To peel a perfect hard-boiled egg: as soon as the eggs are done cooking, put them in VERY cold water. The sudden temp change will make the inside contract and makes the shell easier to peel off the inner membrane.
This weeks preps check-in
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To peel a perfect hard-boiled egg: as soon as the eggs are done cooking, put them in VERY cold water. The sudden temp change will make the inside contract and makes the shell easier to peel off the inner membrane.
I didn't do anything special, just put them in boiling water, for fifteen minutes, then remove the pot from the heat and let cool. I tap the shell on the counter and peel under cool running water. I didn't have any issues at all. Do you give your hens laying crumble? It may make the shell easier to peel?
Actually, laying mash makes their eggshells harder. I do give it to them as a treat in the morning and evening, about 2 measuring cups shared amongst 8 hens each time. I did go ahead and make my "damaged" hard-boiled eggs into pickled eggs since they are for me anyway. They'll keep in the fridge for a couple of months. I'll have to scramble the rest of my eggs!
These are sweet and spicy eggs. I used habaneros and jalapenos, red onion, a clove of garlic, sugar, salt, pickling spice and a cinnamon stick. They aren't for everyone. You can leave out the cinnamon, sugar and onion if you don't like the sweet. I love these sprinkled with tabasco sauce and pepper.
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The way I do my hard boiled eggs. . .
I try to use small to medium sized eggs that are at least a week old. I bring my water to a rolling boil first then place in however many eggs. Cover and turn down to a simmer for 10 minutes. Pour out hot water, add ice and some cold water. Peel. Out of the 5 dozen eggs I just did, I had 4 that didn't want to peel nicely so those I used in potato salad.
This week I was able to add 10 cans of tuna and 10 cans of canned chicken to my storage. Not much but I'm on a tight budget. I have also made plans for a Bol close to home on the way to my long term location. Going to do a semi permenant shelter in the middle of the woods hidden
When you write 'cans', do you mean as in tin cans or like pint/quart jars? Reason I asked as I've seen the tin can set-ups and curious about them., Costly but lasts longer than glass.
I hadn't thought of Ball-type jars until I read this. Thanks for the post!
On vacation this week already went through and put away some preps that I've been acumalating here and there , worked in whats left of the garden this morning still getting lots of okra and tomatoes ocasional squash Am planning on lots of projects this week and couple fishing trips . Me and my son are going to the flea market this weekend I'm looking for preps He will most likely look for electronics or something for his car , 16 this year .
Just normal cans from the store. Nothing special about them other than close to 4 year shelf life.
Ordered 8 Cree 7W 300LM Mini LED One Mode for $3.60 Includes shipping, has good reviews. I was looking for something to add to my supply store for trade items and this fit the bill.
http://www.amazon.com/Cree-300LM-Mini-Mode-Flashlight/dp/B006VPPERC/ref=cm_cd_ql_qh_dp_t
NOTE: doesn't include battery as pictured
Wife was at garage sale yesterday and found a box of double bitted axe heads 11 in all (no handles) for $5.00 all in pretty good shape, I can get handles for about $7 a pc locally,
they are the old Snow & neally out of the hampden plant she figured a good buy (yap)
http://www.amazon.com/Cree-300LM-Mini-Mode-Flashlight/dp/B006VPPERC/ref=cm_cd_ql_qh_dp_t
NOTE: doesn't include battery as pictured
Wife was at garage sale yesterday and found a box of double bitted axe heads 11 in all (no handles) for $5.00 all in pretty good shape, I can get handles for about $7 a pc locally,
they are the old Snow & neally out of the hampden plant she figured a good buy (yap)
you have a very smart wife
She knows I am always looking for older axes and in some cases she gasp at prices I have paid for old rusty axes but double bitted axes are getting harder to find and generally not cheap
the Snow & neally today isn't the same, they don't forge anything here in the states anymore
no, the axe heads are USA made, around the late 60s early 70s, today however is a different story, for the most part they sell so-called high-end imported garden tools not so much in the axe business anymore
I'm collecting as many hard copy reference materials as I can. I'm really spoiled with google, you can learn anything, till you loose power.got my self a book about camping, full of old-school things, several hundred pages of info and knowledge of how to do...and it was on sale
How does your pickeling recipie differ from quietharts? I have too many eggs and would like to try saving some.
