Canning A Lost Art: Simply Scrumptious Zucchini Bread

Welcome back to my canning series! This is the second recipe that uses my newly frozen squash! How better to end squash then with zucchini bread yum! This is definitely one of the kids favorite treats. When I was a kid my mom would always try and hide the fact that there were vegetables in there. I suppose it's counter productive to have veggies in sweets, the sugar cancels most of the good nutrition out, but you win some and you lose some. Thankfully, my kids love their vegetables, so I don't have to push too much.

As I experimented with all of my recipes I baked this and brought it to a potluck. It was collapsed and dense but I still got tons of compliments and had multiple people ask me for the recipe. So this one is a keeper for sure :). The original recipe for the zucchini bread is found here. But I made my own changes that made it simply scrumptious. 

Simply Scrumptious Zucchini Bread

• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

Cinnamon Struesel Topping

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup butter

1 tsp cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2.  In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar.
3.  In a separate bowl, combine oil, eggs, water, zucchini and lemon juice. 
4. Mix wet ingredients into dry. Pour batter into greased loaf pans. 
5. Top with the cinnamon struesel topping. 
6. Bake in 2 standard loaf pans for 1 hour, or until a tooth pick comes out clean. Alternately, bake in 5 mini loaf pans for about 45 minutes.

High Altitude Directions

If you're like me then you have to deal with baking in high altitudes which can be a pain in the butt! Your cookies come out flat and crisp instead of round and fluffy and your bread's are collapsed and dense. Agh it has been the bane of my existence since my move and I LOVE to bake! So I did a lot of experimenting and my husband got to eat a lot of defective cookies, breads and pastries. I'm still working on this recipe if you hadn't noticed my bread collapsed again; but I'm pretty sure I know the reason why. So I'll try and try again. But this batch came out way better then the first. So there is a glimmer of hope!

This website has great advice to get you started on high altitude baking; but I have made my own adjustments as I've experimented throughout the years. I would love to give you exact high altitude measurements but it really depends on what altitude you're at. I'll tell you one thing though I tend to bake my cookies and breads at a higher temperature then what is recommended.

Enjoy this delicious Zucchini bread! I know I will ;)

Canning A Lost Art: Cheesy Bacon Squash

Welcome back to my canning series! We've just frozen squash and I'm definitely looking forward to using it.This is the first time I've frozen my homegrown squash. So I'm excited to have squash year round to make all of my delicious recipes! I love the fact that frozen squash tastes so much like fresh. Amazing! I mean with frozen food you have to give yourself some leeway to expect it to not taste exactly like fresh. But I've had this dish with fresh squash and it tasted the same with frozen. This recipe is a side that my mother-in-law made for us. It was really delicious and I would have never thought of putting these flavors together!

Cheesy Bacon Squash

Ingredients

1 Cup zucchini
1 Cup yellow squash
6 Slices bacon
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Italian seasoning
1 Cup cheddar cheese

1. Cook bacon in a large frying pan. After bacon is cooked remove and drain bacon grease reserving about two tablespoons in pan.
2.  Thaw squash until you can break it up into pieces and add to frying pan.
3. Cut bacon, with scissors, into bite sized pieces and add to squash.
4. Season squash with salt, pepper, garlic powder and italian seasoning till desired taste.
5. Cook mixture until hot. 
6. About five minutes before you're ready to eat sprinkle cheese on top of squash and let melt on low heat. Serve hot and enjoy!

This turned out more amazing then I remembered it was so delicious. The only let down is that this side dish isn't the most amazingly healthy veggie side in the world. So I highly recommend having a large salad alongside to make you feel slightly better about yourself :P Next is zucchini bread and snap am I excited!

Canning A Lost Art: Freezing Summer Squash

Well it has been a while since I've posted! I did a lot of canning last year and took a whole lot of photos and wrote the drafts and then life happened. Well that's being one Mad Momma for ya I keep myself extremely busy! But I really want to get back into my canning series because in all honesty I've become obsessed!

Next up is squash! I love squash and for the first time I grew my own in my very first vegetable garden! I couldn't even tell you how excited I was! Perhaps I planted too many because I'm picking up to five a day! Luckily near the end of the season we had a brutal hail storm and it killed almost all of my plants. Yes I was happy my squash plants died!

