 

So I took the tomatoes I had frozen in the freezer and defrosted them and put them in the roaster to slowly cook down for sauce. 

Since I couldn't put my watermelon seeds back outside in the sun to dry I stuck them in the dehydrator. I set it to the lowest possible setting hoping just to dry them out for a couple hours. Worked like a charm.

Then I cooked a nice hot meal. I get so many questions every year about how I use my canned goods so here is a good example of exactly that. Yes we really do consume all those jars of food....eventually.

I put a nice venison stew to simmer in my cast iron dutch oven on the back of the stove on the lowest setting. 

This stew started with a jar of canned venison and broth. Add in some dehydrated carrots from last year, onions from the storage shed out back and potatoes dug from the garden last week and you have stew.  

And for greens a jar of mustard greens canned this spring. Add in again some onions from storage and a slice of that home smoked bacon we made a few months back.

Remember that tutorial I did on canning greens?

And a skillet full of homemade buttermilk biscuits to add some butter and some of those watermelon preserves  I've been canning this week on to.

Remember that post I did on rendering lard after we killed the pigs last year. That lard makes the fluffiest biscuits you can imagine.

How about pumpkin pie for dessert? 

Made with a quart of those pumpkin chunks I canned last year. Eggs contributed by my ladies. And the crust again made with that pretty white leaf lard from last year. It's not just for making soap.

So as the temperatures cool and the harvest continues we are still enjoying the fruits of the year before. Soon there will be another pig to butcher and new lard to render. The pumpkins are ready to come out of the garden and into storage and next week I will start on canning apples. But for now we hunker inside out of the rain for as long as possible, enjoying a reprieve, if only temporary from the work of harvest and preparing the garden for another winter. With a dry spring and a summer drought under our belts we have to wonder what mother nature will throw at us this winter season?

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter