Never Fail Rhubarb Jam

April 25, 2009

Never Fail Rhubarb Jam

There’s nothing better on a piece of homemade bread than a big spoonful of homemade jam! One of our favorite ones is this never fail rhubarb jam.

The recipe from came from my mother-in-law who clipped it from a newspaper years ago.

It’s so easy to make that it has become one of the first 4H cooking projects my kids take to the fair. It’s received a blue ribbon every time!

Rhubarb Jam

Pick, wash, and cut 5 cups of rhubarb into small pieces.

Add 3 cups of sugar and let sit overnight.

In the morning boil the rhubarb and sugar until tender and the rhubarb falls apart.

Add 1 – 3 ounce package of jello (strawberry, orange, raspberry and cherry all work well).

Stir until dissolved and well-blended.

Pour into sterilized jars and seal with flats and rings. Place in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes. Remove and cool. Or you can place the jam into freezer containers and freeze.

This recipe makes 5 half-pints. I have doubled it with no problem.

Enjoy!

By Country Gal | Posted in Gardening, Harvesting | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Papa’s Favorite Apple Pie

November 13, 2008

My Mom benefited from our bumper apple harvest and used some to bake up my Dad’s favorite pie. I think you’ll enjoy it, too! Here’s Nana…

Papa's Favorite Apple Pie

I found this recipe in a magazine years ago. Don’t remember which one! Papa Jim’s favorite pie is apple and after he tasted this one it became his very favorite apple pie! It has a creamy filling around the apples.

It freezes well, too. I cut it into individual pieces before freezing. This makes it easy to serve a “fresh” piece of pie for our meal or for company.

Papa Jim’s Favorite Apple Pie
(From Nana’s Kitchen!)
Yield: 1-10 inch pie

Crust:
1-3/4 Cups All-purpose flour
¼ Cup Granulated Sugar
1 tsp. Cinnamon
½ tsp. Salt
2/3 Cup Butter or Margarine, Cold
¼ Cup Cold Water

Combine the flour, cinnamon & salt in a large bowl. Cut in butter with a pastry blender until the mixture is coarse. Sprinkle in water and gather it into a ball. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface into a 12 inch round and turn it into a 10 inch pie plate. Turn under overhang and flute the edge to make it stand up. Refrigerate until crust is ready to fill.

Filling:
1 Large Egg
¾ Cups Sour Cream
¾ Cups Low Fat Plain Yogurt
1 Cup Granulated Sugar
¼ Cup all-Purpose Flour
2 tsp. Vanilla
½ tsp. Salt
4 to 5 Cups Peeled and Sliced Raw Apples

Beat the egg slightly in a large bowl. Stir in the sour cream, yogurt, sugar, flour, vanilla & salt until the mixture is smooth. Add the sliced apples, stirring gently to coat. Spoon mixture into pie shell. Set the pie on a cookie sheet. Bake at 450° for 10 minutes.

Lower the heat to 350° and bake for 40 more minutes checking to see if the apples are tender and the filling is set.

Prepare the topping while the pie bakes.

Topping:
¼ Cup Butter
½ Cup All-purpose Flour
1/3 Cup Granulated Sugar
1/3 Cup Brown Sugar
¼ tsp. salt
1 Cup Chopped Walnuts

Blend the ingredients and sprinkle evenly over the pie. Continue to bake at 350° for 15 more minutes or until lightly browned. Cool pie on a wire rack.

Be sure to refrigerate after it is cooled.

Options: You can substitute all sour cream instead of the yogurt or ½ cream cheese & ½ sour cream or ½ yogurt and ½ cream cheese. I have even put cottage cheese in the blender and used it when I did not have sour cream or yogurt on hand. You can use all brown sugar in the filling and the topping if you prefer (it works! We were out of granulated sugar and substituted.) You should use white sugar in the crust.

Until next time,

Nana

By Country Gal | Posted in Cooking and Food, Harvesting, Pies | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Mixed Fruit Jam

November 8, 2008

My Mom (otherwise known as Nana) is my guest blogger today and once again shows us that creativity in the kitchen is the key to frugal living…

Mixed Fruit Jelly

Snow flakes are flying past our window, but melting as they touch the ground. Papa & I decide that today would be a good day to defrost the freezer.

To be honest, the reason we defrost is to be able to get reacquainted with the contents! All summer and fall we bring in produce, pack it in freezer bags and stack it in the freezer.

It is a gold mine that needs to be “dug” out occasionally.

Today we found a small bag of raspberries (the last picking before frost), a small bag of cherries that did not fit in the quart bag after last picking, a container of strawberries from a year ago, and another last of the season bag of rhubarb! On the counter was a basket of home-grown pears that are getting ripe.

Now what do we do with them? How about jam!

We followed the directions in our box of Surejell using an average amount of sugar listed for the fruits we had in the pan. Delicious!

I wonder if that’s why you have “mixed fruit” jelly on the restaurant table? Could it be the last little bit of all the flavors mixed together?

Until next time,

Nana

By Country Gal | Posted in Autumn, Canning and Preserving, Cooking and Food, Harvesting | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

So What Do You Do With 20 Bushels of Apples?

November 1, 2008

There were over 20 bushels of apples on my back porch.

I avoided that porch for days because I really didn’t want to deal with them. It seemed as if they grew in number every day. I would close my eyes at night and see gigantic apples rising up and chasing me.

So what does one do with over 20 bushels of apples? A lot.

First we needed to determine the kind of apple. While red delicious apples are wonderful to eat, they aren’t good for cooking, sauce or baking. So they are carefully picked over and left in a cool spot to be eaten. My unheated porch works well, but a refrigerator would also work.

The Granny Smith apples are very firm and hard. They are waiting patiently to be made into pies, crisps and other delicious treats.  They will do fine in “cold storage” on the porch for a few weeks or even months. If they start getting soft before we use them- we’ll cut them and freeze them.

Before we store apples we always look for bruises or blemishes and eat those fruit first. An apple with firm flesh and no bruising or cuts will keep much longer. The saying “one bad apple spoils the bunch” is absolutely true!

The Yellow Delicious, Red Rome and Jonathon we processed into applesauce, apple pie filling, and apple butter. We also used our apple corer/peeler on some and froze them in quart bags to be used all winter in pies and crisps.

I now have a 3 year supply of apple butter, a 2 year supply of applesauce, and enough apples in the freezer for several pies this winter. And I still have apples!

So I boxed up several bushels and shared them with my sisters, my sister-in-law, my friend from Michigan, and anyone else who happened along and looked hungry.

Crate by crate, box by box I’m making a dent in the piles! What an amazing harvest!

By Country Gal | Posted in Autumn, Cooking and Food, Harvesting | Tagged , , | Comment (1)

Crab Apple Jelly

October 23, 2008

Crab Apple Jelly

During a recent phone conversation, my Mom told me about the crab apple jelly she and dad had mixed up. She agreed to write it out and share it with us all. So here is my Mom (otherwise known as Nana) as a guest blogger:

We have tried for years to get a tree started to the west of our house for some cool shade. I’ve lost count of how many trees we’ve planted there!

Finally a crab apple tree lived more than a year! It has grown and produced fruit over the last few years, but never the size not the number that fill the branches this year!

Since the crab apple sits right outside our dining room window, it seemed to challenge us at every meal to do something with it’s fruit. Being the frugal people we are, we just couldn’t let it go to waste!

Papa and I had discussed the possibility of making some jelly with it, but he’s been busy with black walnuts and my list of in-house projects took priority- until this week. We looked at each other and said, “Let’s do it!”

Papa picked 3- 5 quart plastic buckets of crab apples while I surfed the web to find some information and recipes for crab apple jelly.

He suggested that we put some red-hot cinnamon candy in for a boost in flavor! (The grand kids can tell you that Papa likes to put red hot candies in lots of things- like the popcorn popper when making popcorn and adding them to pancakes!)

We decided that there was a reason for the name “crab”- definitely not sweet and almost bitter!

Was it frugal? With the cost of sugar, sure-jell and flats to seal the jars, I’m not sure. But the color is beautiful! And it tastes great! With all the sugar and the candies, it is delicious on bread, toast and crackers.

Prairie Crab Apple Jelly

Wash 3-4 gallons of crab apples. Remove stems (nail clippers work well) and blossom end. Discard any apples with blemishes.

No need to cut or core, just place the apples in a stock pot and barely cover with water.

Bring to a boil and 20-25 minutes until soft. (Too long will make them bitter.)

Pour through a fine strainer. In order to have clear jelly- DO NOT PRESS! Discard the apples.

Measure 7 cups of juice in and put in a deep pot (you will need room for it to boil.)

Add 9 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of red hot cinnamon candies.

Stir constantly until you have a full rolling boil.

Add 1 box of sure-jell and continue to stir. Bring to a full rolling boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and skim foam from the top. (One recipe said that you could add 1 tablespoon of butter to the juice to eliminate the foaming.)

Pour into sterilized jars and seal.

Yield 13 cups of jelly.

Enjoy!

Until next time,

Nana
Travels with Papa & Nana

By Country Gal | Posted in Autumn, Harvesting | Tagged , | Comments (3)