Print, print, print... I copy everything of relevance I can find on the internet into notepad, print it out and file it in a large zipper binder.
Brent, there are numerous recipes on the web for pickling eggs. It's a matter of what taste you prefer most or if you want an assortment to surprise yourself. I'm going to try the recipe using dill, garlic and jalapenos that was on the canning pickled eggs link posted here earlier in the week. But I'm also going to try some of the recipes below which came from the National Center for Home Food Preservation site. All contingent upon whether I can get these fresh eggs to peel properly for me, that is. I'm actually going to do them in pint jars, that way if I open a jar and don't like the taste, I haven't wasted many eggs and I can sell the rest of the jars from that batch at the Farmer's Market or give them as gifts. My son-in-law will eat anything!
RED BEET EGGS
1 cup red beet juice (from canned beets)
1½ cups cider vinegar
1 teaspoon brown sugar
a few canned whole tiny red beets (or several slices of beets can be used)
SWEET AND SOUR EGGS
1½ cups pasteurized apple cider
½ cup cider vinegar
1 package (about 12 oz.) red cinnamon candy
1 tablespoon mixed pickling spice
2 tablespoons salt
1 teaspoon garlic salt
DARK AND SPICY EGGS
1½ cups cider vinegar
½ cup water
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon mixed pickling spice
¼ teaspoon liquid smoke or hickory smoke salt
2 teaspoons salt
CIDERED EGGS
1½ cups pasteurized sweet apple cider or apple juice
½ cup white vinegar
6 thin slices of onion
1½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon whole pickling spice
1 peeled garlic clove
DILLED EGGS
1½ cups white vinegar
1 cup water
¾ teaspoon dill weed
¼ teaspoon white pepper
3 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon mustard seed
½ teaspoon onion juice or minced onion
½ teaspoon minced garlic or 1 peeled garlic clove
PINEAPPLE PICKLED EGGS
1 can (12 oz.) unsweetened pineapple juice*
1½ cups white vinegar
2 medium onions, peeled and sliced
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon whole pickling spice
*If sweetened pineapple juice is used, omit sugar
A couple of years ago, we had a hurricane here that blew the roof off of my shed. My toolbox and everything in it got soaked and rusted. I know this is bad, but rather than try at the time to clean it all up, I just went out and bought new screwdrivers, pliers, hammers and other little odds and ends as I needed them. I left the rusted stuff just sitting there. My only excuse for procrastinating on doing anything about it is that I've spent the last 3 years doing a lot of travelling.
Well, I finally decided it was time to clean out the shed but like many of us here, I have a hard time throwing away things that might be useful or sellable. I put all of those rusted tools in a plastic tub and poured a gallon of vinegar on them and let it sit for more than 24 hours. It worked! No more rust on anything and now I have 2 sets of tools. The cleaned ones are sitting in the sun drying now. I'll have to take a wire brush to the toolbox before I put them back in there.
The fact that I also cleared out all of my green bean bushes (way too many canned green beans here now) and my corn stalks - I only got enough corn to freeze a gallon baggie full scraped off the cob - and canned 8 quarts of chicken broth and 6 quarts of chicken and broth together during the wait seems minor compared to having tools that look new again.
Well, I finally decided it was time to clean out the shed but like many of us here, I have a hard time throwing away things that might be useful or sellable. I put all of those rusted tools in a plastic tub and poured a gallon of vinegar on them and let it sit for more than 24 hours. It worked! No more rust on anything and now I have 2 sets of tools. The cleaned ones are sitting in the sun drying now. I'll have to take a wire brush to the toolbox before I put them back in there.
The fact that I also cleared out all of my green bean bushes (way too many canned green beans here now) and my corn stalks - I only got enough corn to freeze a gallon baggie full scraped off the cob - and canned 8 quarts of chicken broth and 6 quarts of chicken and broth together during the wait seems minor compared to having tools that look new again.
