If Life Hands You Old Corn

Make corn meal! Remember my lamenting about getting to our corn a little late and not liking it's stickiness and chewiness? How could you forget, its like two entries ago?! Anyhow, I said to myself, "Little Glutton, why don't you throw some of that old corn in the dehydrator and see what happens." So I did because I always listen to myself. And what happened was that it dried all up. What did you think was gonna happen, it's a dehydrator, silly. Then I threw it in my little nut-chopper gizmo and then into the old coffee grinder. It looked pretty darn good.

I had to put it to the test, though, so I made some whole wheat cornbread. The Big Guy said it was the best he ever had, and he liked my cornbread before.

I'm thrilled about this because I was so unhappy about all my hard work in growing all that beautiful corn being for naught. Making cornmeal from future corn crops is not the plan, but it's comforting to know we have a great use for our old, sticky corn this year.

Accidental Syrup

I neither made nor ate these. This is all The Big Guy's doing. I did, however, make the mountain huckleberry "syrup." It was an accident because I was trying to make jam. But that's OK because sometimes accidents are happy things. Just ask The Big Guy.

At First I Was Afraid...

I was petrified...to use the pressure canner for the first time. I had visions of the heavy lid sailing across the kitchen and hitting someone (probably me) in the head. But I read everything I could find about pressure canning and I talked to people who had done it before and I watched a video on You Tube that showed a canner just like ours...and I made sure The Big Guy was home to stand between me and the stove. I'm not proud.

Turns out, it really wasn't all that scary. It worked just like it was supposed to, See? Beans!

These are three colors of beans if you're wondering why some look a different color -- green (duh), wax, and purple. I'm not really a fan of canned beans -- much prefer steamed and bright green, but if we're to not waste anything from the garden, canned or frozen they must be. Speaking of frozen things, we also picked all the corn. We were, unfortunately, a little late on that, so it was a bit sticky by the time it was blanched and stripped from the cobs. These are the drawbacks of only two people trying to work big gardens. But, don't be sad. We got 47 cups of corn kernels frozen into 10 lb bags, and it will be perfectly suitable for things like scalloped corn, corn pudding, corn bread, and as The Big Guy said, "Just throw it in anything for filler!" Nine out of ten cows across America agree. One out of two cats in the Ravensdale area agree, too.

The Answer: 2 Quarts of Peaches

The Question: How much will 20 fresh peaches make for canning?

I don't know if I like the looks of these. Oh, they're safe and all, but they look cloudy. And fuzzy -- not in a good peach-fuzz way. Perhaps I'm just too used to the store-bought ridiculously bright and smooth peach halves (which makes me wonder how do they do that and do I really want to know?) Maybe that's why I've never liked canned peaches. Still, I think these may become cobbler someday...