Wild Muscadines

Muscadine grapes are a native variety that do well in the South.  The European-style grapes have plant disease issues when grown here.  There are a number of cultivars that produce very nice grapes (albeit all with seeds--no way around that).  Most or all state agricultural extension services in the southern US have pages devoted to muscadines, e.g., UGA.  Somewhat confusingly, the different states' sites offer conflicting information.  Ison's, a nursery that has developed and patented a large number of muscadine varieties, has a table that more or less lines up with the information available from the extension services (keeping in mind occasional disagreements--which may be related to how different varieties perform in different regions).

There are wild types growing...wild...everywhere in the South.  I have seldom seen any female vines with fruit on them, but when walking through the woods near the well recently, found one growing on an old fence.  The picture at the right was taken in early July.

I was wondering if I'd ever see any fruit off of the plant.  Muscadines are eaten by a variety of wildlife, and north Georgia also has been in a fairly severe drought since spring.  Most farmers in the area have no irrigation (with 50+" of rain per year, it's normally not needed), and I saw a number of fields where the corn crop was lost.  Wheat was not as heavily-impacted, though yields may have dropped, and soybeans got off to a very slow start but some rains arrived in August to keep things going--temporarily.  September has been mostly dry, as well.  The drought has caused a more or less total loss of my own black walnut crop this year; in April and May things were looking decent but all of the nuts dropped early.  Some hickories are dropping now but I haven't opened any up yet to see if they are developed.

I did get a harvest--one grape--off the vine pictured above.  When I looked in early September one was ripe with a couple of others still green.  The grape was tiny but the flavor was okay.  The skin was thick and fairly tart, but overall it wasn't bad.  I hope this plant continues to develop.  It will probably never amount to much because it's under a fairly dense oak canopy.  Still, it's a nice find.  Then again, I may have to cut it out.  If it grows substantially, it might pull down the old fence. The old fence isn't serving much functional purpose currently, but I don't want it to end up on the ground.

I see wild muscadines littering the trail where I run in August, both bronze and black, but they grow high in the trees, so the grapes usually split or at least get badly bruised in the fall to the ground: they are seldom in good / edible condition.

I have a trellis set up for muscadines--more domesticated varieties--but I haven't planted them yet.  I need to get my fencing set up for the vines when they are installed; I have a substantial deer population in the field where they will be going.  That's a project for the off season coming up.

Pear Preserves

Harvest season is starting to wind down a bit so I have some time to post.  I have a lot of material queued up, but it takes time and motivation to get it online--that and timeliness: a post on thinning peach trees probably wouldn't resonate much right now.

I got some Kieffer pears yesterday.  There are trees all over north Georgia that are overloaded with pears right now and they have an ever-increasing collection of drops on the ground. Most of these are probably Kieffers.  Many people apparently don't bother with them anymore; in the Atlanta exurbs, there are a lot of pear trees in what are now subdivision yards--the new occupants have no idea what to do with them and, since they didn't plant the tree, not much interest.  They might have tried gnawing on one at some point and quickly decided they were no good.  However, the people who planted the trees didn't waste time and effort.  If there were better fruit trees to plant, they would have done so.  The old rural farmhouses might be gone, but the trees endure.

I had a Kieffer tree myself (briefly).  It was long-neglected when I took ownership of the property and I did get a few pears the first year.  I tried to eat them fresh both before and after I let them sit at room temperature waiting futilely for them to ripen and soften to become like Bartletts.  I looked into doing pear preserves at the time but never got around to it.  The tree was a scaffold for a poison ivy vine the size of Godzilla, so I cut it down after a year or so and hauled it off to an inert landfill (I was worried about even burning it for firewood).  The poison ivy had more or less embedded itself in the tree over a period of years and couldn't be pulled out or cut off at ground level.  The tree had literally grown around it.

Kieffers are very hard.  They look like pears but do not assume Bartlett-like softness and coloring when they ripen.  My peck bag had a mix of green and almost-golden coloring, as the picture shows.  They are somewhat grittier than Bartletts and way more so than Seckels.  The skin is more noticeable than that of a Bartlett when eating fresh if unpeeled.  The pears at the right (any color) were sweet enough; I was pleasantly surprised when I cut one open and sampled it.  It was also very crunchy.