The beet and dill sounded the best so far! Thanks for posting. I usually ask friends first, then google several different recepies, then make some mixture of the ingredients I think sound good. Most of my life food wasn't a big thing to me, but now trying new things is one of the best pleasures in life!
I liked your post of cooking down the bone and scrap for preserving for dog food. I didn't think canning broth was really worth while, but this put a new twist on it.
This might help, I hope. Around here it's noting but farm land and Amish so the farm auctions almost always include old 'worthless' tools and such. Great places to pick up the Old World implements.
If anyone wants something specific, I could keep an eye out for you. Just a thought.
If anyone wants something specific, I could keep an eye out for you. Just a thought.
Went to the flea market yesterday . We had storms rolling through small crowd less vendors . They had alot of old hand tools I got a hand plane for wood working and a old length of log chain with hook from the mule and ox days of loggong . One vendor had some nice drawing knifes but wanted a bit to much for them .
I may be the only person who thought it was worthwhile to do this. All I have to do is look at the ingredients list on the can or box of broth from the store and it becomes worthwhile to me. Three organically raised chickens that were on sale and enough water to keep my water bath canner pot 2/3 full. Plus herbs - I remember adding a bay leaf, basil, parsley, sage, poultry seasoning and peppercorn. I may have added more. I also added chopped carrots, celery, garlic and onion. It takes a lot of cooking to soften the chicken bone so you have to consider whether it's worth the time and electricity to do so. I put my broth on to simmer while I was awake and turned the burner down to low while I was sleeping and it took 24 hours. I poured it through a strainer at about 12 hours cooking and tossed the veggies to the chickens and separated out the meat I was going to can. The bones weren't soft enough at that point. You have to be able to break them easily between your fingers before they are safe to give to dogs. So I put the bones and scrap back in the pot and simmered for another couple of hours. I poured it back through the strainer again and let the bones cool a bit so I could mash them all with my hands then put them back in the broth for the last couple of hours.
I probably shouldn't have done so much taste-testing with the coffee mug. I drank at least a quart of the broth while it was cooking.
I can't find the nutritional details on bone broth website, but when you cook through the marrow of bones you get a lot more minerals and vitamins than just a short cooking of the chicken. The bone broth becomes a whole food at that point and personally, I could live on it in the wintertime.
Last step - I poured everything through a cheesecloth lined strainer. All of the bone, cartilage, skin and gristle went into a 2 quart container for the dog - it didn't fill the container. So, for someone like Jim with his Pomeranian, it might be a week's worth of dog food, but for me with the 140 lb great dane, it's only about a handful a day added as a supplement to dry food for a week. I had enough chicken meat to make 6 quarts of chicken soup base - I filled each quart jar half full of chicken then poured broth over it. Knowing the canner will only hold 7 quart jars, I filled 8 more jars with broth and had enough left over to drink another mug of it, pour some over the dog's food that evening and make a pot of chicken and dumplings.
This is a 50% concentrate of broth, I found. With what I had left over, I added the same amount of water and got a wonderful tasting broth for my Sunday dinner.
The plain broth only took 25 minutes in the canner but the chicken/broth mix took 75 minutes and the first time I did it, the canner ran out of water 2/3 of the way done and I had to let it cool and do it over again with more water added.
This was my first time doing this. There are things I will definitely do differently next time. Like the vegetables will go into the broth in a cheesecloth bag so I don't have to pick them out from the mass of chicken. I think they were necessary to get the final flavor that I'm so pleased with and it's never a waste to make more chicken food from things that grew in your own garden. I will do four or five chickens, depending on size, instead of three so I can get 3 full canning pots of quart jars.
The worst part of every canning experience for me is the cleanup. My kitchen is always a mess afterwards. On the plus side, I won't have to buy chicken for another year now.
That's been the most important thing I've learned this year - I have to really think about how often I'll eat the things I'll can and not make more than that. The other issue that I have is that the high pressure of canning not only destroys bacteria - it also destroys nutrient content. That indoor garden looks more and more attractive every day!