I started picking squash from my garden around Mid-June and it's now August. It seems to me that it has a pretty long growing season but it's peak is in the hotter months. You can find squash at your grocery stores or local farms. But where I'm from squash grows like a weed and I started the plants from seeds and they're now the size of beach balls. Below is a picture of those suckers! Plus they're attempting to kill the pepper plants and have succeeded with half of the strawberries. We have to trim them back every couple of days! It's a very easy plant to grow and considering I paid about a penny per seed and those plants have yielded $30 or more in fruit; I'd say that growing your own is not a bad investment. This year I am most definitely building a trellis.

So with all of that squash laying around I thought there had to be a way to preserve these! We couldn't eat them nearly fast enough. I've never preserved squash before so this is a first and I kind of made it up as I went. So after freezing my first batch I did some research and found I was pretty spot on, which I probably should of done the research first. Doing this is really simple and takes no time at all. We will be freezing shredded zucchini for bread and bite sized zucchini and yellow squash for side and main dishes.

Bite Sized Summer Squash

Here's what you'll need.

1. Any type of Summer Squash, I used Yellow Squash and Zucchini
2. 1 large pot
3. 1 large bowl
4. Ice
5. 2 large spoons or tongs
6. Quart Ziploc freezer bags

First step is of course cleaning. I soaked my squash in the cleaning solution I found here. I let it soak for about 10 minutes, then lightly scrubbed it with a fruit scrubber.

I then cut them into bite sized pieces. A good tip about squash is the smaller the squash, the better. The larger they get, the tougher they are. They also get more seeds and become bitter. I used some big squash, because I simply don't like to waste food, but I wouldn't do it again. I could only use a small portion of the squash because the bigger the squash got, the spongier the center was. You want your squash to be firm, not squishy.

Now that your squash is cleaned and cut, it's time to blanch. Blanching is boiling or steaming vegetables for a short amount of time. Doing this stops enzyme's from breaking down the food which would cause loss of taste and texture. It also kills bacteria that could be harmful when you eat it. Make sure to not over blanch, this will cause the vegetables to become mushy.

Fill a large pot half way full with water, bring to a boil. Add squash while being careful to not over crowd the pot. Your blanching time begins when the water returns to a boil, this should only take a minute. Blanch your squash for 1-2 minutes. You can reuse the blanching water 3-5 times.

After blanching quickly transfer the squash to a large bowl filled with ice water. I used my large punch bowls since it was the largest bowl I had. Let sit for 5 minutes.

After cooling transfer squash to a dry towel. After the Zucchini was blanched it had turned a light honeydew green. The squash on the left is blanched compared to the two pieces of squash on the right. The squash should still be fairly crisp after this entire process. Any dark or mushy pieces and you know that you over blanched. 

Before blotting dry if any of the squash has it's seeds falling off, just gently pull them off. I personally like to eat the squash, not a mouthful of seeds.

We found that squash retains a lot of water. Even after we patted them dry with a paper towel they were still pretty wet. After we packed them the water built up in the ziploc bag, so we just drained it out. However, you can't get it all out. I think that laying the bag on it's back and letting the squash freeze spread out will help it not to freeze into a solid squash cube. So the second time we did this we ended up squeezing the squash and then spread it out among the bag so it froze in a single layer. It turned out a whole lot better. It was a whole lot easier to defrost and protected it more from freezer burn. Make sure to get as much air out of the ziploc bag as possible or you can vacuum seal it.

Shredded Zucchini

Now we're doing shredded Zucchini for Zucchini Bread. It's a lot simpler because you don't have to blanch it. In all honesty I'm not sure why probably because it's mainly used in baking. I tried to find info on it and came up empty handed, but I know it turns out fine (shrugs).

Here's what you'll need:

1. Cheese shredder
2. Large bowl
3. Quart sized ziploc bags

So for this you want to clean the squash like above. You ideally want to use small zucchini like usual but if you have large ones. Cut them down the middle length wise and then scoop all of the seeds out with a spoon.

