A basement room that is cool, dark and dry is a good place to store your home made canned items. In the fall the temperature of this room drops to below 40 deg. F an ideal temperature for dry curing meats and sausages too. See the Charcuterie page
We stuff the peppers with Provolone cheese and Prosciutto ham. I first soak the peppers in white vineger. after ten days drain and stuff the peppers then put in to jars filled with Olive oil. place the jars in the refrigerator, the peppers will keep for a few months stored this way.
Tasty treats, well worth all of the work.
We pressure can some of our potatos, here is a mix of yukon gold and white potatos from our own seed stock. We just remove the metal lid and microwave till hot,drain the liquid and dump in a pot with butter and milk then mash a-way for quick mashed potatos, you can also add them to a chowder or stew at the very end of cooking. The potatos will store well for two years canned this way.
Trina and Paula bagging some of the 50 pounds of Soy beans we grow each year, the beans are blanched and then frozen.
We had a bumper crop of Eggplant this year, to save it for winter use we dip sliced eggplant into beaten egg mixture, I add a little garlic power also.
The egg coated slices are then covered with bread crumbs and placed on a large tray.
I take the tray of breaded eggplant slices out to the garage and fry them till they are golden brown. after the slices are cool, the eggplant is put into plastic freezer bags one layer deep and then placed flat in the freezer. you can stack the bags several layers high after the eggplant is well frozen. To use the frozen eggplant I just take out what we need and place a layer in an oven proof pan,put tomato sauce over the eggplant and some mozzarella cheese, then bake for 30 minutes or so till hot.
