Fall Foraging in Oregon

We are officially back in Oregon for the next few months, and so happy about it! Traveling was eye-opening, fun, and it was so great to see our friends, but there is nothing like your own bed, or your own couch.

I think the kitties missed us at least as much as we missed them!

Since we were in Asia for 3 weeks, it took us about 5 days to really get over our jet lag. But it was a great time to reconnect with our pets and get our fridge restocked, and we took some walks around our neighborhood. While we were gone, fall came to Central Oregon!

The fall colors at the Bend Fall Festival.

one of the many parks near our house.

driving around town - look at all that yellow!

While walking back from the Bend Fall Festival, I spotted a plum tree sitting on a vacant lot. After trying a few and determining that they were, in fact, plums, I went back the next morning and foraged a whole bag.

Then I proceeded to make wild plum jam! Here is the recipe I used, although, because I have no idea how much my plums weighed, I sort of winged it. I also used a little pear juice and only 4 cups of sugar, because 5 cups of sugar seemed a bit much.

All the plums, washed and ready to be pitted.

Threw them in a pot and added sugar...

They came out a beautiful red color.

The finished product! 24 jars - enough to give away.

It was really fun. So fun, in fact, I went ahead and tried to forage apples around the neighborhood (there are like 8 trees within a 2 block radius of our house). But it's the tail end of apple season, and almost all the apples have worm holes. So, I just bought some Honeycrisp apples on sale, and made applesauce.

It's easy, just put the apples in the pot, cores, skins and all, with spices.

I added a cinnamon stick, cloves, and a secret ingredient when I cooked them down. Mike said it's the best he's had (and he is picky!). No sugar needed, which I think is awesome. 

The food mill removes all the stems, skins and cores without wasting any apple.

Last time I made applesauce, with my friend Sheila, she had an automated food mill. This time, I had to use a manual food mill, and man, it gives you a workout!

The applesauce, ready to be canned!

The finished product!

So 5 pounds of apples only made three 12-ounce jars of applesauce (plus a little for eating immediately), sadly. Apples are cheap around here - I can get Gala apples for $0.68/pound, but I wanted to try these Honeycrisp apples, which are $0.89/pound. Not too bad, but I found an orchard which lets you pick them for FREE, which I will be doing next year; by that time I should be pretty good at canning applesauce.

In consolation I made us a Buttermilk Spice Cake. Nothing says fall like spiced-something.

The batter came out pretty thick since I don't have a Kitchenaid mixer.

I followed the recipe mostly (if you know me, I love to experiment), but with a little less sugar, and I made my own cinnamon/nutmeg glaze with a hefty amount of cinnamon, nutmeg, powdered sugar, and just a touch of milk. It came out really tasty and a great consistency. 

The cake was light, moist and fluffy - yum.

We are continuing our foraging this weekend on the Mushroom Foray we signed up for, about a month ago, with the North American Truffling Society. Here's to hoping we learn something useful!

our new truffle rake, brushes, and basket for collecting 'shrooms!

Canning Applesauce

Yesterday my lovely and talented friend S. taught me how to properly can fruit. We started with the simplest fruit to preserve: apples! The reason apples are a good starter fruit is because they contain a lot of pectin, which is what people add to jams, etc to get them to be thicker and properly gel. 

The ingredient list in our applesauce was extensive (sarcasm): Apples, Cinnamon, Cloves. And I guess a touch of water, if you count that. 

I started with apples. The best part is, you can get "seconds" from the farmer's market for $1.00/pound, which is crazy cheap, and they were organic! They don't even look that bad; they were just smaller, and a few had a bruise here and there. We checked with a few different vendors but Ha's apples were the best:

Wash them, cut them into eight pieces each, and toss them in a pot. You don't have to core them, peel them, or anything. In fact, you should leave all the peel and cores ON, because that's where the pectin is. The only thing you cut out is any really bruised part or wormholes or whatever. 

Then you cook them down with just a bit of water at the bottom of the pot to start (also we threw in 3 cinnamon sticks and 5 cloves per 10 pounds of apples), so they don't burn. Cooking time takes approximately 1.5-2 hours, and you must stir occasionally. No sugar needed!! Apples plus steam below:

Once they were soft, we cooled them and then ran them through a food mill, which is a machine that pushes it through a sieve. It would be an excellent way to make baby food. Anyways, all the stuff like cores, skins, and the spices get caught in the mill and don't go through, so all you get is the meat of the apple, with very little waste. I forgot to take a picture of S.'s which is a totally awesome old school antique Kitchen Aid attachment, but here's a pic of one so you can get the idea. Basically you crank the handle and it spins the food around and around over the sieve, where all the soft parts fall through. The bonus with the Kitchen Aid is that it does all the cranking. When you're dealing with tons of apples, that is a plus.  

