Chocolate Raspberry Jam To Die For!

Okay so its not pretty, but fruit and chocolate seriously? you can't go wrong!

Gather your materials.

6 cups raspberries (I threw some strawberries in there for good measure)

4 cups sugar

1 box low sugar pectin

5 tbsp lemon juice

1 cup Dark Chocolate cocoa powder

Mash your berries and start bringing them to a low boil. Mix the cocoa powder and pectin. *Cuss loudly because you spilled some on the counter*

Once the raspberries are at low boil, add the cocoa powder and pectin mixture.

Stir well.

*Stop to say aloud and to the dog and anyone randomly listening thru hidden mics (just kidding) Wow, that looks like baby....*

Bring back to a rolling boil for 20 min. Makes 3 pint jars or 6 half pint jars. Waterbath for 15 minutes. Make sure you taste it before you can it, it may not make it to the canning stage if you do!

While it is in the water bath, click the link on the side of this postK's Fajita Seasoning and gather the ingredients.

Be sure to duck as the spices come falling out of the 3 little cabinets that you have to store food in.

Sneeze several times from the peppers.

Place in a mason jar for later use!

By the way, did you know that the tops from parmesan containers screw on perfectly to mason jars?

Odds and Ends of Prepping

Just a hodgepodge of stuff going on here on the farm.

Made a new batch of a blended tea. It's a combination of anise (mountain mint), bee balm (bergamont) and spearmint. Tastes and smells like a minty black jelly bean!

Looks so pretty in the dehydrator as well.

Got berries everywhere! Even though we aren't getting any rain, the berries seem to love it.
Canned some strawberry desert topping this morning. Picking up more canning jars this evening and canning some chocolate raspberry jam/filling tomorrow. I'm envisioning turnovers filled with it!

And the gratitious dinner picture just for Kymber, since she always posts yummy food that she is eating!

It's what we call a gondola dog with a side of spaghetti. It's basically a italian sausage wrapped in pizza dog then I brush a mixture of olive oil, fresh herbs from the garden and parmesan cheese on it and bake.

As you can see we are keeping busy! Next week will be a round of fishing up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin along with forgaging. Hoping that we do as well or better fishing up there as we did in Kentucky.

Raspberry Pecan Jam

Ambitious this morning after finally getting a night's sleep. Bear has developed this new habit of wanting to go lay down outside in the middle of the night. He barks when he wants to go out. Night before, I didn't get to sleep til close to 430 am and up with him again at 630 am. The training collar seems to be helping though I still have to get up to tell him No and to go back to sleep but less times last night.

Anyway, made Raspberry Pecan Jam this morning. This is the first year that our bushes have really produced and I am picking a little over a quart a day with no end in sight. Still plenty of green berries on the bushes.

Recipe is your basic jam recipe.

Raspberry Pecan Jam
4 quarts of Raspberries (roughly 6 1/2 cups)
2 cups of sugar
1/2 package of powdered pectin
scant tbsp of water
tbsp of lemon juice
1 cup of ground pecans

Combine everything but the pecans in a pot. Bring to boil and allow to boil for 20 min. (220 on candy thermometer). Last 5 minutes add the ground pecans.

Process in hot sterilized canning jars (pints) for 15 minutes at a rolling boil. Makes 4 pints.

It's like a peanut butter jelly sandwhich in a jar! Makes a impressive Christmas gift as well.

Chive Oil for Kymber

Olive oil, fresh cut chives from garden, mortar and pestle

(No that's not a rug on the floor, thats Bear sticking as close to Mom as possible!)

Kymber asked for this recipe which is simply easy as ...cake?

This works best with fresh cut chives, use scissors to snip them into small sections, then bruise with mortar and pestle to help release the oils.

Add to canning jar (or whatever jar you wish) then add about 1/2 cup of olive oil, we use EEVO.

Shake and place in fridge, this is best made the day before use, will store up to 5 days in fridge (though I believe it will go a bit longer)

This is great on grilled asparagus  and potatoes!! We love it with a bit of chopped garlic, cubed potatoes in a pan with some of this added. Gives it so much flavor!!

Later this week, I will be making a big batch of chive butter for the freezer. We add the chives to softened unsalted butter, roll it in wax paper to form a cyclinder, then slice off as we need it ...I know this sounds like a heart stopper but its excellent on grilled steaks!

Temps Rise-Maintence Time

With the summer like temperatures this early in spring, it has become a high drive to get maintence done early around the farm.

Right now, I look like I have a bad case of the measles with red paint speckling my arms. The last side of the gargage is getting done as well as the Bear Mansion Dog house (ever wonder what a dog house for a 200 lb dog looks like, you could park a car in it!), well not really but i can sit comfortably in it.

I have such a good man! Grey Knight before he left at o dark thirty in the morning went out and tipped the dog house up on its side so I could fully paint the bottom. All it took was a mention in passing that one evening when he got home, we needed to tip it.

Aldi run tonight (Aldi for those that don't have them) is a discount warehouse type grocery store. They have a ton of produce picks on sale, onions for 49 cents a lb, peppers for 99 a 3 pack, mushrooms for 49c a half lb, red potatoes for 1.29 a 5 lb bag. All of which will be thrown into the dehydrators for veggie flakes to add to soup mixes. Of course, I need to finish drying the 2 dozen eggs left in the frig too. I was impressed by the ease of drying them. 6 fit nicely on my fruit roll sheets and after drying simply grind them up (being careful not to breathe the egg powder in as it is still raw egg) and putting them into a canning jar with a couple 02 absorbers. To use them after simply substitue 1 tbsp for 1 egg in baking mixtures adding additional water to the recipe for liquid.
From what I have seen on survival food sites, unopened will last for 5 years, opened and stored in a cool place (like refrig or root cellar) will last 1-2 years.

Off to finish the painting! Just call me SPECKLED!

Jumble of Ideas

Several upcoming blog ideas rolling around in my head today. Started a giant crock of homemade saurkraut this weekend. Thank you for St. Patricks Day sales (a preppers friend) was able to get 25 lbs of cabbage for $5.10. As the Grey Knight said , thats less than a gallon of gas and will provide more gas than a tank of it! The 5 gallon crock will ferment for 4 weeks and then be canned up to 9 qts. of kraut.

Also started some fermented lemons this weekend to add to homemade mustard. Very simple to ferment them just add able a tsp of pickling salt to each lemon after its been quartered. Squeeze the juice into a mason jar and add the lemon. Continue til the jar is full. Top with a brine (1 qt water to 1 tbsp salt). Let sit for 4 weeks.

Also been thinking about substitues for WSHTF. It's all nice and good to have 12 bottles of shampoo and umpteen bars of soap. But when that runs out, what can you do to keep clean. Gonna do some experiments with planting Soapwort this year and using it as a soap and shampoo.

Pulling on my native american heritage, I'm gonna try the old fashioned way of getting oil from sunflower seeds. We like our food around here and frankly when SHTF, I plan on eating well, just doing alot more work to get the supplies.