Feeling a Bit Domestic

 It's July and it's hot outside, so I typically garden first thing in the morning and try to be inside by around 10am. I am free from piano lessons this summer, and so have decided to do several cleaning chores and some extra cooking with some of my free time. The first thing I decided to do was to try and make sauerkraut like Julie posted on here some while ago. I cut up my head of cabbage, and decided to use the crock above to ferment it in. After adding my salt, I put it into the crock above and weighted it down with agates in a bowl. After all it is summer, and the agates remind me of the beach, the cool beach. I think I left it in the crock for 6 or 7 days. I had never done this before, and I don't think I have actually tasted sauerkraut many times in my life. Certainly never homemade. A real adventure. The insurance man was dubious....

It came out beautifully, not too strong but rather salty. I decided to add it with other ingredients my first time out, so I sliced up some sweet onion and bell pepper, and stir fried them with the sauerkraut all together and added some large chunks of Italian sausage. It was good, but could have used more seasoning. We both liked it. I am going to try a different recipe for the kraut I have left.

Another morning I decided to clean out and organize the freezer. It's so much easier to find things, and to organize the meat we have to use it better. Each year we get 1/2 of a beef, grown by some good friends in Prineville. Anyway, I found 2 packs of soup bones and decided to make my own beef bone mineral broth. 

 

I cooked the bones with lots of veggies and scraps for flavor, and cooked the whole thing for 24 + hours. My first time to cook it that long. It made a nice rich broth when strained. The recipe said that the broth would gel as it cooled, and sure enough it did. I added the veggies and spices for a nice beef soup and could just feel all that goodness going down. There was actually a lot of meat on my soup bones, not like the photo above, so the soup was really yummy. (I even shared the cooked bones with a couple of black labs visiting next door.) It made a lot of soup, so it went into my nice clean freezer for another soup day.

 

 

And finally, I made up some freezer jam. It was and is a good year for berries in Oregon. I made strawberry, raspberry and a batch of strawberry/raspberry combo. We will be enjoying that this autumn.  

 

Tomorrow I am going to polish my silver in the morning. Next week I have in mind to clean out my china hutch and wash all the dishes. Who knows?