Time for an Overhaul

Even I don't believe in New Year's resolutions per say, a new year always suggests the opportunity to reset, and start afresh. Or maybe it's just that January can be so mind numblingly boring at times that even rearranging the spice drawer seem exciting. Whatever the reason, I've been seized with the urge to get my house in order and in between bouts of lethargy, I been having bursts of obsessive reorganization and along with that, some thoughts of things I like to improve on this year.

First up was the fridge- from the above photo you can see I have slight jar problem. (there are also the piles of empty jars taking up space elsewhere but that's a whole other issue). Now we already have the smallest of apartment sized fridges- it's ridiculously tiny. Then there are four adults currently living this house and we don't all eat or shop together so we end up with a lot of duplicates (6 jars of mustards-seriously guys?). So there really isn't room for all these jars but somehow their number seems to increase much faster than it decreases. Pickles and hot sauces have a high turnover but sweet preserves seem to take up residence for far too long. I have a difficult time throwing out food of any sort but when I decided to clean the fridge recently I got ruthless. Besides disposing of the obviously-past-their-prime stuff I also got rid of about half a dozen jars of half eaten jam. There was nothing really wrong with most of it but the truth is we don't eat jam! I know that sound almost like blasphemy from someone who is canning obsessed but when it comes to fridge real estate it's about time I admit the truth and deal with it. I really don't like jam. It's too sweet and unless I'm having fresh bakes scones, I have no use for it. No one else eats it either and we don't cook with it enough to make jam a must have ingredient. So after reclaiming all those jam jars (oh yay, more jars to figure out where to store) I've decided that is the year I stop making jam unless it's to sell or give away. There will be a few exceptions - red onion jam is a staple now, but for the most part I'm going to have to figure out something to do with fruit other than jam it.

Second up is my finances. Now I am extremely frugal and pretty good at living within my means for the most part. But occasionally even I fall off the rails and some how over the years I have managed to acquire 5 credit cards, which is about 4 too many. And on all 5 of those cards I carry a balance. None of them are a very large balance but added together they make up an amount higher than I am comfortable with, and of course they carry interest; in some cases an extremely high rate of interest. Now I know how I got myself in this situation and I know how to get out of it but my history of working mostly contract and piecemeal never gave me the opportunity to do much more than maintain my credit rating without actually addressing the principle. In other words I'm paying off the interest month after month but barely denting the debt. This is basically the equivilent of throwing money away every month and it adds up. I can think of so many things I'd rather be doing with that money and now that I have a job that pays me at regular intervals I can finally do something about it. To that end I sat down and made my first ever budget.( My dad will be so proud!). It's not a fancy budget; I just searched online for a basic template and tweaked it a bit to suit my needs. It allows me to see what regular expenses I have and where I can best use my money to get rid of these debts . First up HBC: this card carries only a $500 limit and should have been paid off long ago- I haven't even used it in over two years! But at almost 30%, pretty much 100% of every payment I make goes towards covering the interest. Right now the balance is at just over $300- if I can stick to my budget of $100/month I should rid myself of this albatross by spring! Then it will be onto my PC Mastercard which I got thinking I'd get points towards groceries. Well in the 5 years I've had this I haven't earned enough points for a carton of milk but at 24.9 % interest, I've paid for a years worth of milk in interest, every year. With any luck I should have the balance paid off on it before the end of this year and then that card too will be cut in many small pieces. I wish I could say I'll have rid myself of all of my cards by next year but I believe in setting realistic goals and even paying off two of them will save me about $70/ month which I can then apply to the remaining 3. So if nothing else I should be able to reduce the principle on the others. Fingers crossed that I stick to my plan!

The other things on my reorganization list are my library (which much as it pains me to say, needs culling, if only to make room for more books!), my seed boxes and the aforementioned jar collection. While I'm offering up confessions, here's another one: I didn't buy a single new canning seal last year, except for the box of Kilner seals which I have yet to open. Every jar I canned last year was done with a reused seal and I didn't have a single seal failure. Frugal yes but it also means I have a lot of seals that are definitely past their prime and I need to sort out the potential bad ones and dispose of them before canning season begins again. I really need a better organized storage system for canning supplies but I have yet to come up with one. I also need to find somewhere to store the new pressure canner which is still shiny and new because it's yet to be used. Can you guess what my next project will be?

Passing on the Traditions

Last week I taught my first canning workshop. I've been sharing what I know about preserving food with friends for years but this was my first ever paid performance and like most things I wanted to make a good impression. The workshops are part of a CSO ( Community Shared Orchard). People purchase shares of the fruit harvest in advance and receive a share every two weeks from the participating farmers. Giving people the option and ability to preserve the fruit helps everyone make use of the harvest at it's peak! The tricky part is that no one, not even the farmers can be sure what will be ready the day the shares are delivered so half the fun is picking out recipes. For the initial workshop we were expecting the last of this year's cherries and some newly ready peaches. Two days before, we were notified that we were receiving 56 lb of apricots, 26 lbs of plums and 14 lbs of blueberries. So much for cherry jam and peach salsa!


We decided to do apricots in light syrup, slow cook plum jam ( no pectin) and I found a wonderful recipe for Apricot Blueberry jam with basil. (Thanks to Kat of A Good Appetite for sharing this recipe!)

The workshops are being held in a local church that has a commercial grade kitchen. There are 14 participants signed up for the CSO so we decide to do two sessions of 7 people in each to have enough space and time for everyone to actively take part in the canning. In theory this sounded great- what actually happened was almost no one showed for the first session and and a few extras came to the second. The first session was still in full swing when the second group arrived so the was some overlap but no one seemed to mind. Thankfully we had plenty of fruit to process and most of the recipes were designed to be made in smaller batches so it all worked out in the end. I'd love to say that everything went perfectly smoothly but there were a few glitches as one would expect.




At times it was a bit chaotic trying to keep up with three recipes simultaneously. I forgot to tell people to remove the air bubbles in the first batch of apricots in syrup so they came out about 3/4 full once settled- we corrected that in successive batches and it provided a good learning moment for all. The stove we were working on wasn't quite big enough to have 4 large canning pots fit simultaneously so I opted for a tall and narrow pot to cook the plum jam in. It was a slow cook method with the pits left in and the second batch got a bit scorched. Some of the participants suggested that it tasted 'smokey' but that wasn't really what we were aiming for. As with most no pectin recipes it didn't set firmly and will be delicious on many things. But the highlight of the night was definitely the apricot blueberry jam with basil- the recipe was simple and fast, the pectin worked as it should in all 8 batches and the taste is divine.


Three different recipes was probably a bit ambitious but it did give the opportunity to demonstrate 3 different methods of preserving using a hot water bath. All in all it was a successful evening- each participant went home with 3 x 500ml jars of apricots, 2 jars ( 250ml) of each of the jams as well as some fresh fruit. The next batch of fruit arrives Aug 10 - most likely peaches. Peach chutney anyone?

All Photos courtesy of Robin Newman of Not Far From The Tree!