You can see videos and sites online that say you can briefly immerse pears in simmering water, then quench in cold water, and remove the skin easily.  I don't think that works with Kieffers, or if it does, there's more to it than just letting them bob in near-boiling water for up to a couple of minutes.  I soon gave up and resorted to a vegetable peeler.

That worked fine.  They peeled quickly.  I used the knife to cut off the top and bottom, then quarter them, cut out the core, then dice them.  I was surprised at how quickly it went:  I'm pretty slow at canning food prep, but I got eight cups of diced pear pieces in less than two hours.

This is a double batch, which various sites say is a bad idea when making preserves, jams, and jellies.  I have never had problems getting a doubled recipe to work, but at some point I might--either way, if I'm going to go through all the trouble to get everything set up then torn down and cleaned at the end, I want to do more than three pints.

I did not have much trouble with darkening; to each two cups of diced pears I added a tablespoon of lemon juice, stirring it around a little.  I then followed the standard directions.  The Sure-Jell package insert has a recipe, as does the website.  I did not add the butter--that wasn't on the package insert and it does not necessarily sound appetizing.  Before heating, I used a potato masher to bruise the pieces and liberate some juice, but they did not break down nearly as well as peaches or blueberries, to say the least.

I was a little worried that the nuggets wouldn't soften enough.  Crunchy preserves would be interesting, but they would also unprecedented in my canning experience.  No worries on that count; I actually ended up with slightly more than eight cups of pears, so also had slightly more than six pints of preserves: the remaining 0.2 pint after I'd gotten as many filled jars as I could I just put in the refrigerator.  It set up well when it cooled and the fruit chunks are tender.  The ones in the canner got even more heating, since they were processed for about 17 minutes.  They should be fine.

The consistency of the pears was thinner / runnier than I get with peaches when the mixture was heated.  As the pear pieces cooked down, they shrank quite a bit--one of the reasons that fresh-pack pears and apples usually don't turn out all that well, I suppose--and the overall viscosity became very fluid.  I mentioned above that I usually don't have trouble getting my preserves to set up, and that's true: I also don't usually do the frozen-plate test, but I did today just to be sure.  All was well.

The recipe is the standard two cups of sugar per pint, so is very sweet--but that's okay.  Given the amount of this I eat at any given time, I'm not worried about counting calories for this.  I tried some reduced sugar jam with the low-sugar pectin one time and didn't care for the consistency.

It's good stuff.  I'm not sure I want to go on a mission to meet people and ask them if I can harvest pears from their trees, but Kieffers have some promise.  I have two pear trees that are too young to bear: Magness and Seckel.  A third, Ayers, was unfenced and demolished by a randy buck last fall.  I will look to replace it this winter.

I've been thinking of another Ayers or a Warren... something that is good to eat fresh.  There are some who say the Kieffers can become soft eventually, and that even if not, they're fine crunchy.  I half-agree.  It's a bit more work to render a Kieffer ready to eat than it is to do the same with a Bartlett or Seckel (with the latter, it's just clean and start biting).  I'm going to try dehydrating some Kieffers with and without skin to see what happens.  Will I plant a Kieffer?  I don't know.  They are definitely low-maintenace and disease-resistant, thriving everywhere around me in conditions of long-term utter neglect.  Maybe.  I'll think about it after seeing how the dehydrating works out.

Sauerkraut

Note (added 1/22/17):  More on sauerkraut can be seen in another post.  

I've tried fermenting vegetables, and so far the one that has worked best is cabbage, aka sauerkraut.  There are much better sites that describe the process than what I can provide; see for example Nourishing Treasures (the link is to the final report, but there are numerous other posts on the experiment linked from that page; the whole package is very detailed).

