By Sarah Witmer
It’s canning season! Barb Beachy, of Singers Glen, shares a good experience she had this year in preserving corn for the freezer: “Sweet corn! If you need to buy sweet corn and put it up, I highly recommend Garden Fresh Produce in Mount Crawford! I had called ahead to order a number of dozens and then he [Leonard Wenger] told me he purchased a silker/washer that I’m welcome to use. So he had me clean the corn there and then put it through this machine that brushes off the silks and washes it. It is so quick! My sister and I and our two boys did 40 dozen ears…cleaned and washed them in less than an hour and a half. How wonderful to drive home and just need to cook them and cut it off…”
Tomato Soup to Can
Amusingly, this recipe in my mom’s collection had a family friend’s name as the source on the card. When I called her about it, she said she got the recipe from my grandma Loretta Horst. I’ve tweaked this heaviy, so maybe it’s mine! So it goes with recipes – a nostaligic evolution.
3 gal. red tomatoes
6 lg. onions
14 stems celery
1 t. celery seed
1 c. sugar (or less!)
¼ c. salt
½ t. red pepper (opt.*)
1 c. thickening**
½ lb. butter
Original directions instruct to cook and sieve tomatoes. My advice is to be sure to blanch tomatoes to remove skins, unless a high quality blender is available, such as a Ninja. Even with an immersion blender, I have had little bits of hard tomato peel in the batch – not a pleasant texture. Blend all vegetables and celery seed together in either the juice from blanching or reserve from defrosted tomatoes***. Use two more cups of said juice to dissolve sugar, seasoning, and thickening agent. Add spice paste to tomato mixture. Bring to a boil and add butter. Pour in prepared jars and prepare lids. I like to label and date my lids before heating. A splash of vinegar in the canner water will stop hard water build up on jars. Process 25 minutes in boiling water bath. Yield – about 10 qt.
*Tip – kids usually mind the red pepper and will complain even at the mere ½ t. – recipe won’t taste the same without it, so I usually offer milk in their bowls so I can have my pepper in the batch.)
**Cornstarch, clear gel, thermflo, or flour – flour and cornstarch are likely the healthiest choices. Thermflo is the prettiest – it turns clear when done.
***The best part about this recipe is that tomatoes can be bagged in gallon freezer portions or large plastic tubs (think pretzel jars and ice cream buckets) and tucked away in a chest freezer during the harvesting blitz of summertime and retrieved in the slower pace of fall or winter for a cozy job when heating the kitchen to cook and can is a more welcome ordeal, and soup is more seasonal.
Refrigerator Pickle
From my husband’s Aunt Judy Witmer
1 gal. cucumbers
3 med. onions
3 ½ c. vinegar
3 ½ c. sugar
¼ c. salt
1 t. mustard
1 t. celery seed
1 t. turmeric
Thinly slice cucumbers and onions; mix remaining ingredients as a brine and pour over vegetables. Let set in refrigerator five days or more and enjoy!
Shoofly Whoopie Pies
Crumbs
3 c. flour
2 c. brown sugar
¼ c. lard*
Mix together and reserve 3 cups for the “goo”. Sprinkle remaining crumbs liberally on top of the cookie before baking.
Goo
3 c. crumbs
2 eggs, beaten
2 c. hot water
2 t. baking soda, dissolved in hot water
2 c. king syrup
2 t. vanilla
Mix together in saucepan, heat over medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk until it becomes thick and gooey. (Bubbling for approx. 20 min.) Cool before spreading on cookies.
Cookie
1 c. softened butter
1 c. shortening
½ c. king syrup
4 c. brown sugar
Cream and add:
4 eggs
2 t. vanilla
Cream and add:
9 ½ c. flour
4 ½ t. baking soda
3 t. salt
3 ¼ c. buttermilk
Bake at 350°F for 10 minutes. After cookies are cool, spread 1 T. of goo on one cookie and 3 T. of frosting on the other half. Put together.
Frosting
6 c. powdered sugar
3 c. butter*
1 T. vanilla
6 T. flour
2/3 c. milk
*Original recipe called for Crisco, which is really not good for health. (This entire recipe isn’t exactly a healthy choice. ☻) Could use lard, butter, or half and half of each. Cold shortening works best for making crumbs.
