Vibrant Moms

I haven’t done any canning for a while. I haven’t had the energy or desire, and I haven’t needed to.  But yesterday I went down to my basement to take something out of the freezer- the freezer that dh told me needs to be replaced because it’s not working properly - and found everything on the door half defrosted and everything in the main section encased in a thick layer of ice.

What to do?  First of all, I took out three frozen turkeys to make room for some of the items from the door that could be refrozen without a problem.  I also took out a 9 x 13 pan of shredded potatoes, and was able to chip out a couple of containers of cottage cheese and butter.  After moving some things from the door into that space, I was shocked that I couldn’t even tell I had taken anything out.  How in the world is it possible for there not to be noticeably more space after taking out three turkeys??

(This raised the question in my mind if it’s possible that maybe I buy a little too much food?  But I quickly banished that thought.)

Anyway, now I needed to find something to do with the turkeys.  One was already roasted so I put that in the fridge to defrost for Shabbos dinner.  The other two I decided I’d have to can.  I used the pressure canner as a pressure cooker, cooking them one at a time, and couldn’t believe how fast they were done. You know that cooking two solidly frozen turkeys would take hours, right?  I’d usually have to put one in the oven and the other in our electric turkey roaster, both of which would have added lots of heat to the house in the hours of cooking.  I just love the efficiency and versatility of my pressure canner - it’s been a much more valuable purchase than I expected. 

Well, since I was going to can them I didn’t need them to be fully cooked, so once the pressure was up to 15 pounds I cooked them for just 10 minutes, the same as for a defrosted whole chicken.  That was enough to cook the turkeys almost totally!  If I had left them in another 2 minutes, they’d have been done all the way throught - as it was, they were just a little pink in the very center.  When one was done, I put the other one in.  Within about 2 hours both turkeys were done.   They were finished cooking early enough in the day that I was able to debone and then can them  today, too, and they were finished before it was even late in the evening.  They’re now cooling on the counter, and all of them sealed except for one.  That one will go in the fridge.  All of that turkey amounted to 6 quarts (we ate some of it or it would have been 7 quarts) and I canned a quart of broth; the other broth was used to cook the rice for tonight’s dinner. 

Six quart sized jars on a shelf will take a lot less room than two turkeys in the freezer!  Now I’m going to have to put some effort into using the frozen veggies in the freezer before going out shopping for fresh vegetables.  And hopefully we’ll soon find a good used freezer at a good price.

Avivah

A few weeks ago my fairly new (bought on Thanksgiving) food processor broke.  Often I think it must be because I use things more than average that they break, but lately I’ve thinking more and more often that it’s because things aren’t made to last.  It bothers me that things are made so cheaply nowadays, and that it’s expected that you’ll just throw the old thing away and buy a new one - they call it ‘planned obsolescence’.  My last food processor lasted for 9 years, and was just an average model; this latest one was supposedly a much better one with more bells and whistles, but never worked as well as the old one.  And to top off not working well by breaking when never mishandled is really annoying. 

I use a food processor alot since it makes chopping or grating all the veggies we use for a meal a breeze - if I had to do it all by hand, we’d just eat veggie sticks.  I considered getting a food processor that wouldn’t need electricity, remembering I had seen something in the Lehman’s catalog.  I pulled out the catalog and when I saw the price (something like $189) I decided being power free wasn’t that important to me!  But it got me to thinking and researching, trying to find something else. 

I found remarkably little available, but I did find this.  I did some research on it and found it for a cheaper price, and decided to get two - one for dairy (so I can make shakes with milk or kefir) and one for meat.  Since I never did get my Bosch mixer repaired after my ds broke it when making a mega sized batch of chocolate chip cookie dough for his cookie business, I’ve been managing without it.  Surprisingly to me, it hasn’t been much of a loss - it’s not a big deal to mix bread dough in a large bowl by hand, we don’t make many cakes, and basically, I really don’t need it.  But the one thing it did that I sometimes miss having the capacity for is beating egg whites.  This little hand powered mixer does that, which is why I got a second one for non-dairy dishes.

It is a simple device, but works remarkably well.  The only down side I’ve so far experienced is it doesn’t beat things for a shake as smoothly as a blender would, and it doesn’t have a shredding capacity (which I knew when I bought it) - just chops- but it is easy to use, easy to clean up, and even the younger kids can use it by themselves.  A couple of days ago ds15 used it to chop four heads of cabbage and 15 large carrots, and he said it was great.  Not as fast as an electric model, but that’s okay with me; it’s still a LOT faster than chopping by hand.

I would have liked to have gotten two different colors so the meat and dairy mixers could be easily distinguished, but it only comes in red.  Not a big deal, we just marked one with nail polish.  I’d also like if it had a suction on the bottom to hold it down on the counter better. 

Now if the cap and trade bill passes (I think it’s a disaster and am perturbed that our government leaders think it’s a good idea to do this at a time of national financial distress; the president himself said, “”Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”), lots of people are going to be looking for ways to cut power costs.  This is a simple little solution for one appliance and I’m glad to have it!

Avivah