Here's what I have experienced:  First, my house is normally somewhat warmer than the typical upper 60s-lower 70s temperature range suggested for kraut fermentation.  In the summer, my house is usually around 80.  Because of this, I have never let a batch go for 28 days.  I don't let it go too much past when the CO2 action fades, although as the Nourishing Treasures posts note, that may be ending things too soon (see also this post by the same author, Lea Harris:  Fermentation Mistakes. Some sites warn that spoilage may occur at higher temps, but I have never had a problem--although last summer, a batch seemed to be through its CO2 cycle within a week.

My most recent batch I  left out for about 20 days.  I have previously used a half-gallon mason jar with a simple airlock; it works very well.  One nice thing about it is that it's possible to see what's going on.  I usually have kept it in my pantry, out of the light, but it's available for examination at any time.

Two pounds of cabbage plus one tablespoon of canning salt is all that's needed.  Two pounds is around one normal-sized head; when chopped and put into the jar initially, it fills it.

To get things ready to ferment, part of the process is mixing the salt in with the chopped cabbage, which begins to liberate water, and massaging/crushing/stomping the mixture to bruise the leaves.  This in turn liberates more water from the leaves.  I have often massaged the cabbage a lot in a bowl, then crushed it with my fist once it's in the jar.

Things will rapidly start to get a little foamy.  The two pounds of cabbage, when crushed/compressed, fills the jar about halfway.  I took a piece of thin plastic and cut it in the shape of the jar, below the shoulder, and use that to hold down the cabbage leaves.  In the picture below, you can see some glass weights holding it down; those are Pickle Pebbles.  I have the wide mouth size.  I stacked three on top of the plastic.  I got the plastic itself from a pack of bacon (washed, of course).

This time I did a larger batch.  Two pounds is okay, but more is desirable.  A number of companies sell airlock fermentation crocks; as noted in various places they are fairly expensive and some are available in very large sizes.  One of the factors to consider is that, while it is not necessary to fill the crock, there has to be enough cabbage to generate enough CO2 to fill the airspace.  Filling a vessel all the way is a bad idea, because it heaves a bit as it ferments, but if it is only 25% full, that might be a problem.

I put about six pounds into the crock and another two pounds into the mason jar (I wanted a visual check of what was happening).  The crock was a 5 liter model from Stone Creek Trading (I like the glass weights). Although cost per volume drops dramatically with larger crocks, I realized that I'm not--for now--likely to want to make more at any one time than what the 5 liter model will hold.

The foaming action died down after about 10 days and I let it go another 10. At that time I noticed a little mold starting to form at the edge of the water in the gutter at the top of the crock.  I opened it up and ended up with a little over a gallon, including what was in the mason jar and what was in the crock.

There was no mold inside the vessel; what you see above is some petrified foam.  There's also a lot of water (both in the mason jar above and the crock); I added some when my stomping efforts didn't get enough fluid to cover the leaves initially (I used a 3 tablespoons of salt per gallon mixture of water, suggested by NW Edible).

I tested the pH of the mixture; it's a little difficult to do with red cabbage, because the red stains the test strip.  But it seemed to be in the 3.5-4.0 range, which is good enough for me.  The Nourishing Treasures trial found 3.0-3.5 after 28 days.

I have noticed that the kraut gets tangier as it sits in the refrigerator; it is no longer submerged (except at the bottom of the vessel), and fermentation slows way down--but to some degree, it may continue.  Storage at room temperature is apparently okay for a relatively short time; that's why this food preservation technique came into use (although as I noted above, my room temperature is not the same as what would have been typical in Europe in the fall and winter, to say the least).

Corn and Rye Bread

A few months ago I discussed cornbread.  I slightly modified the recipe to use whole wheat flour instead of white, and due to a mistake in mixing the ingredients, made some further modifications.  I've used the same recipe ever since.

A family member is visiting who is sensitive to wheat, so I decided to try an alternative.  Instead of 2/3 cup whole wheat flour, I used 2/3 cup whole rye.  I also dropped the vital wheat gluten.  I didn't make any other modifications (either to ingredients or baking time).

