Categories

Canning the Fungi

I love mushrooms.  I think that it’s due to a diet low in potassium and the other nutrients found in fungus because there are times when I simply cannot eat enough mushrooms.  This grosses out my husband to no end (he hates the fungi), but I just ignore his faces.  I decided to can mushrooms because I go through them a lot and the store by my house had the sliced/washed ones on sale for a dollar a bag.  I couldn’t pass up that sort of deal!

Make certain that you only can domestic mushrooms that are certified as safe. Make certain there is no discoloration on the mushrooms and cut off anything that looks weird.

So, here’s the modified recipe that I used:

Mushrooms

weights are always approximate

1/2 Pint

1 lb.

Pint

2 lbs.

Boiling Water as needed as needed
Ascorbic Acid 1/16 teaspoon 1/8 teaspoon
Pressure Canner Processing
45 minutes 45 minutes
  1. Trim stems and soak mushrooms for ten minutes.
  2. Wash in clean water.
  3. Slice mushrooms.
  4. Boil covered in water for five minutes.
  5. Drain and reserve water for canning.
  6. Can mushrooms using hot pack method, and then add boiling water,
    maintaining 1″ headspace.
  7. Process with a Pressure Canner 45 minutes for half-pints or pints, at
    10 pounds for a weighted gauge.
  8. After processing, remove from boiling water and place the jars on a towel, separated
    by 1” to cool naturally.
  9. Label with the date.

This is my canning setup:

Below is the picture of the mushrooms boiling.  I used a slightly smaller lid to submerge all of the mushrooms.  I don’t know if this was necessary but I did it anyway.

Then I drained them.

Into the jars they go to be pressure canned!

And then the final product after canning.  Perfect!

Keep in mind that this could be done with many veggies and fruits if you ever run across a great sale.  It’s a perfect way to save money/be frugal.

Blue Champagne Cupcakes!

I received the April/May 2010 Betty Crocker Cupcakes, Cakes & More magazine in the mail and immediately went to make the Pink Champagne Cupcakes.  I changed the color to blue since I didn’t have pink food coloring, but the result was fabulous!  I added on some multicolored sugar sprinkles and some silver edible ball sprinkles as a last touch.  Very tasty!

The recipe can be found here on the Betty Crocker website.

They were almost too pretty to eat!  Almost…

Dehydrating Parsley?

My family goes through dry parsley on a regular basis.  It goes on to seared chicken, beef stews, steaks…  You name it.   Well, a trip to the store revealed that organic parsley spice isn’t cheap.  Who wants to spend five bucks on a bottle that won’t last very long?

The cheapest solution: dry my own dang organic parsley.  Yes, it can take a little bit of time, but not more than ten minutes.  And buying it fresh and organic was a third of the price!  How could I not embark upon this adventure?

The first step was to cut the parsley down to little leaf bunches, wash the parsley, and rise it off.  I use an organic vegetable wash that I bought, but you can easily make it from scratch by using lemons and vinegar.  Here’s the link to that.

To speed up the drying process, I tossed the parsley in my salad spinner and spun it like crazy.

Onto the dehydrator trays it goes!  I tried not to cut the pieces too small, as they would have fallen through the cracks in the dehydrator tray.

I set the dehydrator at 95 degrees Fahrenheit.  The drying time took about 22 hrs total.

From there, I took the dried parsley pieces and put them into my food processor.  A few presses of the high button had them at just the right size.

This was seriously easy and the result was the best parsley spice that I have ever tasted!  Skip the expensive spices and just do it yourself.

Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes