Procrastination Rears Its Ugly Head Again

I feel like I've done a lot of dilly-dallying these past couple of weeks. I started painting rocks when it got too hot to work outside. Even though we've since had cooler days, I've continued staying inside and painting. Of course, I'm going to claim that the unhealthy smoke in the air is the reason I didn't go out to do work that requires deep breathing. That's partly true. The other part is just plain laziness and procrastination rearing its ugly head.

I didn't get around to doing any canning, even though I knew our wheat harvest was quickly coming my way. Now that farm work is upon me, there won't be any canning done unless we have a rain delay. That doesn't seem likely. I will snack on fresh sun gold cherry tomatoes while running the grain cart. I'm getting lots of those.

I did whip up a batch of tomato sauce, sans recipe, using sun-ripened tomatoes, along with onions, shallots, and fresh herbs from my garden. It wasn't a big enough batch for canning anyway, but it was perfect with my rice-y meatballs. I kind of followed my sister-in-law's recipe for dolmas, which calls for grape leaves. I use that recipe for cabbage rolls, but always cook the cabbage on the side since my husband won't eat the cabbage anyway. The meatballs call for fresh mint, which gives the dish a nice, fresh taste. I'm pretty sure I shared this recipe last year.

I also tried a new recipe for carrots. I will change it next time as I felt there was too much sauce. I'll cut every ingredient except the carrots and raisins in half. If you don't want to use rum, you can substitute a teaspoon of rum extract with a half cup of apple juice for that.

Rum-Glazed Carrots

1/2 C butter

3 pds. carrots, trimmed (about 16)

1/2 C packed dark brown sugar

1/2 C dark rum

1/4 C raisins

1/2 tsp pepper

Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the carrots, toss to coat, and cook until just tender and beginning to brown, about 30 minutes. Turn them every 10 minutes. Combine the rest in a bowl, mixing well. Pour over the carrots, reduce the heat to low, and cook another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Spoon into a bowl and serve hot.

I still have lots of beets, so went looking for more beet recipes. This one makes use of my InstantPot. If you don't have one, you can always just boil the beets until tender, cool them a bit, and peel them. Cut them up and put them in the pickling sauce. I like this recipe as there isn't as much sugar in the sauce so they're a bit more tart. I hard boiled some eggs and added them to the sauce with the beets. They got much better as time went on. Oh, and I used fresh sliced onions instead of dried onion. I used 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Next time I'll just use one cup. I'll also use this pickling sauce for zucchini sticks, maybe even some carrots.

InstantPot Pickled Beets

Wash the beets and stack them on the trivet insert. Add 1 1/2 C water. Cover and use the steam setting for 15 minutes. Let the steam release naturally. Let the beets cool, then peel and cube them.

While they cook, make this pickling sauce on the stove top:

1 1/2 C (5%) white vinegar

1 - 2 C sugar

2 tsp pickling spice

2 Tbl dried onion

1 Tbl iodine-less salt

Bring to a boil, stirring often, then simmer 5 minutes (or longer). Pour over the peeled, cubed beets. Refrigerate. These will keep for 2 weeks.

I read several articles that say not to use the InstantPot for canning. It hasn't been approved by the government agency in charge of such things, as they don't think it keeps the contents of the jars hot enough long enough to kill botulism. I was hoping it would work for smaller batches. I thought it would keep the kitchen cooler. But that idea went right out the window when I read the articles. So after the wheat harvest is over I'll drag my big canner out and get busy with the beets and tomatoes. So much fun in my future.