The results were good.  The texture is somewhat smoother--rye dough is sticky, and it might be that same quality that transfers into the finished product--and the flavor is slightly different, but certainly okay and in no way inferior to the normal recipe.  I was surprised it rose so well.  I was expecting it to be more compact.

I'm not sure I'll do this routinely, but it's something to have as an option.

Processing pumpkins

This is one case where I definitely don't use state of the art methodology.  I do it the old-fashioned way--slowly, awkardly, and potentially painfully.

The standard approach is to cut the pumpkins in half, scoop out the seeds, then put the halves face-down in about an inch of water and bake at 450 for 45 minutes.  This will soften the flesh, which can then be scooped out and used.  This entire procedure can also be used for butternut squash, which I consider to be essentially the same for all practical purposes.

Cutting can range from difficult to horrifically hard.  It all depends on the rind.  The pumpkins I processed last month were very tough.  That may be good for storage, but it's not so good for cutting.  The problem is that the pumpkin is small, and moves around as you try to get leverage on it.  And a knife--I tried three--isn't the best tool for tackling something like that.  A saw or hatchet would've been better.  A clean hacksaw has possibilities and I'll consider it--though that would lead to fragments of rind embedded in the flesh along the cut.  When you're putting great force on a sharp object partly embedded in something that's unstable, there's obvious potential for injury.  It took 20 minutes or more to cut two pumpkins; you can see that the edges of the cut are pretty ragged.

Then I put them in the oven and all went well.  After 45 minutes the flesh had softened so much that it almost fell out of the shells, which themselves seem to have some potential for future use for... something.

There may be a better way.  Jill Winger at The Prairie Homestead suggests putting the pumpkins in the oven whole (at 350 for 45 minutes to 2 hours).  At that point they cut open easily and can be processed as above.  I might give that a shot next year...or later this year when I tackle the butternut squash on the kitchen counter.

So far the only thing I have done with pumpkin and squash is make puree for various dishes--pumpkin pie (shown above), pumpkin casserole, and pumpkin scones (the latter courtesy of the Paratus Familia Blog; they also work well un-iced).  The pumpkin casserole recipe I use (from somewhere online that I don't remember) is:

2 c pumpkin puree

1 c evaporated milk

1 c sugar

1/2 c self-rising flour*

1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

6 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 350. Combine all ingredients (mixing the dry ingredients first helps avoid lumps in the flour) in a casserole dish.  Bake at 350 for 1 hour (covered for 45 min, open for 15).

*In lieu of self-rising flour can use 1/2 c all-purpose flour, 3/4 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt

This comes very close to being pumpkin pie filling minus the crust, so it is almost a dessert in itself.

One other thing about processing pumpkins: the seeds.  There are a lot of ways to roast them; I just toss them in some salt water for a few minutes, then put them in the oven at 400 for 15-20 minutes.  They usually turn out okay.

Last, what to do with all of the puree?  It takes a pound to do a pumpkin and about the same for the casserole (2 cups = 1 pound, more or less).  I got about four pounds from the two pumpkins above (which is more than normal).  I got about six pounds from a tan cheese pumpkin last year.

I put the puree in one-pound lots into containers and freeze; they stay good for about a year.  Over at Dehydrate to Store there's a video on dehydrating pumpkin puree; I haven't done it yet but it looks like it has some potential as an alternative to freezing.  Pumpkin puree is apparently one thing that cannot be safely canned (even in a pressure canner), so alternative methods are needed.  The fresh pumpkins themselves (uncut) don't keep all that long; butternut squash will last longer, but at some point it will probably make sense to process before you are ready to use them.

Kerosene lighting

I've been aware of Aladdin lamps for a few years.  The online consensus-backed up by some YouTube videos is that they are very bright (see also this one).  They also are reported to put out a lot of heat.  I toyed with the idea of getting one for a while, but never pulled the trigger.  Some of them are very nice-looking, but they are hideously costly.  You can get one for about $135 [update 11/22: now $199; welcome to Inflationworld].  If you look around, nice used ones may show up on Craigslist, eBay, or retail antique dealers.  If you want a pedestal design and shade, the price is probably going to end up north of $200 [Update 11/22: now over $300].  So that deterred me.