Leftovers end up in the mill, which you can just pull out and compost, give to your chickens, or if you live in a loft like I do, just throw down the garbage disposal and make a resolution to get yourself a compost pile or chickens in the future. 

The picture above is from this blog, where the author makes her applesauce much the same way, except she cores her apples, which is an unnecessary step.

Then you reheat the applesauce to get it ready to jar - when preserving food it is extremely important that the stuff going in the jar is hot, the jar itself is hot and clean, and that the lids for the jar are hot. The reason is that the lid and the jar need to form a tight seal to lock out bacteria, and the contents need to be hot to help form that vacuum seal. So don't skip any steps on this one!

We stuck the jars in the oven (after cleaning them) on low (180 degrees), the lids in a pot of almost boiling water (you don't want it to boil and ruin the rubber seal), and brought the applesauce to boiling temp on the stove. Then we quickly pulled out 3-4 jars at a time, put the applesauce in carefully (don't let the outsides/top get dirty or it will mold later - ick!) to within 1/4 inch of the top, and put on the lids and rings. 

Once they were all filled, the jars got placed into a pot of boiling water (put the on a rack, not directly on the bottom of the pot, or they will crack), and boiled for 7-10 minutes. The water has to cover the jars entirely.

That's it! Once they cooled I used these super cute print-it-yourself labels and we will gift them next week! Mike couldn't believe how DELICIOUS the applesauce was with no sugar. Sweet and yummy (we love cinnamon, but you could totally fiddle with the spices). And the best part is, you know exactly what's in it and it's organic. We are totally planting an apple tree in our future yard!

Cost of the organic applesauce making endeavor:

$1.00/pound for apples. I bought 12 pounds. I have read other blogs where people got theirs for way cheaper by going to the orchard or the Amish! So shop around your neighborhood.

$11.50 for 12 jars, including lids/rings. If you had jars already, you could just buy the lids/rings, or just the lids. It's like $2.25 for 12 lids.

Spices were donated by S.! But they cost less than $1.00.

We had enough applesauce for about 18 eight ounce jars, with some left over for eating. So that makes it around $0.80-$1.31/jar, depending on how many supplies you needed. And if you got your apples cheaper, you could really cut down the price. Either way, awesomely cheaper than purchasing it from the grocery store (well, at least MY grocery stores here in SoCal!).

Pickling

One of my favorite daydreams for our future life is to have a little house on a big lot, with chickens, fruit trees, and a huge garden. I'm apparently a very well paid writer in this daydream, so I have a lot of time to just putter around the house and make jams, jellies, pickles, and preserves. Right.

So in order for this to come true, one of the things I need to learn is how to pickle. In pursuit of this skill, I spent a morning with our friend and neighbor, S., who is experienced in pickling, canning, and also happens to be a trained chef. She gave me all sorts of tips, recipes, and spices, loaned me her processing pot, can lifters and other utensils, and sent me off with her best wishes. 

My good friend B. is always willing to join me in any sort of homesteading endeavor. She came over with her own pickling supplies, and we proceeded on our first pickling adventure. 

5 hours later, voila! We have homemade pickles. A couple pretty labels and decorations and these would make cute gifts. It was fun and easy. I can't wait til next summer, when cucumbers come back in season (we used some SoCal seasonal produce, like green beans and carrots, but cucumbers are out of season, even here). 

How much does this really save you? Well, I guess it depends how much you like pickles, and if you have produce you want to save. If you're saving your bounty from your garden, or taking advantage of seasonal produce at the market, then this is a great preserving alternative to freezing, canning, or dehydrating. Produce is cheap, in season. In theory, you could make a whole lot of side dishes and add a lot of variety to your diet this way, and it would cost you less than $1.00/jar, if you'd already invested in jars and spices and such.

For my costs: I got all my spices from my friend S., already had jars, and vinegar costs $3.50/gallon. I did have to buy new lids because you have to use new ones each time, but that was like $2.50/12 lids. Plus vegetables (which vary in cost, depending on where you live and where you get them). All in all, a very cheap enterprise, indeed!