The Equipment List

68°f/20°C, foggy.

I admit, I am loving this autumn weather. Cool mornings, long shadows, leaves drifting down, and this morning a heavy fog that didn’t clear until after 10. Bliss.

The pears are hanging heavy but are not yet ripe, although some are starting to fall. These are old Bartlett pears, also called winter pears, that must be stored a while before ripening.  The thing is, many spoil before they ripening! So it's a careful game to get enough to can or otherwise preserve.

Clyde avoided the damp morning by camping out in one of his favorite places. 

This planter of impatiens managed to survive the heat and drought and still provides a bright spot of color.

I spent most of the day in the kitchen again. Yesterday I canned a few jars of vegetable soup,  and I made a second batch today. While that was in process I picked the meat from a rotisserie chicken we had for supper Friday evening. I made the meat into chicken salad, and then started a pot of broth with the bones.

Cooking from scratch and preserving most of our food takes a lot of time, as I guess regular readers know. And makes a lot of dirty dishes! But the end result is so satisfying. My friend Batsy (a nickname from her storytelling days) suggested that a post about all the equipment needed for food preservation, so here's a stab at it. Let's see:

• A pressure canner is a must if one wants to put up meats and low acid foods. I havev3, just to have backup, and often have 2 going at the same time.
• A water bath canner for fruits, pickles, and tomatoes. I have 2 or 3 of these too.
• A jar lifter to get hot jars out of the canners
• Jars! Lots and lots of them. And lids and rings. The lids must be replaced with every use but the rings can be used over and over. I have used about 250 lids so far this year, much less than usual.
• A food processor isn't a necessity but certainly can make chopping stuff up much easier, and saves a lot of time. 
• I also find my immersion blender indispensable these days for purees. I can't think how I got along for so many years without it.
• A dehydrator is great for herbs, onions, peppers and a host of other things that can be dried and stored. 
• A vacuum sealer is another tool that's not a necessity, but food sealed with one doesn't freezer burn and stays in good shape much longer than with traditional bags. 
• A candy thermometer for making jam. Getting it to the right temperature makes the difference as to how well the jam will set. Not foolproof,  but a big help.
• The Victorio strainer is amazing for making applesauce and tomato juice 
• A meat slicer and a meat grinder are needed when deer season come around, or if I find pork loin or roasts cheap. We can slice our own chops that way.
• The big copper apple butter kettle makes an annual appearance, along with its stirrer.
• Ditto the cider press. It's not going to be used much this year as our apples didnt do well, so unless we find a source for apples, it will mainly be making pear cider.
• A drying rack is handy for hanging herbs, hot peppers and garlic.
• Baskets--half bushel and peck-- for picking and short term storage. And buckets for picking.
• Then there is all the other small stuff: a food mill for small batches of apple sauce, canning funnels, ladies, a jelly bag and stand, colander and strainers, cheesecloth for straining, a drying rack for pasta, a pasta machine. If I went in the kitchen and looked in the cupboards and drawers, I am sure i could add to this list 
• And the other big stuff, mainly BIG pots! I have three stock pots, I think, and often all three are in use. 
• Let's not forget the biggest thing: storage! The cellar is our main storage, but we store potatoes and winter squash in the back room. The large pantry cupboard holds most of our dry foods, the equipment cabinet holds most of the small appliances, and then there is the big pot cupboard, which is part of the kitchen base cabinets and was built just for that purpose. We have 2 freezers, one large upright and one smaller one. I know people who have 4 or 5 freezers but these two are enough for us. 

I think that's the list! Seems like a lot, but i have been at this over 50 years, so it gradually accumulated. We used to make butter so I still have my old churn, and finally sold my grain grinder a few years back. The churn, though, holds too many good memories so I am not ready to let it go yet.