I have been enjoying watching a husband and wife team on YouTube living out their dream of a self-sufficient life somewhere in Alaska. They make beautiful videos and I am completely in awe of how they live.
I think if I lived in the States I would move to Alaska too. Less people and the pressures of modern life seem to be much less too. The landscape looks beautiful and I just love the slower pace of life.
However, this kind of life comes at a price too and this husband and wife work full time to grow and preserve their own food, hunt, fish, and everything else that is involved which although wonderful and inspirational, I am fully aware that this is not a sit down and read a book all day in the quiet, kind of life.
As I think about the quiet here, our doorbell has just rung twice in a row in less than 5 minutes and our dogs have gone ballistic!
But there is something quite invigorating and refreshing about a life spent outdoors tending to gardens. Even in our busy life with homeschooling and my husband's job, once I'm in the routine of spring and summer gardening I really love it. Thankfully our neighbourhood is reasonably quiet so if I go up to the vegetable gardens it is quite peaceful.
I was recently inspired to pickle some vegetables, they weren't from our own garden but they came with our organic vegetable box.
It was an interesting journey to get these vegetables pickled as you see above. Let me explain.
I followed a recipe in the classic Edmonds Cookbook. The instructions were pretty good for the start of the pickling process.
I started by chopping all the vegetables and leaving overnight with a few tablespoons of salt sprinkled over them. The next day I drained off the liquid that had formed and rinsed the vegetables. Then I had to blanch some of the vegetables. So far so good.
The night before I had made a spiced vinegar mix to brew overnight. This was made from malt vinegar, sugar, spices, root, ginger, mustard seeds and salt.
The recipe suggested filling the sterilised jars with the vegetables and filling with the cold vinegar mix and then seal the lids.
I did this but then after awhile I realised that the lids weren't popping to indicate a seal and I thought without heat they might not seal. Usually I always hot pack everything.
So I texted my Mum who always preserved just about everything and she suggested I start over. Oh.
So I undid the rings and seals, drained the vinegar liquid into a pan, placed my jars full of vegetables into moderately hot oven to keep warm, heated the vinegar back up to almost boiling point and I put the seals and rings back into a pan of boiling water.
Once satisfied all was going to plan I took the jars out of the oven, poured over the hot vinegar liquid and sealed the jars, again.
Success, it worked. Thank you Mum!
At least I know for next time how to do it correctly. I know you can cold pack pickles as I watched the Alaskan lady do it but I think she had different jars and seals.
Let's hope that after all that they taste good! I doubt my boys will want to eat them but my husband and I will. I remember my mum pickling vegetables and we would have them in the summer time with cold meats for an easy meal.
Here is the recipe for the spiced vinegar:
2.25 litres malt vinegar 4cm piece root ginger
1 cup sugar 2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons black peppercorns 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
2 tablespoons whole cloves 2 teaspoons crushed nutmeg pieces ( I used ground nutmeg )
1 tablespoon whole allspice
Put all ingredients into a saucepan and boil gently for 10 minutes. Leave to cool and either strain and use or leave to steep overnight or for several days then strain and use. You can omit the sugar if you prefer an unsweetened vinegar.
There you have it, it's quite easy actually, just takes a few steps to get there but hopefully worth it!
I have also been trying my hand at dehydrating my own vegetables which was an interesting exercise.
It took about 12 hours to dehydrate this quantity so not sure whether it is a sustainable thing to do as every hour throughout the day I had to rotate the trays. But in this jar is a whole 1 kg packet worth of vegetables which is a few meals. I like to have some food put away incase of some kind of emergency where the power might go out and we have food that is not required to stay frozen. That is one of the reasons I like to preserve my own food and I find it very enjoyable and it helps to slow the pace of life down. That might sound strange because it is actually a busy task but because it is viewed as an old fashioned way of doing things, I feel like I stepped out of modern life when I am quietly working away in my kitchen bottling food. My family knows I am concentrating and they don't disturb me in this time.
Well I hope you have found some inspiration from this post and I hope you all have a great weekend coming up.
Many blessings,
Fiona
"Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest." Proverbs 6: 6-8
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