Cooking with Chef Jo: Cheater's Pickles

I planted Boston pickling cucumbers this year. In fact, it's the only cucumber I've ever grown in my garden. Whether I'm making pickles, slicing them in a salad, cooking, or dehydrating them, they work for me.

Their small lengths are perfect for a salad for four ,or two if you gave a salad hog in the family. I'm he salad hog on this homestead. Three quarters of my plate is piled high with the fresh vegetables leaving only a small spot left for a chicken thigh or a piece of chuck steak.

Mel doesn't like to eat fresh cucumbers but she loves pickles. For a year's worth, Our homestead will go through a case of pints each of bread and butter, and dill pickles. That's not including the case of pints jars of pickled relish, because I make that out of zucchini. It's a far cry from the 3 cases of quarts jars of each that I use to make with yougens under foot, but it's just enough to see us through a year. I rarely make more than 18 months worth a harvest because my cucumber pickles texture changes. One day I might try a new recipe that will have a longer shelf life, but not this year. There just isn't the time to try one. My learning curve is much slower these days and I've used my recipes for over forty years.

Out of the 94 recipes I've posted, I can't remember which recipes posted. EEK! I believe I've posted my zucchini relish and bread and butter pickles here, or did I just do videos of them? ARGH! CRAFT (can't remember a frazzling thing) is hitting me harder as each year passes. I don't have time to look at each canning blog right now. What to do, what to do?

You want a recipe. That's that's why you stopped by today. Okay, I'll do this. What if you are not a gardener. Or, you run out of your homemade pickles and need more but you don't want store bought  pickles with all those chemicals in them. You don't have a pot big enough to can your own pickles. You don't have/can't buy all the spices that go into pickle making. What do you do?

The answer is Cheater's Pickles! All you need is small or pickling cucumbers from the grocery store and the brine mix of the pickle you loved. Watch this video to learn how.

So now you know. Stretch that dollar until it screams. Whether you use your brine or store bought pickle brine, you can repeat this process only once. After that, the flavor is reduced with each remake.  But it will get you through while you are wanting for your cucumbers yo come in. We had fun playing with this video. Hope you enjoyed it. Me, I'm in the kitchen making...you guessed it, pickles. The whole house smells like a pickle factory, which it is.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Chef Jo

The Conversion to Quails Begins

After looking closely at the old quad-plex of rabbit hutches against the house that I was to convert to quail hutches, we realized this particular unit was in worse shape than we thought. This was the first one Mel built. She used what she had on hand for fasteners. This is the main reason we dismantled it this week. There were an assortment of different screw heads and sizes, staples, and nails. It was a hodgepodge of thrown together salvaged materials of this and that.  Mel handles the disassembling the demolition because she built it.

Wasting not wanting not, She saved all the screws and nails. She was changing drill tips left and right between hes, star, straight slot, and star. The outside frame was pretty sound considering it was piece milled for this 8'x 2 1/2'x 8' rabbit hutch. Mel even painstakingly removed all the staples holding the  1/4" and 1/2" hardware cloth in place. The old rusted pieces of mesh were discarded. The staples were discarded in their own plastic container to keep them from littering the ground. Each piece was placed in an orderly fashion in stacks so we could see what we had to build the new quail hutches in place. All the inadequately sized 1" hinges were saved for a future project. What that project is, we have no idea. 😸

For Christmas last year as a gag gift for Mel, I gave her a large boxes of assorted sized hinges. It's an ongoing joke with us that Mel hasn't met a hinges that she didn't like, didn't collect, and save. Even when she goes to an auction or yard sale, she'll grab hinges, knobs, and other such items. I'll ask, "What are you going to use them for?" She'll respond, "I don't know, but I'll find a use for them." She's currently got an 19-gallon tote of them.

I decided to sand and paint all the wood pieces to preserve them better. The rabbit hutches had been through the wringer the last four years unpainted and worked hard with rambunctious bunnies.  They needed some extra love and to make cleaning a breeze. I'd use the leftover primer and paint in the workshop so our cost would remain ZERO.

This was my job. With daytime highs around in the 60s, It will still dry. Later this month, the temperatures would drop below paint the paint drying stage and I wouldn't be able to paint until spring. I wanted it repainted, rebuilt, and ready to go for quail by March. Even though the Coturnix quail, if I hatched them out. wouldn't be ready to go in there until April.

Googled this image

I saw some adult quail at the local livestock auction for $2 a piece. I might just buy them at that price and incubate their eggs at that price. Yes, we got the seller's business card for future reference. He does this regularly and he sells eggs, chicks, and adult brown domestic quail. These full grown 10-week old quail, at the auction.  They were about 5 oz size so they could be butchered or produce eggs immediately. That means I could recoup my expense almost immediately. The cage he had them in was home built so I looked at how he built them also. They would be simple enough to build out of 2x2 and wire. The lid was framed with lathing strips. Talk about an effective, simple, and inexpensive build project!

So as Mel dismantled the old hutch, I sanded and painted the pieces. The doors to the cages were ample size. All we have to do is replace the hinges and latches. Oh, I gave her an assorted sized latches too for that Christmas too. So, it's still using things we have on hand. I'll be using some of the knobs on the drawers I 'm building around the oil drip pans to make them easier to pull out too. If I'm involved with the building of the quail hutches, they'll be built right even if it's with salvaged material. All screw holes will be predrilled to eliminate splitting and level! Mel abhors predrilling and using the level for animal builds. She eyeballs most builds so they come out cockeyed and become unusable like the old dropping pans. Some things building cockeyed doesn't matter, but I want these to be functional for a long time.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Crafting with Jo: Soil Block Maker Tutorial

I know Wednesdays you are used to seeing recipes, but I planned on using the additional blog page for other homesteading activities like cooking, crafting, and other creative stuff. So no secret recipe today. Instead we are crafting! And better yet, we are repurposing and recycling items which would take a couple thousand years to compost.