The mantle is another factor: Aladdin has changed them recently because of concerns with thorium, which was in the old design.  The new mantles aren't as bright, but I'm willing to stipulate that they're still brighter than any non-pressurized alternative (though there are many variables with flat-wick lamps that impact their brightness).  Mantles are somewhat fragile, and from reading various comments from users, the mantles need to be replaced with some degree of regularity--though that would depend for the most part on the amount of use. The mantles represent an ongoing cost; though flat-wick lamps also need new wicks periodically, those are cheaper and they are consumed at a lower rate.

I was partly interested in a good light source for emergency use--the power here does not go out often, but it has been out for about 24 hours a couple of times while I've lived here due to ice.  I wasn't sold on the practicality of a kerosene lamp for that purpose.  I have flashlights and batteries, plus options to run low-wattage things (like strings of LED Christmas lights) for a time if the power is out.  When I began to plan for a kerosene heater as well, it made more sense to get something for lighting that could use the same fuel.

I ran across this duplex (double-wick) lamp offered by Lehman's one day, and decided to give it a try [Update 11/22: no longer available].  I'm willing to spend $50 on a speculative basis.  It arrived in July, which was not necessarily a good time to either 1) find kerosene or 2) use a lamp that puts out a lot of heat as it runs. So I didn't do much with it until fall, when its heat output would be an asset.

I didn't know what to expect.  I have some battery-powered LED candles, and figured that amount of light was about what I'd get out of a single-wick lamp.  I was surprised.  The duplex burner (two 1 1/16" wicks) puts out a lot of light.  It's not like an electrical light, but it's more than enough to read by if sitting close to the light source.  The picture makes it look like it's somewhat brighter than it actually is, but it's close.

I also got a lantern (the second picture above); they have some advantages over lamps.  They can be carried around more easily and are more weather-hardy.  I bought a #2 Champion from W.T. Kirkman, though other brands and cheaper versions can certainly be found.  I liked the galvanized finish.  This lantern has a 7/8" single wick.  It's also brighter than I thought it would be--my expectations were apparently too low before I started this--but it's noticeably dimmer than the duplex (as you might expect, with only 41% as much wick width as the latter).  The lantern also puts out less heat, although the Kirkman site helpfully estimates the heat output: 1400 BTU per hour (compared to about 10,000-23,000 BTU/hr for a kerosene heater...that suggests they have limited potential as mini kerosene heaters: one lantern, the Jupiter, was designed with a large font/tank to enable it to burn for a long time and heat greenhouses).  The light output is estimated at about 12-14 candlepower with a max of 20--getting from there to lumens seems to be somewhat of a messy calculation.  However, it's also bright enough for reading and general low-level illumination, though you wouldn't mistake it for an electric table lamp with a 60- (or even 20-) watt bulb.

You may be able to see in the picture that the walls are a bit darker with the lantern; the difference between the two is reasonably close to how they look when viewed live, but to my eyes, the brightness of the duplex lamp was about equivalent to that of the second picture, meaning things were dimmer still for the lantern.  Either would work fine for non-electric lighting.

What about fuel efficiency? I have not done a fuel consumption test.  Patrice Lewis, on her blog, has.  She used a lamp with a 3/4" wick for her test and found that it consumed about 0.61 ounces of kerosene per hour (2.5 cups used in 33 hours).  If the amount of fuel consumption is linear at a 1:1 ratio with wick width, that would mean the 7/8" wick lantern uses 0.71 ounces per hour and the duplex lamp uses 1.71 ounces per hour (if you ever had any doubts, yes, algebra has real-world uses).  If all of these assumptions and calculations are correct, the duplex lamp is a fuel hog, relatively speaking.  The Aladdin should be somewhat more fuel efficient than an equivalently-bright flat-wick lamp if it converts some of the heat to light through making the mantle glow.  However, I've seen some sources--like Jack's Country Store, which sells them--report that consumption is about 3 ounces per hour (if they use that much, they really would put out a lot of heat).