 Go ahead and shred the zucchini with a cheese shredder by hand or electric. I didn't have an electric one so I did it by hand, yuck! You will quickly find out when dealing with squash that when you cut them they bleed and it gets everywhere! It sticks on everything especially your hands and when your hands dry they become "tight" like you spilled glue all over them. The only way to get this off is by literally scrubbing it off. I used my fruit scrubber it was just a pain. So if you don't want this to happen wear gloves!

Then, this is optional, you can wring any additional moisture out before you pack them in ziploc bags. Some people like the additional moisture in their zucchini bread but I found after wringing it out that my bread was still moist enough. Plus veggies that have more moisture when frozen can have more freezer burn. I was shocked at how much liquid came out of the zucchini you can see it just dripping off as my husband wrings it. Crazy!

Pack your bags with the amount of zucchini your bread recipe calls for. Mine calls for two cups. This way you won't have to measure it out or come up short or have to much. Then seal out as much air as possible. You can also use a vacuum sealer if you have one. Then I spread it thin in the bag to freeze. It turned out great!

There you have it you now can enjoy your favorite squash year round! Which has already come in handy! Come back next week while I share two of my favorite squash recipe's so you can now use your newly frozen squash! Happy canning!

Canning A Lost Art: Breaded Green Beans and Asparagus

Welcome back to my canning series! This is the second recipe on how to use your newly frozen green beans! This recipe pairs great with breaded chicken and mashed potatoes. And let me tell you like usual this is easy peasy even if it is a bit time consuming. It's also really fun for the kidos to help out, well for them at least. You can leave the asparagus out of this if you want, but I love the flavor combination. This is something I whipped up out of the blew one night and my husband and I loved it, it was great by itself but I later on added the garlic dipping sauce and wow! This is amazingly scrumptious! 

Breaded Green Beans and Asparagus

1 Cup of asparagus
1 Cup of green beans
Flour, 2 T. reserved for bread crumbs mixture
1 Egg
1/4 Cup milk
1/2 Cup Seasoned bread crumbs
1/8 Cup Parmesan cheese
Salt
Pepper

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375º F.
2. Snap the ends off of the asparagus and snap into 2 inch lengths, do the same with the green beans, set aside. If using your pre-cut frozen portion of green beans, defrost slightly before use. 
3. Whisk your two eggs with the milk and set aside. Mix your seasoned bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper with 2 T flour, set aside.
4. Dip your asparagus and green beans in a bowl of water then dip into a bowl of flour evenly coating, next dip them in the egg and milk mixture and then coat evenly with the bread crumb mixture.
5. Lay on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 12 minutes.
6. Dip breaded green beans in the butter garlic dip or drizzle over cooked veggies. 
7. If you have unseasoned bread crumbs like I did I seasoned them with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion salt and whatever else you feel like adding.

Garlic Dip

1 whole head garlic
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 T fresh finely grated Parmesan cheese
2 T heavy cream
1/2 tsp kosher salt
Large pinch of turmeric powder if you want that tempting radioactive glow

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 F. Peel away the garlic head's papery outer layers, leaving the cloves attached and intact, and then slice off the top half inch.

2. Rub all over with a little olive oil, then loosely wrap in tinfoil. Bake for 40 minutes. Your kitchen will begin to smell wonderful.

3. When the garlic is done, mushy to the touch and slightly golden, remove from oven and let cool. Heat olive oil over low heat in a small pot, and then squeeze the cooled garlic out of its skin right in the pot.

4. Add Parmesan, turmeric and cream and whisk vigorously until smooth. Taste for salt and serve with pizza for dipping. Pepperoni and pineapple work particularly well, according to Papa Jason.

5. It'll keep covered with plastic wrap in the fridge for up to a week. Add the leftovers to pasta or rice or pour over vegetables before roasting. 

Find the original recipe for the garlic dipping sauce here.

Come back next week I'll be sharing how to freeze squash and two recipes of how to use it. Thanks for stopping by!