I was looking at my soil block maker while we were sowing our indoor seed starting operation a couple of weeks ago, and thought it would be a nifty idea to make a small set of soil block makers for the smaller seeds like herbs and carrots. So I decided to bring you along while I make them.

The middle bottle

Since my pharmacy now fills some of my prescriptions for 90 days including one of my muscle relaxers (Dantrolene). I get 6 of these bottles every 3 months. While we have a slew of uses for these bottles, I have a medium size stockpile of this size bottles.

How to Make It

Tools
Exacto Knife
Scissors
Marker
Saw, if combining them
Drill

Odds and Ends Bits
1 pill bottle or other round or square container with screw on lid
1 Eye bolt, how long depends on the length of the bottle plus 3"
4 fender washers
4 nuts, sized for the bolt

Duct Tape, if combining them
Six-inch long piece of 1x4, if combining

Now take your marker and mark the bottle following the diagram.
1) You want to mark for your drill hole in the center of the top. This is where the eye bolt will go.

2) Mark around the bottom of the pill bottle above the curved bottom.
Cut along the bottom with an Exacto knife.

3) Save the bottom that you just cut off. You'll use it as part of the plunger attachment. cut around the bottom piece until it fits smoothly inside the pill bottle.

3) Drill a hole in the center of this cut cut down bottom.

 
4) Drill a hole in the top where you marked the center spot. The size will depend on the size of you eye bolt. Make sure the eye bolt can move freely through the hole.

Assembly

1. Take the cap off the bottle.
2. On your eye bolt, screw on a nut within 2" of the eye.
3. Thread on a fender washer onto the bolt.
4. Slide on the cap. 
5. Add fender washer and nut. Make this finger tight to the cap. Too much torque and the plastic cap will crack.
6. Measure your bottle from the neck to the cut edge.
7. Now measure you bolt and sbtract a 1/2". Mark your bolt.
8. Screw a nut onto your bolt so the bottom edge of your nut is just above that mark.
9. Screw the top onto the bottle.
10. On the eye bolt, add a fender washer.
11. Slide on the cut down bottom piece.
12. Slide on a fender washer.
13. Screw on the nut.
14. You should have about 1/4" to 1/2" inch clearance off the bolt showing.

This isn't mine. I googled this one for a finished product image.

Your soil block maker is ready to use. Pull the plunger all the way up. Fill with moist seed starting mix. Invert onto seed starting tray. I use a repurposed baking sheets. It had rusty spots. Or even a repurposed vinyl tablecloth lined box will do. Place seed in the depression made in the top by the bolt. Scratch the surface to cover the seed. I use a bamboo skewer or popsicle stick. Water from bottom up or gentle spray from the top.

How to Tell If Your Mix is Moist Enough 
It's not runny but clumps together nicely when squeezed in your hand.

BONUS
Now making a hundred pots one at a time is a bit tedious. I make 4 to 8 bottles at a time. I'll mount regular bolts instead of eye bolts onto a 1x4 piece of lumber. This way I fill and unmold 4-8 soil blocks at a time. I'll use duct tape to stabilize the bottles together.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Jo

Starting Seeds and Preparing for Spring

 

This week on our homestead we planted English peas, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic and leeks in the garden. Now our last frost date isn't until the end of April. In the greenhouse, I started my herbs, peppers and tomatoes. Am I nuts to think the cold won't kill them? Not really. I far too aware I'm farther north than my previous gardening experience.

Now I could have gone out and spent a small fortune on those seed pots but the Cockeyed Homestead is a shoe string operation. My seed starting pots are made out of toilet paper and paper towel rolls. If more are needed, there are plenty of free newspapers available. FYI (for your information) we also use toilet paper rolls stuffed with dryer lint and dipped in paraffin for fire starter in the wood stove, and also use them for rabbit treat toys. We recycle as much as we can. In fact, it takes us two months to fill three 32-gallon trash cans. Even my empty one liter bottles of tonic water are saved. But I digress.

For frost protection

It's almost the end of February. It will take a few weeks to grow the seeds big enough to transplant from the greenhouse.The plants outside can be covered with sheets to protect them from an overnight frost. Our daytime temperatures are in the 50s and 60s. We even hit the 70 this week. Or for really tender plants, my empty tonic water bottles protect them. We simply cut the bottoms off and place them over the plant in the afternoon before a frost. During the summer, a small hole is drilled into the top and they are inverted as a slow drip watering system for the plants. The water goes where it is needed most...the roots. As an alternative, I can replace the water with either worm, compost, or rabbit poo tea for a slow release fertilizer. If slower release is

For summer drip waterers

needed, a quick trip to my local dollar store for a supply of sponges. Two sponges pack will net twenty sponge inserts in the caps to slow the dispersal down. For a buck and some change for tax, it's a good deal.

Two liter bottles work better, but we don't buy two liter sodas opting for aluminum cans instead. Recycle centers actually pay you to recycle these. Everyone can use a few extra bucks back, right?

I take tonic water for the quinine to help with my nocturnal leg cramps. There is nothing like waking from a deep sleep by Charlie horses. Before the tonic water, I was awakened a couple times a night with these.

Planting, setting seeds, grooming angora and Jersey Woolies has dominated the week. Fifty English peas, ten pounds of russet and red potatoes, forty leeks, onions, and garlic cloves all in the ground. Ten bell peppers, cayenne, turmeric, ginger, ten types of lettuces and spinach, fifteen assorted herbs, and thirty tomato seeds are snug in their pots in the greenhouse just germinating and growing for spring.

How has your week been?

"Y'all have a blessed day."