Last night applesauce was on the shopping list, and since I’ve been taking the food preservation course I knew applesauce was not hard to make and can. Instead of buying processed applesauce (with high-fructose corn syrup – yuk) I bought a variety of Washington apples and made applesauce and canned it. I ended up with three quart jars to put in the pantry and one half jar for immediate use. And it tasted very good. I tried two recipes – one with brown sugar and extra cinnamon and nutmeg – one with white sugar and less cinnamon. They were both very good.

I also made natural peanut butter (trying to get away from the hydrogenated fats in store-bought), which is so easy I don’t know why we don’t do it all the time. Today I’m going to dry some pineapple and start marinating some beef for jerky. Although I had said that the jerky wasn’t worth the trouble, after I was out of homemade jerky and bought some from the store, I realized how much better the homemade stuff was. So I’ve changed my mind, it’s totally worth the trouble!

It just won’t quit raining! Long after we should be enjoying pleasant spring days we are still getting pounded daily by rain, hail, and high winds. My garden plants are hunkered down under their covers wondering if there will ever be heat and sun. I haven’t even bothered to replant my patio pots, and they are overgrown with opportunistic weeds. Since it has been too wet to mow, the grass in the backyard has grown so tall that it can’t be mowed now. Seems like there’s nothing else to do but put on a coat and break out the BBQ!

I’ve been wanting to make jerky for a long time, ever since I first saw the Good Eats episode a couple years ago. Well now I have a dehydrator and some knowledge of how to do it safely, so on the way home last night I picked up 2lbs of Flank steak and decided to give it a go.

I froze the steak, sliced it thin across the grain, and marinated it using the Good Eats recipe. Then just before bed I poured the marinade into a pot and brought it to a boil, and put a few jerky strips into it at a time, returned it to a boil and pulled them out and let them drain. That’s supposed to kill any e.coli on the outside of the meat. Then it goes onto the dehydrator racks. Since the book said 10-12 hours, we let it go overnight.

In the morning I woke up at 5am  and thought I’d check it, and it wasn’t quite done, but it had only been 6 hours. I went back to bed and woke up at 9, and by then it had been cooking for 10 hours – the minimum expected time by the book – but it was overdone.

It still tastes fine, just the texture is a little more dried out than I would have liked. And the rumor that you can make jerky cheaper at home? Tillamook Jerky costs $5 for 3.5oz. My jerky cost $11 for the meat, not counting the cost of marinade or electricity to process it, that 2lbs of flank turned into 9oz of jerky! If you divide it out, it’s pretty much a wash. The main benefits are knowing what’s in it, and flavoring it the way you want to.

It was fun to do for the experience, but for the price I think I’ll stick with dehydrating fruits and veg.

I made these two recipes tonight:

Asian-Inspired Brown Rice Salad with Snow Peas

Grilled Salmon with Orange Glaze

They were delicious together! Wow – really really good! I loved the complex flavors. Dave enjoyed it too, and he doesn’t care much for salmon. I always try to dress it up a little for him.

The Allrecipes.com site is my favorite place to find recipes because of all the user comments. For example, the first comment on the salmon recipe was someone saying it worked just as well substituting apricot for the orange marmalade in the recipe. I didn’t have orange marmalade, but I did have apricot preserves, so seeing that comment convinced me to go for it, and it was delicious!

I’ve been doing a bit of cooking this week. First off I tried the ‘five minute bread’ technique, which I’ve been hearing so much about. Read about it here if you’ve missed out. My results have been a little hit and miss.

The first loaf out of the batch was very nice, and the rest of the dough was stored away in the fridge. But when I went to make the second loaf, I discovered the dough had gotten very cold on the bottom shelf, maybe even frozen (sometimes stuff freezes on the bottom shelf). No amount of sitting out on the counter could get a rise out of it, and the resulting loaf was thick and doughy, no air holes at all. Yuk. The chickens enjoyed it though. I have a second batch in the fridge now, on the top shelf this time.

I also made a big pot of chili, using my favorite recipe from cooking light – All American Chili. It’s very good, it has sausage and beef in it, and red wine, and it’s not too spicy, which is perfect for us. In fact I cool it off with a dollop of sour cream, and of course some cheese sprinkled on top. Dave even finds it tolerable, even though it has beans and he hates beans!

Now when I say I made a big pot, I mean BIG. I used my camp oven, since it’s the only dutch oven I have. So what to do with all that chili in that huge cast iron pot which will stay hot for hours? I give it a dip in a sink full of ice water. I occasionally stir it until the chili is cool enough to go in the fridge. I also put ice on top (and the camp oven lid comes in handy with it’s lip to keep the ice on top).

The necessity of this is a matter of some debate, because as Dave points out his mom would leave a pot of food on the stove until it cooled down a couple hours later and then put it away, and no one ever got sick. I have to admit that’s how it was at my house too.  But I’ve seen Alton Brown’s food safety advice, and I want to make sure I get the food cooled off and put away as soon as possible. What do you do when you have a giant pot of hot food to deal with?