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Loose Ends and Housekeeping

Jun 17th, 2009
by htwollin.
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If you are (ahem) old enough to recall the Ed Sullivan Show, then if I mention the words “Italian acrobats with spinning plates”, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. For the less ‘elderly’ among Aunt Toby’s readers, suffice it to say that this family group had a hilarious act whereby they set up poles with plates spinning at the tops and they ran about the stage, back and forth, making sure the plates were spinning and not falling to smash on the floor. The big finale was their all picking up the poles and catching the plates. Voila!!

Well, sometimes, Aunt Toby feels that way about KCE. I have to make sure to keep some of the ongoing things up in the air and revisiting them from time to time before they..well, they won’t go smash on the floor, but the story may not be fresh or interesting any longer and all of my little buggers might lose interest.

So, this post is a bit of a catch up. (more…)

Last thoughts on a Strawberry Weekend.

Jun 15th, 2009
by htwollin.
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Getting the most out of 23 pounds of strawberries would be a challenge for anyone (unless you were doing it to fill your freezer with just strawberries), but this past weekend, during the ‘Strawberry Special’ we made it a goal to do as many different things with strawberries as we could within the confines of strawberry-ness. Which means that we froze, ate fresh, made jam and started strawberry wine but did NOT dry. Dehydration does not do a whole lot for strawberries. We’ll save that for when the cherries come in next month (woohoo!!). (more…)

Cheap and Good: Pick Your Own Strawberries

Jun 14th, 2009
by htwollin.
1 comment

As promised, the DH and I (along with The Boy) went to a local berry farm to augment the strawberry ‘stash’ at Chez Siberia. The DH picked 17 pounds of berries on Friday, most of which ended up being frozen and used as the starter for his strawberry wine (more on that another time). So, with the freezer inventory reading at the ‘danger, danger, Will Robinson’ line for strawberries, we knew we needed to get back to the farm for more.

Lucky for us, they open early, even on Sundays, so we were there in the cool of the morning this morning, along with a bunch of other families, out there in the field picking. (more…)

Strawberry Hot Flash: The End IS the Beginning

Jun 13th, 2009
by htwollin.
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As promised, this is total immersion in Strawberry goodness and THE number one question (and actually, this is the gateway to all others) is:

What do you want to end up with?

This determines everything else. Opens the road or closes it. The first fork in the ‘decision tree’ (for the geeks out there).

Because strawberries are like – well, in their own fruity way, they are like potatoes: They can be baked, boiled, frozen, eaten fresh. All can be done to the same bucket of strawberries you pick, if you pick the right ones.

But if you ‘choose poorly’ (as the monk from that Indiana Jones movie put it), then your opportunities with the fruit become increasingly limited. (more…)

Radio STRW: It’s an All-Strawberries Weekend!!

Jun 13th, 2009
by htwollin.
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So much to tell you, my greedy little buggers and so little time.

Local strawberry season is upon us (well, local to Chez Siberia – depending on where y’all are located, it may already be past – or in the future) and we must attack it like Lance Armstrong on a hill at the Tour de France. Time IS of the essence.

I received a communique (it must be an all-French weekend too) after yesterday’s strawberry post asking, “Aunt Toby – I only know how to go to the grocery store, pick up a box of strawberries and pay for them. No one ever took me strawberry picking; I was deprived as a child.”

So, I apologize; (more…)

The Exploding Pressure Canner and Other Kitchen Myths

Jun 1st, 2009
by htwollin.
2 comments

Well, I certainly opened up the floodgates for folks with the ‘my grandmother told me about the time she just left the kitchen ‘for a moment’ and her pressure canner exploded and cousin CindyLou got burned and the windows blew out and she never used a pressure canner ever again’ stories.

The business end of these tales usually involve the fact that it’s someone’s grandmother – who was canning in 1925, using the dial canner technology of the time…was not watching the damn canner (and did not ‘leave for a moment’ – but actually went outside to yell at one of the other kids – and had to chase the dog out of the garden and then decided to pick some corn for supper and so on)…and Cousin CindyLou got burned – because she opened the top or took the weight off the vent tube before things were cold inside. As for the windows blowing out – well, Aunt Toby suspects that there is a little bit of dramatic license being taken there to justify the fact that they never used the pressure canner again.

I think there is also this tremendous number of people out there who would like to can but who are terrified that they will blow up the house. Folks – it ain’t 1925. (more…)

Introduction to Canning

May 30th, 2009
by htwollin.
4 comments

So, you want to get started with canning. When the DH and I were first married, we lived in a house that did not have a freezer and the freezer in the fridge was teeny. How could we put food by? We got a book, bought some equipment and got into the ‘pick yer own/ can yer own’ thing. Someplace in the house is a photograph of our kitchen table, so overburdened with jars of canned stuff that it was bowed down in the middle. We didn’t have a lot of cupboard space, either so we used to store all the boxes of the canned goods under the bed. There is truly no feeling so secure as lying in bed while there is a blizzard going on outside and you know that you have at least enough food to probably last you until spring.

So, what can you put into a jar and process vs. what doesn’t work really well processed in a jar? (more…)

Be Prepared! Introduction to Anxiety Reduction, Part One

May 28th, 2009
by htwollin.
2 comments

This is the time of the year when all sorts of wonderful things pop up: plants in the garden, farmers markets, bugs. This is also the time of the year when some not so wonderful things pop up: thunderstorms, major weather systems with wind, hail, tornadoes and hurricanes. And when your area gets hit with one of these (and we can almost always bet money on that one, no matter where you live), there is a chance, even if remote, that your living unit is going to either suffer damage or lose power or both.

Aunt Toby, the DH and all the little Chez Siberians(who are not longer so little, nor are they in residence), have experienced this. Thunderstorms that knocked power out for hours. Ice storms in the winter that have snapped trees in half on top of power lines and left us without power to run the blower on the furnace for days at a time. Gentlemen at the control of backhoes who..well, we won’t talk about the whole ‘call before you dig’ from people who won’t.

The results are the same. No power. (more…)

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