Canning, A Lost Art: Mediterranean Mixed Veggies

Welcome back to my canning series! Now that you know how to preserve you're own green beans here's a recipe to help you use them up. One of the recipes I use for frozen green beans the most is my mixed veggie side. It's a great side to serve with a main dish of chicken, rolls and a salad. Which is a very common dinner in our house. Quick and easy definitely is a help when you have little one's scurrying about. This is a recipe that will certainly please everyone at the table and that guests will rave about.

Mediterranean Mixed Veggies

1 Cup Green beans
1 Cup Squash (Yellow squash and Zucchini are best for this recipe)
1/2 large onion, sliced
1/2 head garlic, sliced
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Rosemary
Parmesan Cheese
Mozzarella Cheese

1. Preheat your oven to 375º F.
2. Cut your squash into bite size pieces. If using a portion of your frozen green beans, do not defrost put strait on the tray frozen.
3. Lay out the onion and garlic on the baking sheet drizzle with olive oil and cover your baking sheet with foil. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. This will cause the onion and garlic to become soft and very flavorful. 
4. Now that your onion and garlic are baked add your squash and green beans. Sprinkle vegetables with salt and pepper till you have a very thin layer covering all of the vegetables. Then with a spatula turn the vegetables till they're well coated in spices. 
5. Cook in the oven for 8 minutes, pull out and turn the vegetables, sprinkle lightly with parmesan and mozzarella cheese.
6. Put back in the oven for 4 more minutes or until the cheese is melted.
7. Put the vegetables on a serving tray or bowl and sprinkle with fresh Rosemary. If using dry Rosemary cook in the oven with the vegetables.

This recipe is also great with mushrooms however my husband not only hates mushrooms but is "allergic" to them. So I'm very mushroom deprived. Well I hope you enjoyed this recipe and come back next week for another delicious recipe using your frozen green beans!

Canning A Lost Art: Freezing Green Beans

First up in the canning series is Green Beans. As a kid we not only canned these green beans but we picked them too! If you can find a farm where they let you pick your own produce it's usually much cheaper. So as usual we were our mom's labor force: we picked, cleaned, and snapped boxes full of green beans. My mom would always can green beans, but I found growing up that I hated the taste and texture of them. I thought for the longest time that I hated green beans in general. Then I tried them frozen, and it changed my world. It tasted so much like fresh that I've never looked back. Now green beans is a staple vegetable in our home that everyone enjoys.

Freezing green beans is very simple that anyone can do it. You don't need any special tools or equipment. Here's what you'll need:

1 large pot
1 large bowl
Ice
2 large spoons or tongs
Ziploc quart freezer bags
Green Beans

Green bean season ranges from July to August, and of course it varies for different zones. You could find green beans at your local grocery store on sale; however, I prefer to buy from a local farm. They tend to have better quality, fresher produce and cheaper prices. Plus most farms give you a discount for buying in bulk. I was able to find a large box in my region for $32, which yielded enough green beans to last our family of three for a year.

After you have your green beans, make sure to keep them refrigerated if you're not going to work with them right away. But do so quickly: like all fresh produce they will go bad quickly.

First step in freezing green beans is cleaning. I used this cleaning ratio that I found here. It worked like a charm! It's really great for green beans because it's really tedious washing every single bean by hand. I let them soak in this solution for 20-30 minutes. Then I rinsed well and kept them in bowls.

Next you need to snap off the end that was attached to the plant. The other end that comes to a long point you can keep on or snap off. It depends on your preference, but a lot of the plants nutrition is held in this part of the bean. I personally don't like to chew on just the skin of the green bean so I discard any "flat" or what my husband calls "meatless" green beans. When you snap the end off you will be able to see that there is a fleshy center. If not, and the bean goes flat when you squeeze it, discard it. Now is the time to snap the beans into the size you want as well.

Now that all your beans are cleaned and snapped it's time to blanch. Blanching is boiling or steaming vegetables for a short amount of time. Doing this stops enzyme's from breaking down the food which would cause loss of taste and texture. It also kills bacteria that could be harmful when you eat it. Make sure to not over blanch, this will cause the vegetables to become mushy and dark in color.

Fill a large pot half full with water. Bring water to a rapid boil. Add green beans, being careful to not over crowd the pot. The water will not boil if it's over crowded. The blanching time starts when the water comes back to a boil, which should only take about a minute. For green beans, blanching time is 3 minutes.

After you blanch quickly transfer your beans with your tongs into a bowl of ice water and let sit for 5 minutes. This will stop the cooking process.

Pull them out of the ice water and lay on a towel to dry. They should now be a bright grass green and still crisp, just slightly softer then fresh. If any come out looking brown or avocado green you probably over blanched and they might not be as tasty. The avocado green beans were always what my mom's canned green beans looked like. Yuck!

If you're not in a hurry you can lay the green beans out on a dry towel to air dry. But if you're like me, I didn't want to drag it out another day. So I blotted the green beans dry with a paper towel.

After all that's done pack single serving's for yourself or your family into quart ziploc bags. Label with the month and year and seal pushing out as much air as possible. Voila! Now you have frozen green beans to last you all year long. After all was done that large box yielded 30 14 oz bags of green beans. That's about $1.06 per bag or 0.076 cents per oz. Not bad at all!

Well thanks for stopping by, come back next week and I'll share two of my favorite recipes that use your newly frozen green beans!

Canning & Freezing Food: A Lost Art

It's that time of year! Canning time. It's the time that for just a few short months my childhood home was filled with aroma's sweet and bitter. Where my mother had us snapping beans, peeling apples, poking pickles and smashing strawberries. Our house was transformed into a finely tuned canning factory. We all had a job to do and nothing less then perfection was acceptable. Whenever my two sister's, myself or my brother would complain my mother would say, and I quote "Why do you think I had you kids? So you could be my slaves!" A part of me kind of believed her, even if she did smirk. She worked us hard, but with that work we learned. And as much as we hated it, we still managed to have fun. We ended up being grateful in the end.

Now every year my sister's and I all come together, cramming into one of our houses small kitchen's to can and preserve food for the upcoming year. Like our mother before us, everyone has a job. Whether to taste test, splash in cleaning water, or stuff food in jars. Even the little kids get to help, might as well while they still think it's fun!

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing how to preserve, store and use a variety of different foods. What I'll be posting are common foods that my family enjoys and eat often enough that we have to restock every year. These are foods that you can find at the store and that you usually buy canned or frozen! Some of these are so easy to do, you'll be amazed you didn't do it sooner.

Before we get started I want to discuss the benefits of canning and freezing you're own food. The title of this post is called "A Lost Art" for a reason. There are few people that still preserve their own food. We have been wrapped up in the convenience of the convenience store! Back in the day there was no one-stop shopping. You went to your cupboard for a can of tomatoes not a grocery shelf. Here are a few reasons to bring canning and freezing food back into your home.

1. The Price: It is simply outrageous what they charge for a can of corn these days, 97 cents! Really? I understand, you have to pay for the expensive machinery, pay the workers, pay shipping fees. Well all of that cuts into your pocket. Cut out the middle man and save some money. At it's peak season you can get an ear of corn for around 30 cents, depending on the region it goes higher or lower. A pint sized jar of corn will fit two ears of corn. That's roughly 60 cents per jar. A pint is 16 oz where a can of corn at the store is 15 oz. There are some initial fees for a beginner. A jar will cost about a dollar to buy, but here's the best thing. You can use it over and over again. I'm using jars that my mom has been using for years! They still work great!
2. Knowledge: What is in your food, really? When you can and freeze your own food you're in control of what you're eating. Companies use a lot of chemicals and preservatives to extend the shelf life of food. I don't know about you but I don't want to eat "mystery", just food. Just a bit healthier was never bad in my book.
3. Food Storage: Wait? The Hurricane's coming tomorrow! Better go stock up, oops... Natural disaster's or just a tight month, this will come in handy! I lived in Texas for ten plus years and let me tell you, the weather there certainly teaches you a lesson of preparedness. You don't want to be caught without food for a few days. Food storage might sound like an old fashioned idea, but in tough times it helps to know that you're set if disaster strikes. Canning is definitely a step towards becoming more secure in your own home.

Hope you enjoyed the first in a series of posts and my first post ever! Come back soon and happy blogging!