And what about fuel?  K-1 kerosene can be bought at big-box stores in the early winter months as heater fuel for around $9-$10 per gallon [Update 11/22: LOL--$14 to $18]--they advertise it as ultra-low in sulfur, and therefore low emission.  It can be bought at the pump at service stations for maybe half that amount.  W.T. Kirkman has a summary of fuels as well as a list of ones to avoid.  The only ones I have used so far are Florasense, which definitely has a kerosene-like smell when it burns in the lantern, not so much in the lamp, and Klean-Strip kerosene substitute (which still has a smell on first lighting in the lantern, but it soon dissipates).

One other thing about the duplex lamp: The chimney assembly comes off of the burner for lighting--you don't have to pull the chimney up by itself then get it back into the prongs after lighting.  I found that tip on a YouTube video that I can't locate at the moment.  It makes things a bit easier.

There are other options for emergency lighting--the aforementioned LED Christmas lights will do a decent job if you have a battery and inverter to run them (this isn't as hard to set up as you might expect; some car starters have small inverters and outlets, and you can also hook an inverter up to your car battery).  Or you can use LED lanterns (like the Streamlight) with a couple of sets of batteries at the ready.

Kerosene lamps and lanterns are in many ways antiquated and sub-optimal; they are relatively dangerous; they pollute as they burn; and they are relatively inefficient.  There are a number of international initiatives to transition rural areas in the developing world to solar LED lanterns.  However, for some uses, the inefficiencies of kerosene are bonuses.  Winter ice storms are one such situation.

Reviewed: 11/1/22

Cranberry Sauce

I made some sugar-free cranberry sauce today.  I've been doing it for a few years.  Originally, I didn't can it and only made it as needed, storing it in the refrigerator.  I also used aspartame as the sweetener, which worked in terms of sweetness, but changed the consistency.  At the end of the season, I'd buy bags of berries, put them in the freezer, then try to use them in ensuing months.

Whey Low works much better as a non-sugar sweetener.  And when I started canning it, my experience with cranberry sauce in the off season improved.  Warehouse clubs often get three-pound bags of berries, which is too much if you just want a side dish at Thanksgiving, but works out well if you're doing a canner load of sauce for use in the next year.

I use this recipe, adapted from the Ball Blue Book (BBB):

About 21 1/3 cups of cranberries
10 2/3 cups each of water and sugar (or Whey Low)

The berries have to be picked over carefully.  I always find a lot of bad ones.  They're often off-color and squishy; they may be translucent pink, or turning black.  If you don't get all (or most of them) out, the cranberry sauce will have an off-odor and flavor, somewhat reminiscent of PineSol.  Tonight I started off with nine pounds and culled out about 26 ounces, or 18%.  It took about an hour to do so.  I used the above amounts of water and sugar, but didn't measure out the berries.  From past experience, I know that nine pounds will net out to about 8-9 quarts.  Tonight I got about 8.5.  They can be canned in the boiling water bath canner.  I do them for 25 minutes.

 To make the sauce itself, I just boil the water and sugar, then add the berries.  They'll start to rupture immediately.  I stir them and eventually mash the few remaining stragglers against the side with the slotted spoon I use to stir.  Everything fits into a 16 qt. stock pot, though it is tight at first.  Until the berries break down, it will be nearly full.

You can see a couple of things in the picture.  One is that foaming becomes a problem as it continues to cook (and boil).  Another is that the berries (even once they burst) float at the top of the mixture, leaving a more syrupy consistency below.  I try to balance out what goes into each jar, but obviously miss the mark sometimes.  Still, it all works out and they're good.

The Whey Low does admittedly make this an expensive indulgence.  The three bags of berries cost about $14, and the amount of Whey Low (a little over four pounds) costs probably $30 or so (without any discounts, which are easy to get if you're willing to go on their e-mail list).  I could use sugar, which would cut the price dramatically. For preserves I use sugar; Whey Low would be prohibitive.  But for cranberry sauce, I figure it's worth it to lighten the load calorically.