Food, Fun and the Southwest Sun

Farmer's Markets delight me, when I go. Which is not very often although there are quite a few in Phoenix and several not too far from my house. I don't know why I never make the effort since I'm all about the organic, locally grown movement in our city. There is one Farmer's Market that I do attend though, and last year I even had my own booth. It's the annual fundraiser sponsored by Gentiva's Rehab Without Walls and benefits both the Brain Injury Association and the Spinal Cord Injury Association. This November I and several of my colleagues will again team together to provide home-made products for sale at the event.

This year I don't have a large garden to supply the market with herbs or home-made pesto so I decided to try my hand at home canning. I want to make apple pie filling in anticipation of Thanksgiving just a week after the event. I also plan on baking pumpkin pies with a walnut and brown sugar topping. Along with the same hummus I made last year we should have lots of good, interesting products at our table. Except, I don't know how to can anything. Yet.

I began by looking up lots of home canning recipes for apples. I was surprised to see that you don't actually cook the apples, just stuff them in the jar with the syrup. I was also having a hard time finding out how many quarts of apple pie filling it takes to make one pie. As I was doing my research I got a little scared about the dangers of home canning and particularly the use of cornstarch, even though I saw it as an ingredient in a lot of recipes. I decided to skip any recipe that called for it. The best website I found for my needs was http://www.ourbestbites.com

I didn't have any canning jars but remembered I saw lots of them at Goodwill. As an experiment I bought two of the flip top type (made in Italy) to try them out. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the rubber rings for them. I went to a couple stores in my neighborhood for quart sized canning jars and found some at Ace Hardware. I picked up a jar lifter thingy too. When I got home, I dug out my stock pot and placed the jar in the pot to see if it would fit. It would not. Really? I now needed to buy a larger stock pot for the sole purpose of boiling jars. Not wanting to pay a fortune I tried to locate a large pot at one of the many thrift shops in my area. No go. A friend suggested I go to a Mexican Food Store so off I went, and sure enough, they had great pots lining the entire back wall in all sizes! I settled on a 20 quart model with a steam tray, for $19.00. Here's what I have so far:

Tomorrow, I will go hunt down something called "Ultra-Gel".